West Needs Conflicts to Retain Hegemony
MOSCOW (Dispatches) — Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of trying to encourage extended hostilities in Ukraine as part of what he described Tuesday as Washington’s efforts to maintain its global hegemony.
Addressing a security conference attended by military officials from Africa, Asia and Latin America, Putin reaffirmed his long-held claim that he sent troops into Ukraine in response to Washington turning the country into an “anti-Russia” bulwark.
“They need conflicts to retain their hegemony,” Putin charged. “That’s why they have turned the Ukrainian people into cannon fodder. The situation in Ukraine shows that the United States is trying to drag the conflict out, and it acts in exactly the same way trying to fuel conflicts in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
The United States has provided key economic and military backing to Kyiv, in particular supplying Ukraine with long-range, precision artillery that has allowed it to strike Russian supply facilities deep inside Moscow-controlled territory.
Putin also drew parallels between the U.S. backing Ukraine and a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, charging that both were part of an American attempt to foment global instability.
“The American adventure in Taiwan wasn’t just a trip by an irresponsible politician. It was part of a deliberate and conscious U.S. strategy intended to destabilize the situation and create chaos in the region and the entire world, a blatant demonstration of disrespect for another country’ sovereignty and its own international obligations,” Putin said.
Putin also cited the AUKUS security pact between Australia, Britain and the United States as evidence of Western attempts to build a NATO-style bloc in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We also see that the collective West is seeking to extend its bloc system to the Asia-Pacific region by analogy with NATO in Europe. For this purpose, aggressive military-political alliances are being formed, such as AUKUS and others.”
The Russian leader said that “Western globalist elites” are trying “to shift the blame for their own failures to Russia and China,” adding that “no matter how hard the beneficiaries of the current globalist model try to cling to it, it’s doomed.”
“The era of the unipolar world order is nearing its end,” he added.
Speaking at the same conference, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that along with supplies of weapons to Ukraine, Western