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Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech Thursday at the Valdai International Discussion Club and said the West’s effort to prolong the war in Ukraine is really an effort to maintain its grip on global hegemony, repeating his claim that Washington is willing to fight Moscow to the last Ukrainian.
Putin said the West continues to fuel the Ukraine War by flooding Kyiv with weapons of death.
The Western media has said the weapons for Ukraine have helped even the playing field. Russia once had a major advantage with heavy artillery, but now Ukrainian fighters have their own arsenal that they are using effectively.
The New York Times, citing commanders and military analysts, say Ukraine now has the upper hand. Countries like the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France have all contributed on that front.
Putin has indicated that he will fight on at any cost and Russia still maintains millions of rounds of artillery shells, and 300,000 troops have just been mobilized.
Putin said it is not the Ukrainians who the West is concerned about, but rather using “dirty” and “bloody” means to hold on to its power. He said the West has been exposed and the world is witnessing a “tectonic change.”
“It’s no coincidence that the West claims that its culture and worldview should be universal,” Putin said. “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.”
Putin said that Russia is not a natural enemy of the West, but blamed much of the current crisis on Western “elites who see the hand of the Kremlin behind all their internal problems.”
He said Russia has no interest in challenging the Western elite.
“We are not trying to become the hegemonic power,” he said.
Putin said Russia is simply trying to defend its right to exist.
Putin’s comments come a day after he oversaw nuclear drills by his country’s military. There is also added tension between the U.S. and Russia due to the 101st Airborne Division’s war drills in Romania.
TRENDPOST: As Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan, wrote in The Trends Journal back in Spring 2014 when the United States launched the coup to overthrow the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, America’s way is what Putin is saying today… Hegemony:
“When the Soviet Union collapsed, it cleared the way for the rise of the neoconservatives and their ideology of U.S. world hegemony. The neoconservatives concluded that the Soviet collapse brought the end of history, by which they meant that history had chosen ‘American democratic capitalism,’ which is neither democratic nor capitalist, as history’s final statement. History’s choice gives the government of the ‘exceptional, indispensable’ American people the right to world hegemony.
The problem for the neoconservatives is that not all of the world agrees with ‘history’s choice.’ Independent states, such as Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, China, and Russia did not see themselves as provinces in Washington’s empire. Neither do India, Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
The neoconservatives made a concerted and successful effort to take control of U.S. foreign policy and military doctrine. With the Clinton regime’s attack on Serbia, Washington began eliminating governments that are obstacles to its hegemony.
The U.S. government has overthrown the Iraqi and Libyan governments with military force, instigated a military attack by outside Islamist forces on the Syrian government, demonized Iran as a precursor to military attack, captured the former Russian province of Georgia in a U.S.-financed ‘color revolution,’ overthrown the elected Honduran government, unleashed orchestrated protests against the government of Venezuela, threatened Bolivia and Ecuador, routinely attacks with drones and missiles populations in Pakistan and Yemen, and has been at war against the Taliban in Afghanistan for 13 years.
Iran, Russia, and China are being surrounded with U.S. military bases, and now the neoconservatives in Washington have captured Ukraine with a Washington-sponsored coup against a democratically elected government. Washington claims that the Ukraine government was corrupt. Corrupt like who—Washington and the EU?”