The US only cares about its own grandeur and is involved in the Ukraine crisis in order to fulfil its global ambitions, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the leaders of global media agencies ahead of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Wednesday.
Washington has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Kiev since the beginning of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine.
When asked about a potential shift in US policy towards Russia, Putin said that it is largely dependent on Washington itself and its perception of reality. America is currently obsessed with globalist ambitions that are “destroying the US from within,” the president said.
US involvement in the Ukraine conflict is just one manifestation of that globalist policy, he told journalists.
“Nobody in the US cares about Ukraine's interests,” Putin said. Americans are “not fighting for Ukraine or the Ukrainian people, they are fighting for their own grandeur and global leadership.”
According to Putin, the current administration is not so much interested in helping Kiev prevail in the ongoing standoff but is rather “determined to prevent any Russian success precisely because they believe it would damage US leadership [positions].”
Those globalist ambitions are harmful to America itself, Putin maintained, naming “high inflation and a huge debt” among the biggest challenges the US is currently facing. A future administration could reverse this destructive trend by focusing on “strengthening the US from within, strengthening its economy and finances, and building up normal relations with the world,” he said, adding that such policies could then bring some “real change” in relations between Moscow and Washington as well.
The president’s words came just a day after the Kremlin called the US an “enemy” for the first time. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred to Washington as such while speaking to journalists on Tuesday.
“We are now an enemy country for them – much like they are for us,” Peskov said at that time, describing the two nations’ attitudes toward each other. The Kremlin has previously referred to the US as an “unfriendly state” or “opponent.”
Peskov was commenting on Washington’s decision not to allow former US marine, UN weapons inspector and RT contributor Scott Ritter to travel to St. Petersburg to take part in several SPIEF panel discussions.
Earlier, the US also let Kiev use American-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia, beyond what the US considers Ukrainian territory. Moscow has repeatedly warned that such actions, alongside continued weapons shipments to Kiev, only lead to further escalation and increase the risk of an all-out war between Russia and NATO, which can easily spiral into World War III.