via RT

The West and its allies are playing a “dirty game,” the prize of which is global dominance, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. However, the US and its allies are not safe from the consequences of their own actions, he added.

“Ruling the world is what the so-called West has staked in this game, which is certainly dangerous, bloody and – I would say – dirty. It denies the sovereignty of countries and peoples, their identity and uniqueness, and disregards any interests of other states,” the Russian president explained. In their so-called “rules-based world order,” only those making the “rules” have any agency, while everyone else must simply obey.

“They [American leaders] now have no creative ideas to promote positive development,” Putin argued. “They simply have nothing to offer the world, beyond maintaining their dominance.”

The Russian president’s comments came at a Valdai Discussion Club meeting outside Moscow on Thursday. He offered his view that Western nations deny others on the global scene the right to any kind of independence, be it political, economical or cultural. Last December, Russia’s proposals to address its concerns about national security were “tossed aside” by Washington, he noted.

“But in the modern world, sitting aside is hardly an option. He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind, as the proverb says,” he said, pointing out that the ongoing global crisis affects everyone and all aspects of life.

Humanity basically now has two paths it can pursue, Putin stated. It can either be fractured and keep accumulating problems that will eventually bury it, or try to find “may be not ideal, but working” solutions to common issues.

Putin said he believes in common sense and is convinced that sooner or later “new centers of power in the multipolar world and the West will have to start talking as equals about our common future.”

The president noted that while the disruption of the ecological balance threatens biodiversity, diversity of political thought, social norms, and culture is as important as genetic diversity.

Western nations, which want to impose their values and vision as universal, are robbing everyone, including themselves, Putin reasoned. “First of all, this eradicates the creative potential of the West itself,” he warned.

“There is a mercantile interest here too” the Russian leader added, explaining that a homogenous society makes selling things simpler.

Our adversaries, as I would call them, are trying to expand markets for their products. It’s ultimately as primitive as that.

Liberal democracy has changed beyond recognition and has gone from promoting freedom of speech and expression, to demanding the ‘cancelation’ of anyone with a different point of view, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a speech at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow on Thursday.

Speaking about the major changes in the world in recent years, Putin noted that the West has continued its policy of escalating tensions across the globe, and is trying to subjugate the world under its “rules-based order.”

He added that it remains unclear who invented these rules, what they are based on, or what exactly they even are. The only thing that is clear, according to the president, is that the rules are meant to allow those who hold global power to live “without any rules at all,” and allow them to get away with doing whatever they want.

“The West in recent years and especially in recent months has taken a number of steps towards escalation. They always play for escalation; there is nothing new here. This includes the incitement of war in Ukraine, provocations regarding Taiwan, and the destabilization of the world food and energy markets,” he said.

Humanity now basically has two paths it can pursue, Putin stated. It can either be fractured and keep accumulating problems that will eventually bury it, or try to find “not ideal, but working” solutions to common issues.

“Above all, we believe that the new world order should be based on law and justice, be free, authentic and fair,” the Russian president said.

“The future world order is being formed before our eyes. And in this world order, we must listen to everyone, take into account every point of view, every nation, society, culture, every system of worldviews, ideas and religious beliefs, without imposing a single truth on anyone, and only on this basis, understanding our responsibility for the fate of our peoples and the planet, to build a symphony of human civilization.”

The president went on to stress the importance of preserving cultural diversity in the world, stating that the West is trying to flatten everything out to be identical and is blocking the “free creative development” of other civilizations and imposing its own style of development.

“Simplification and the erasure of any and all differences have become almost the essence of the modern West. What is behind this simplification? First of all, this is the disappearance of the creative potential of the West itself,” Putin said.

The most important fragment of president Putin’s speech at Valdai forum:

The collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed the balance of forces. The West felt like a winner and proclaimed a unipolar world order in which only its will, culture, and interests had the right to exist.

Now this historical period of undivided dominance in world affairs is coming to an end. The unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. We are standing at a historical milestone.

Ahead is the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time important decade since the end of the Second World War.

The West is not capable of governing humanity alone, but it is desperately trying to do so. And most of the peoples of the world no longer want to put up with this. This is the main contradiction of the new era. In the words of the classics, the situation is, to a certain extent, revolutionary – the upper classes cannot, and the lower classes do not want to live like this anymore.

On Ukraine:

It is a historical fact that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, which makes the current conflict a “civil war” of sorts, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday during the Valdai Discussion Club session in Moscow.

“This is one people, speaking one language,” Putin declared during the question-and-answer period, calling it a “historical fact” that cannot be questioned. Russian statehood emerged in the territories of present-day Ukraine in the 9th century and that language differences only “emerged in the 14th and 15th century due to Polish meddling,” he added.

Asked by the moderator if the current fighting in Ukraine amounts to civil war, Putin responded “Sort of, yes.”

“We found ourselves in separate states for a series of reasons,” the Russian president explained, saying that the Soviet Union’s creators “decided to appease the nationalist tendencies of Bolsheviks native to Ukraine, and gifted them Russian ancestral lands without asking the people who lived there.” 

In this way, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was granted all of the historical Little Russia, the entire Black Sea coast, and Donbass, Putin said.

On the “Collective West”:

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Thursday that Russia is an “independent”civilization that does not consider itself an enemy of the West. Instead, he is concerned about the “aggressive” and “neo-colonial” liberal elite in charge of the bloc.

“In the current conditions of a tough conflict, I will say some things directly,” Putin told a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. “Russia, being an independent, original civilization, has never considered and does not consider itself an enemy of the West.”

Hatred for American, British, French or German people “are the same form of racism as Russophobia and anti-Semitism,” he added.

Putin went on to describe the West as two entities. On one hand, the traditional, primarily Christian West “is close to us in some ways,” he said, noting that “we have in many respects common and ancient roots.”

“But there is another West – aggressive, cosmopolitan, neo-colonial, acting as an instrument of neo-liberal ideas. It is precisely with the dictates of this West that Russia, of course, will never put up with,” he continued.

While Putin undoubtedly sees the conflict in Ukraine as an existential struggle against the West – describing his forces as fighting the “entire Western military machine” and blaming the derailment of peace talks and sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines on the “Anglo-Saxons,” he has drawn a distinction between Western elites and Western society before.

Speaking at a ceremony following the accession of four formerly Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation last month, Putin declared that “the Western elites target all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves.”

While the West expands primarily to secure its “mercantile interest,” he stated at Thursday’s meeting, it also pushes its cultural exports on an unreceptive world. “If Western elites believe they can launch new trends like dozens of genders and gay parades, they have the right to do so,” he said. “But they don’t have the right to demand that others follow the same direction.”

Putin also condemned the “pure Satanism” of Western liberal culture in his speech last month, noting that “many like-minded people in Europe and the United States” feel the same way.

On the Western Economic Model

As soon as any market is opened for certain goods, the West seizes it along with all the resources, pushing away local manufacturers, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“They build relationships this way – markets and resources are captured, countries are deprived of their technological, scientific potential. This is not progress, but enslavement, mixing economies to a primitive level,” he stated on Thursday at a plenary meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

According to the Russian leader, Western countries lay claim to all the resources of mankind as they aim “to strengthen their unconditional dominance in the world economy and politics.” 

On the topic of world trade, Putin said the beneficiaries of this should be the majority, not the super-rich corporations. “Together everyone will gain more than individually,” the president said.

He also criticized Western companies who are leaving the Russian market and supposedly selling their entire businesses “for merely one ruble.” They are doing this while whispering in the ear of their management: “we will be back soon,” Putin added.