Putin attacks U.S., says Western order collapsing and Ukraine sanctions failed
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Friday that the Western order was collapsing amid the war in Ukraine and said Western sanctions had failed in a speech at a St. petersburg economic forum.
A defiant Vladimir Putin declared Friday that the Western order was collapsing, brushing aside the economic and diplomatic fallout from his invasion of Ukraine in a speech the Kremlin billed as “extremely important."
The Russian president offered a wide-ranging denunciation of the United States and a defense of his financial policies but largely steered clear of discussing the war in his address to Russia’s showpiece economic forum, which was delayed by an apparent cyberattack.
Putin argued that the era of America's global dominance was at an end and claimed that the sanctions "blitzkrieg" imposed on Moscow's economy by Washington and its allies had failed.
"The previous world order is finished — irrespective of all the efforts to preserve it, it's a natural way of history," he told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual business meeting launched in 1997 as a Russian alternative to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
A situation with "One strong power with a limited circle of countries [in support]" was "not stable," he said, adding that it was a mistake for the U.S. to have claimed victory in the Cold War and to have treated other countries "like colonies."
Rating: 5