PRESS RELEASE
In New Documentary, Putin Attacks West's Use of Cold War Tactics, Urges Cooperation for Peace and Development
Dec. 21, 2015 (EIRNS)—Russia's Rossiya-1 TV station aired a documentary titled "World Order" yesterday, which contains several interviews with President Vladimir Putin, in which he discusses Russia's view of the global strategic crisis and terrorist threat, and incisively criticizes the U.S. penchant for imposing its notions of "democracy" on other nations (as in Ukraine)—violating international law, rather than cooperating with all parties to achieve peace and economic development and defeat terrorism.
RT, Sputnik, Vestnik Kavkaza news website (vestnikkavkaza.net), and American media reported on Putin's broad-ranging remarks to prominent Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev, who produced the documentary.
"The bipolar system collapsed, and our partners should have thought about how to become moral leaders of the newly-emerging global relations,"
Putin said. "Instead, they continued to act and think in the old ways, using Cold War clichés." The United States, and its Western allies, cling to the absurd idea that Russia wants to resurrect the U.S.S.R., Putin charged. Worse, Europe has surrendered its sovereignty to the United States. "It has no independent foreign policy at all."
Moreover, he said, the West thinks it can impose its standards of democracy on other regions.
"When various operations started...in Afghanistan or Iraq, Libya, I always took the position that we must act carefully. You cannot have your own schemes and notions of good and evil [or think that] democracy can shift automatically to other countries and peoples, other cultures, other religions and traditions."
Look at the disaster of Ukraine today, he said, which is run by oligarchs controlled from the West who are deindustrializing the country.
The Russian President emphasized that he works easily with Syria, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations, because he maintains a consistent position that doesn't shift. As for nuclear weapons, Putin underscored that while
"the nuclear triad is the bedrock of our nuclear security policy, we never have nor ever will brandish this nuclear club at anyone, even though it is an important element of our military doctrine.... I hope no person is insane enough on Planet Earth to dare to use nuclear weapons."
But, he cautioned, it appears that some countries—Obama?—"have lost a sense of reality," thinking they can tell Russia how to conduct its politics. "That isn't going to happen," he said.
