Putin accuses West of fuelling war he started in quest for ‘global domination’

Vladimir Putin has attempted to cast his war in Ukraine as an attempt by Western countries to enact its quest for global domination.

Addressing a conference of international policy experts, the Russian president suggested that the US and its allies were trying to dictate their terms to other nations in a “dangerous and bloody” game of domination.

Mr Putin also argued that the West, blinded by colonialism, was trying to contain the rest of the world.

“The West … has taken several steps towards escalation and they are always trying to escalate. There’s nothing new there,” Mr Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club on Thursday.

“They’re fuelling the war in the Ukraine, organising politicians around Taiwan, destabilising the world food and energy markets.

“As far as the last one is concerned, it is not deliberate, [I] don’t doubt that. It was due to a number of systemic errors committed by the Western authorities I’ve just mentioned.”

The Valdai Discussion Club is a think tank based in Moscow with close links to the Russian president. Since it was founded in 2004, Mr Putin has met with its participants each year to discuss and deliver “a qualified and objective assessment of global political and economic issues”, according to its website.

Mr Putin started his speech just after 3pm on Thursday. Almost immediately, it descended into a bitter diatribe against the “arrogant” West and argument for a “new world order... based on law and order”.

Speaking in Moscow, Mr Putin said Russia would never accept Western countries telling it what to do, and said the longer the West took to realise this, the higher the price would be.

The Russian leader also accused Western allies of trying to enforce what they call a rules-based world order that only foments chaos.

“He who will sow the wind will reap the whirlwind,” Mr Putin said as part of his hour-long address.

He claimed that “humankind now faces a choice: accumulate a load of problems that will inevitably crush us all or try to find solutions that may not be ideal but working and could make the world more stable and secure”.

He insisted, however, that Russia was not the enemy of the West but will continue to oppose the directives of Western neoliberal elites.

Mr Putin went on to accuse the West of rejecting Moscow’s attempts to build a good relationship with the US and Nato, which he said were adamant on making Russia vulnerable.

Russia had wanted to “be friends” with the West and Nato, but would not accept attempts by the US, EU and UK to pin Moscow down.

In railing against the West, the Russian president accused the US of discrediting the international financial system by weaponising the dollar, and that he believed moves by other countries to reduce the reliance on the currency would accelerate.

Mr Putin, who launched his invasion of Ukraine on 24 February on the grounds of the “demilitarisation and denazification” of the country, also told the Valdai Discussion Club that Russia only ever had one goal, which was to help people in the Donbas.

He last month announced that Russia was formally incorporating four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine after staging what he called “referendums” in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Kyiv and the West said they would not recognise the attempted annexation, which they cast as part of an illegal Russian land grab.

Mr Putin also said that events in Ukraine in 2014 – when street protests ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russia president from office – led directly to today’s conflict.

The Russian leader took a series of question following his address, during which attention turned to the matter of nuclear weapons.

The president argued that the West was using the rhetoric surrounding nuclear weapons as a weapon against Russia.

He said that “building tensions about the very notion of Russia using nuclear weapons” has an “impact on [Russia’s] allies”.

“We’ve never said anything proactively about possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia. We have only hinted in response to those statements those Western leaders have made,” he insisted.

At one point, he turned on the former British prime minister Liz Truss, calling her “crazy” when she spoke of Russia using nuclear weaponry.

Mr Putin also reiterated a baseless claim made by Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu that Kyiv has the technology to create and potentially detonate a “dirty bomb” in Ukraine.