Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the world faced the most dangerous decade since World War II as Western elites scrambled to prevent the inevitable crumbling of the global dominance of the US and its allies.
In a broadside against Washington and its allies, which he accused of inciting the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said the West was playing what he cast as a "dangerous, bloody and dirty" geopolitical game that was sowing chaos across the world.
Ultimately, Putin said, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the future of the world.
"The historical period of the West's undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end," Putin, Russia's paramount leader, told the Valdai Discussion Club.
"We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable, and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War II."
Russia did not consider the West to be an enemy despite the current phase of confrontation, he added.
Moscow sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, triggering the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the depths of the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the US came closest to nuclear war.
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Tens of thousands of people have been killed while the West has imposed the most severe sanctions in history on Russia, one of the world's biggest suppliers of natural resources.
Asked about a potential nuclear escalation, Putin said the danger of nuclear weapons usage would exist as long as nuclear weapons existed.
'Dirty game'
Quoting a 1978 Harvard lecture by Russian dissident and novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Putin said the West was openly racist and looked down on other peoples of the world.
"Power over the world is what the so-called West has put on the line in its game - but the game is dangerous, bloody and I would say dirty," said Putin. "The power of the wind, as they say, will reap the storm.
"I have always believed and believe in common sense so I am convinced that sooner or later the new centres of the multipolar world order and the West will have to start an equal conversation about the future we share - and the earlier the better," Putin said.
Putin cast the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia for the fate of the second-largest Eastern Slav country. It was, he said, partly a "civil war" as Russians and Ukrainians were one people.
Ukraine flatly rejects both of those ideas.
Putin said he thought constantly of the Russian losses in Ukraine. But only Russia could guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine, he said.
