The West seeks to establish and maintain its control over the rest of the planet using "dirty" and "bloody" means, President Vladimir Putin has said.
"World domination is what the so-called West has staked in its game, but the game is unquestionably dangerous, bloody and I would say, dirty," Putin said, speaking at the plenary meeting of the Valdai Discussion Forum on Thursday.
"It denies the sovereignty of nations and peoples, their identity and uniqueness, and has no regard whatsoever for other countries," Putin added.
'Rules-Based Order' is an 'Order With No Rules'
The Russian president also suggested that the so-called 'rules-based' international order declared by the US and its allies actually has only one "rule" - designed to give those who created it "the opportunity to live without any rules whatsoever" and enabling them to "get away with anything, no matter what they've done."
Attempts to do away with cultural, social, political and civilizational diversity and to "erase any and all differences have become almost the essence of the modern West," and is aimed at ensuring "the disappearance of the creative potential in the West itself and the desire to contain and block the free development of other civilizations. There is also a direct mercantile interest here, of course," Putin said, pointing to the West's efforts to impose its consumer culture values on others to expand their markets.
"It's no coincidence that the West claims that its culture and worldview should be universal. Even if they don't say so directly, they behave this way. In fact, their approach insists that these values be unconditionally accepted by all other participants in international communication," the president said.
The origins of the current crisis have their roots in the destruction of the Soviet Union three decades ago, Putin said. "The collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed the balance of political forces. The West felt like a winner and proclaimed a unipolar world order in which only its will, its culture, its interests had the right to exist."
Escalation
"The so-called West - I use this term conditionally of course, there is no unity there, it's clear that this is a very complex conglomerate - has taken a number of steps in recent years and especially in recent months toward escalation," Putin said, describing the state of affairs in the world today.
"They're always trying to escalate...They're fueling the war in Ukraine, organizing provocations around Taiwan, destabilizing the world food and energy markets," Putin said.
Putin characterized last month's terrorist attack against the Nord Stream gas pipeline network as an "outrageous" step, adding that unfortunately, "we are witnessing these sad events."
Pointing to Western governments' admission that they financed the events leading up to the 2014 Euromaidan coup in Kiev, which gave rise to the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West, Putin suggested that they've openly demonstrated their "loutish" nature.
Putin warned that the West's confidence in its "infallibility" is a "very dangerous" delusion, with there only being "one step" between this self-confidence to the idea that "they can simply destroy those they do not like, or as they say, to 'cancel' them."
But "history will put everything in its proper place and will not 'cancel' the works of the greatest and broadly recognized geniuses of world culture, but instead those who today have decided for some reason that they have the right to dispose of world culture at their own discretion. The self-conceit of these people is off the charts. But in a few years no one will remember them, while Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and Pushkin will live," Putin assured.
The neo-liberal "American-style" model is experiencing a "doctrinal crisis," according to the president, and has "nothing to offer the world except to preserve their dominance."
Emphasizing that Russia is not a natural "enemy" of the West, Putin urged the West's liberal leaders and elites to stop seeing "the hand of the Kremlin" behind all their internal domestic problems.
"In the conditions of the current tough conflict, I'll say a few things directly: Russia, being an independent, distinct civilization, has never considered itself and does not consider itself an enemy of the West. Americanophobia, Anglophobia, Francophobia, Germanophobia are forms of racism, just like Russophobia and Anti-Semitism or any manifestation of xenophobia," Putin stressed.
But there are "at least two Wests," the president added, including the positive, traditional one with its immensely rich culture and the aggressive, neocolonial one, whose dictates Moscow will never accept. Russia has resisted Western hegemony and "its right to exist and develop freely," and at the same time does not have any plans to itself "become some kind of new hegemony," nor to impose its values on anyone or "interfere in someone else's backyard," Putin said.
Solutions
The Russian president suggested that amid the escalating economic, humanitarian, military and political crises plaguing the planet, it is unlikely that any country anywhere will be able to 'sit things out'. Therefore, solutions of a global scale need to be reached, even if they are imperfect ones.
"The crisis has acquired a truly global character and affects everyone. There's no need to harbor any illusions. There are essentially two paths for humanity: either to continue to accumulate the burden of problems which will inevitably crush us all, or to try to find solutions together, solutions which may not be ideal, but which work, and which are capable of making our world more stable and safer," Putin said.
The Russian president emphasized that the West would need to start talking to rising alternative centers of power. "I have always believe and continue to believe in the power of common sense, and therefore am convinced that sooner or later both the new centers of a multipolar world order and the West will have to start a conversation based on equality about our common future. The sooner, the better, of course," he said.
The "new world order" that replaces the current one "should be based on law, be free, original and fair. Thus, the world economy and trade should become more fair and open," Putin said, benefiting the majority of nations and people, not individual corporations. At the same time, technology should reduce inequality, not increase it.
The president added that new international financial platforms are necessary which are outside the control of national jurisdictions, and which are "secure, depoliticized, automated and not dependent on any single control center." Putin expressed confidence that such a system could be built.
Multipolarity is a necessity for the planet, including for Europe - to restore the latter's political and economic agency, which is "very limited" today, according to Putin.
"We are standing on a historical frontier. Ahead of us is probably the most dangerous unpredictable and at the same time important decade since the end of the Second World War," Putin said.
Ukraine
Commenting on Russia's ongoing military operation in Ukraine, Putin said he thinks about the losses in life resulting from the conflict "all the time," and that the crisis in Ukraine is a part of the "tectonic changes" taking place "in the entire world order."
"Why was it necessary to carry out a coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014?" Putin asked, recalling the origins of the current crisis. "[Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych actually gave up power and agreed to hold early elections...Why was it necessary to carry out a bloody anti-constitutional coup under these conditions?"
The answer, Putin believes, is that the West wanted to "show" everyone "who's the boss in the house. 'Everyone (and ladies please excuse me for the expression) has to sit on their buttocks and not quack. It will be how we say it will be.' I simply cannot explain these actions any other way," Putin said.
Putin said Russia had no other choice but to recognize the Donbass republics in February and to come to their defense, and said that the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people is an undisputable historical fact. Only Russia could guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty, as Russia "created" Ukraine during the Soviet period, Putin said.
In the decades after the end of the Cold War, Russia's consistent message to the West and NATO was "let's all get along," like in the Soviet children's cartoon Leopold the Cat, but in almost all the main areas of potential cooperation, Moscow got the simple answer "No," according to Putin.
Regarding the latest developments in the Ukrainian crisis and the concerning reports from Russian officials and military commanders that Kiev may be preparing to use a dirty bomb, Putin said he welcomes the International Atomic Energy Agency's initiative to check Ukraine's nuclear facilities.
"We are for it. This needs to be done as quickly as possible, as thoroughly as possible, because we know that right now the authorities in Kiev are doing everything possible to cover up the traces of these preparations," Putin said.
The Russian president warned that it would be "easy" for Kiev to assemble a dirty bomb, and that Moscow has a rough idea about where it's being created. Ukraine could use a Tochka U or another missile in its inventory to detonate the bomb somewhere and accuse Russia of launching a nuclear strike, Putin said.