West ‘clinging to the past’ – Putin
Unwilling to accept the inevitable end of its unipolar hegemony, the West is generating problems and crises everywhere in order to cling to the past, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
“We are witnessing a complex process of a more just world order being established ” Putin told the video conference of intelligence and security chiefs of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). “Unipolar hegemony is inexorably collapsing, this is an objective reality that the West categorically refuses to accept, and we see everything that follows from this.”
The US and its allies “cling to the past and try to dictate policy everywhere, from international relations and economics to culture and sports,” Putin said, adding that the collective West “does not disdain any method of pressuring countries that choose a sovereign path of development, those who do not wish to submit but freely and independently choose their own future, safeguarding their culture, tradition and values.”
Washington has accused Russia and China of revisionism and of challenging the “rules-based world order.”
The CIS was created in 1991 from the newly independent republics of the USSR. While the West is trying to foment new crises in their territory, Putin noted, there were plenty of real ones dating back to the Soviet Union’s break-up.
The Russian president pointed to the present conflict with Ukraine but also the recent border battles between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, warning that “risks of destabilization are still growing” and threatening to expand to the entire Asia-Pacific.
On the other hand, Putin noted, trade, industrial and investment cooperation between Russia and other CIS members has been increasing “in spite of pressure, blackmail and illegal sanctions from the US and its satellites.”
In addition to Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan make up the CIS. Georgia left the organization in 2009 and Ukraine stopped participating after the US-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.
