Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of trying to foment protracted hostilities in Ukraine as part of what he described Tuesday as Washington’s alleged efforts to maintain its global hegemony.
At a security conference attended by military officials from Africa, Asia and Latin America, Putin reiterated his long-held claim that he sent troops to Ukraine in response to Washington turning the country into an “anti-Russian” bastion “.
“They need conflict to maintain their hegemony,” Putin charged. “That is why they have 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 conflicts in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
The speech represented the Russian leader’s latest attempt to rally support amid heavy-handed Western sanctions targeting Russia’s economy and finances along with its government structures, senior officials and businesses for Moscow’s action in Ukraine .
Putin also drew parallels between US support for Ukraine and US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, charging that both were part of an alleged US attempt to encourage global instability.
“The American adventure in Taiwan was not just a trip by an irresponsible politician. It was part of a deliberate and conscious strategy by the US 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 the “Western globalist elites” are trying to “shift the blame for their own failures onto Russia and China”, adding that “no matter how much the beneficiaries of the current globalist model try to cling to there, he 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 supplying Ukraine with weapons, Western allies have also provided detailed intelligence and deployed instructors to help the ‘Ukrainian army to operate the weapons systems.
“Western intelligence agencies have not only provided target coordinates to launch attacks, but Western specialists have also monitored the input of this data into weapons systems,” Shoigu said.
He dismissed accusations that Russia could 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.