Those who believe that things will go back to the way they were before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine are wrong, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
“It is a mistake to suggest that the times of turbulent changes can be waited out and that things will return to normal; that everything will be as it was. It won’t,” Putin insisted during his speech at the the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.
The changes that the world is going through at the moment are fundamental, radical, and irreversible, he added.
However, the ruling elites of some Western countries refuse to notice this obvious shift and choose to “cling to the shadows of the past,” he added.
“For example, they believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and economy is a constant, eternal value,” Putin said. But “nothing is eternal,” he reminded everyone.
Since claiming victory in the Cold War in the early 1990s, the US has “declared itself the messenger of God on Earth, who has no obligations, but only interests, and those interests are pronounced to be sacred,” the president said.
However, the idea of a unipolar world is flawed at its core, according to the Russian leader, as the norms of international relations can’t always be interpreted in favor of a single nation, “even if it’s a strong one.”
It seems as if Washington refuses to see the new centers of power that have emerged in recent decades and which have every right to “protect their interests and ensure their national sovereignty,” he said.