MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of trying to encourage widespread hostilities in Ukraine as part of what he described Tuesday as Washington’s alleged efforts to maintain its global hegemony.
Addressing a security conference attended by militaries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, Putin reaffirmed his long-standing claim that he sent troops to Ukraine in response to Washington turning the country into an “anti-Russian” bastion.
“They need conflicts to maintain their hegemony,” Putin said. “That’s why they turned the Ukrainian people into cannon fodder. The situation in Ukraine shows that the United States is trying to drag out the conflict and is acting in exactly the same way by trying to fuel the conflicts in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
The speech represented the Russian leader’s latest attempt to rally support amid Western sanctions targeting the Russian economy and finance along with its government structures, top officials and businesses for Moscow’s action in Ukraine.
Putin also drew parallels between US support for Ukraine and a recent visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, charging that both were part of an alleged US effort to foment global instability.
“The American adventure in Taiwan was not just a trip by an irresponsible politician. It was part of a deliberate and conscious US strategy aimed at destabilizing the situation and creating chaos in the region and the entire world, a blatant display of disrespect for another country’s sovereignty and its own international obligations,” Putin said.
The Russian leader claimed that “Western globalist elites” were trying to “shift the blame for their own failures onto Russia and China,” adding that “no matter how hard the beneficiaries of the current globalist model try to cling to it, it is doomed . “
“The era of the unipolar world order is coming to an end,” he added.
Speaking at the same conference, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu charged that along with arms supplies to Ukraine, Western allies also provided detailed intelligence and deployed trainers to help the Ukrainian military operate the weapons systems.
“Western intelligence services have not only provided coordinates of targets for launching strikes, but Western experts have also overseen the input of this data into weapon systems,” Shoigu said.
He dismissed claims that Russia could potentially use nuclear or chemical weapons in the conflict as an “absolute lie”.
“From a military point of view, there is no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine to achieve the stated goals,” Shoigu said. “The primary mission of Russian nuclear forces is to provide a deterrent against a nuclear attack.”
Shoigu added that claims of a possible chemical attack by Russia were equally “absurd”, saying that Moscow had completely liquidated its stockpile of chemical weapons in compliance with an international treaty banning chemical weapons.
