FORMER Polish president Lech Walesa has called on the West to reduce Russia’s population to 50 million saying that breaking up the country would ensure world security. 

The controversial comments were made in French newspaper Le Figaro in which he urged Western countries “to force a change in the political system in the country, to organise an uprising of the peoples.”

Mr Walesa was the leader of Poland’s Solidarnosc movement which led a CIA-backed anti-communist counterrevolution in the 1980s and was described by former US President Ronald Reagan as a weapon in the Cold War.