Putin Says World Faces ‘Most Dangerous Decade’ Since World War II
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the world faces “probably the most dangerous” decade since the end of World War Two after U.S. President Joe Biden already spoke of “a new world order.”
Putin accused the U.S. Thursday of inciting the conflict in Ukraine and claimed Western elites scrambled to prevent the “inevitable crumbling” of the global dominance of the United States and its allies.
His remarks came after U.S. President Joe Biden referred to previous wars and other crises to make his case for a new world order in comments reviewed by Worthy News on Wednesday. “As one of the top military people said to me in a security meeting the other day, 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946. And since then, we’ve established a liberal world order, and that hadn’t happened in a long while,” Biden told executives.
Biden added: “A lot of people died but nowhere near the chaos, and now is the time when things are shifting. There’s going to be a new world order out there. We’ve got to lead it, and we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”
Putin countered Thursday that the West was playing a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” geopolitical game that is sowing chaos across the world.
“The historical period of the West’s undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end,” Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club during a session entitled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone.”
LONG APPEARANCES
In one of his most extended public appearances since ordering the Russian army to invade Ukraine on February 24, Putin stressed he had no regrets about the “special operation” despite losing thousands of troops.
The 70-year-old former KGB spy was more than an hour late to the meeting of Russian experts, where he cast the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia.
During his 3,5 hours of talking, he said both sides wanted to fight for the fate of the second largest Eastern Slav country, which he said had ended in tragedy for Kyiv.
Putin claimed he constantly thought of Russian casualties in Ukraine but declined to detail what the West says are considerable losses on the battlefields.
Ultimately, he added, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the world’s future.
Asked about a potential nuclear escalation around Ukraine, Putin made clear that the danger of atomic weapons would exist as long as nuclear weapons existed.
NUCLEAR CONFLICT?
But he said Russia’s military doctrine was defensive, despite his threats to use nuclear weapons if his nation’s territorial integrity is undermined.
Moscow also regards four recently annexed regions from Ukraine, as well as the Crimea peninsula occupied in 2014, as its territories raising the prospect of a nuclear conflict.
Yet when asked by Russian experts about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he stressed he had no desire to be like Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who, along with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war before defusing the situation.
Ultimately, he said, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the world’s future.
As he spoke, the armed conflict continued in Ukraine, where many face death and destruction amid Russian strikes and Kyiv’s counter-offensive.
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