Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no regrets about the war in Ukraine yesterday, claiming that the "special military operation" was still achieving its goals and that the West's dominance of world affairs was coming to an end.
Criticizing the West for more than three and a half hours in a question-and-answer session at the annual conference of the Valdai debating club, Putin appeared confident and relaxed.
Accusing Washington and its allies of fomenting the conflict in Ukraine and nuclear blackmailing Russia, Putin said the West was playing a "dangerous, bloody and dirty" geopolitical game causing chaos around the world.
In one of his longest public appearances since sending troops into Ukraine on February 24, the Kremlin leader said the West would eventually have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the future of the world.
"The historical period of complete domination of the West over world events is coming to an end," Putin said at the session "The World after Hegemony: Justice and Security for All".
He assessed that the world is at a historic turning point, Reuters reported, stating that the 70-year-old president was more than an hour late for the meeting of Russian experts.
"Ahead of us is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, most important decade since the end of the Second World War".
The Kremlin leader claims that the Russian economy has passed the "peak" of turmoil due to Western sanctions. He pointed out that the West's attempts to cause the collapse of the Russian economy had failed and that it had adapted to the new economic reality.
Putin said that the war in Ukraine is partly civil because Russians and Ukrainians are one people
Putin has downplayed the nuclear dispute for the West, arguing that Russia has not threatened to use atomic weapons. He blamed the West for stoking nuclear tensions, citing statements by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss that she was prepared to use London's nuclear deterrent if circumstances warranted.
He repeated the claim that Ukraine could detonate a "dirty bomb" in order to blame it on Russia and dismissed as false Kiev's claims that Russia might be planning to detonate such a device.
"We don't have to do that. That wouldn't make sense," Putin said, adding that the Kremlin responded to what he saw as nuclear blackmail from the West.
When asked about potential nuclear escalation, the Russian leader said the threat of nuclear weapons will exist as long as there are nuclear weapons.
However, he said that Russia's military doctrine is defensive, and when asked about the Cuban missile crisis, he replied that he did not want to be in the role of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who, together with John F. Kennedy, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. before he defused the situation.
Citing a 1978 Harvard lecture by Russian dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Putin said the West was openly racist and looked down on the rest of the world.
The president downplayed the nuclear standoff with the West, arguing that Russia had not threatened to use nuclear weapons and was only responding to nuclear "blackmail" by Western leaders.
"Power over the world is what the so-called West has staked in its game - but that game is dangerous, bloody and I would say dirty," Putin said. "He who sows the wind, as they say, reaps the storm", he added.
"I have always believed and I believe in common sense, so I am convinced that sooner or later the new centers of the multipolar world order and the West will have to start an equal conversation about the future we share - and the sooner the better," said the 70-year-old Russian the president.
"Russia is not your enemy"
He said that ordinary citizens of Western countries should fight for a salary increase and that they should not think that Russia is their enemy.
"Fight for higher wages," he said when asked what he would say to an ordinary citizen of a Western country. "And don't believe that Russia is your enemy".
He added that Russia is not an enemy of the West and has never had any malicious intentions towards Europe or the US. However, Western leaders, he said, made big mistakes that led to the economic and energy crisis.
He also said that liberal Western leaders have undermined "traditional values" around the world, imposing a culture with "dozens of genders, gay parades" on other countries.
Putin portrays the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia over the fate of the second-largest Eastern Slavic country.
He said it was partly a "civil war" because Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Putin said that he constantly thinks about Russian losses in Ukraine, but that only Russia can guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Speech "for Freud"
The leader of the Kremlin said yesterday that hard-line Ukrainian nationalists are ready to "fight to the last Ukrainian" in the conflict with Russia.
He added that Ukraine had suffered heavy casualties in the eight-month conflict and criticized Ukraine's "hard-line patriots" and "Banderovs," a term often used by Russian officials and commentators to describe Ukrainian fighters who they say are neo-Nazis and fascists because they are willing to they sacrifice their comrades.
"Any speech by Putin can be described as 'for Freud,'" Mihailo Podoljak, adviser to the Ukrainian president, announced on Twitter.
"The one who invaded a foreign country, annexed its territory and committed genocide, accuses others of violating international law/sovereignty of other states?"
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