Putin Says West Has Lost in Ukraine—’Breakdown of American World Order’
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently told Russian lawmakers that the war in Ukraine has signaled the end of the U.S.-led international order.
During a meeting with the Russian parliament’s leadership, Putin took aim at the Western response to the war that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which included tough sanctions that his country has had to face. Best deals on hotels and holidays!AdBooking.com
“They should have realized that they have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation,” Putin said on July 7, using the official Russian term for the war in Ukraine. “Its beginning also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the American world order.”
Putin said that “this is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world” and that this process “can no longer be stopped.”
For Putin, the status quo was a world based on “selfish rules” in which there is nothing “but a desire for hegemony.”
He described the sanctions that Russia has faced as “hostile actions of Western countries” which the Russian leadership has had to deal with. “Their goal was to sow discord and confusion in our society, to demoralize people,” Putin said, according to a transcript on the Kremlin website, ” But here, too, they miscalculated.”
“The so-called collective West, led by the United States, has been extremely aggressive towards Russia for decades,” said Putin before revisiting the grievances he has used to justify the war in Ukraine, such as NATO expansion.
“We are told… that we started a war in the Donbas,” he said, “No, it was unleashed by this very collective West, organizing and supporting an unconstitutional armed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and then encouraging and justifying genocide against people in Donbas.”
Putin said that “the course of history is inexorable,” and any attempts by the West “to impose its new world order on the world,” in Putin’s view, were “doomed to failure.”
The European Union has announced a stepping up of sanctions against Russia and support for Kyiv. On Monday, EU finance ministers approved 1 billion euros ($1 billion) in financial aid, while on Tuesday, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders announced that since the start of the war in February, it had frozen Russian assets worth $13.8 billion “from oligarchs and other entities.”
Meanwhile, Putin is due to go to Iran next week, following a warning by the U.S. that Tehran could provide Moscow with drones. The Russian leader will attend a meeting with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts Ebrahim Raisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Syria-related talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to state news agency Tass.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that Iran was preparing to train Russian forces to use the drones, although it was unclear whether they had been delivered yet.