Russian president Vladimir Putin today accused the US of playing God and treating countries like ‘colonies’ as he brushed off the impact of sanctions in a speech to an economic forum dubbed ‘Russia‘s Davos’.
Amid a lengthy denunciation of the US and its allies, Putin, 69, warned ‘nothing will be as it used to be’ as he delivered the St Petersburg Economic Forum address more than 90 minutes later than expected after the event suffered a cyber attack.
When he eventually took to the stage, Putin issued a thinly-veiled threat to oligarchs thinking of quitting his regime.
‘It’s safer in your own house,’ he said. ‘Those who didn’t want to listen to this have lost millions abroad.’
Putin spent much of the 73-minute address focussing intently on his notes, as he warned Russians ‘are strong people and can cope with any challenge’.
He said: ‘Like our ancestors, we will solve any problem, the entire thousand-year history of our country speaks of this.’
Putin drew applause from the hall when he reaffirmed his determination to continue the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine that has unleashed what he said was an ‘unprecedented’ barrage of Western economic sanctions.
Putin warned the US and its allies ‘think they have won’ and said Moscow’s war in Ukraine had become a ‘lifesaver for the West to blame all the problem on Russia.’
He added that the US considers itself ‘God’s emissary on Earth’, and that Western sanctions were founded on a false premise that Russia had no economic sovereignty.
Russia’s flagship economic forum kicked off on Wednesday, with attendees including representatives of the Taliban and separatist authorities from eastern Ukraine. The event is scheduled to run until Saturday.
The Russian leader is set to be be joined by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.
Putin, speaking at the event on Friday, declared the end of ‘the era of the unipolar world’. He said: ‘When they won the Cold War, the US declared themselves God’s own representatives on earth, people who have no responsibilities – only interests.
‘They have declared those interests sacred. Now it’s one-way traffic, which makes the world unstable’.
Putin went on to blame the West for trying to damage the Russian economy with ‘crazy’ and ‘reckless’ sanctions.
‘Their intention is clear to crush the Russian economy by breaking down the chain the logistical chains, freezing national assets and attacking the living standards, but they were not successful,’ he said.
‘It has not worked out. Russian business people have rallied together working diligently, conscientiously, and step-by-step, we are normalising the economic situation.’
He said the main aim of the incursion was to defend ‘our’ people in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region of eastern Ukraine – a justification that Kyiv and the West dismiss as a baseless pretext for a war that has already led to the occupation of parts of southern Ukraine far beyond the Donbas.
Putin said the Russian soldiers in the Donbas were also fighting to defend Russia’s own ‘rights to secure development’.
‘The West has fundamentally refused to fulfil its earlier obligations, it turned out to be simply impossible to reach any new agreements with it,’ Putin said.
‘In the current situation, against a backdrop of increasing risks for us and threats, Russia’s decision to conduct a special military operation was forced – difficult, of course, but forced and necessary.’
The Kremlin had earlier been forced to postpone the speech following a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that began on Thursday, government spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a call with reporters.
‘Problems arose with the distribution of badges and confirmation of access to the main plenary session,’ Peskov said. ‘We will fix it, but it will take time.’
As Russian forces moved into Ukraine on February 24, Kyiv called on hacktivists to help. There was no immediate reponse from Ukraine to the cyberattack.
Putin has been seeking to ramp up ties with Asia and Africa after he sent troops to pro-Western Ukraine in February and the West pummelled the country with devastating economic sanctions.
The annual forum (SPIEF), often dubbed the Russian Davos, has been the country’s main showcase for investors, attracting global leaders and business elites.
This year delegations from more than 40 countries are expected to be in attendance, including those from China, Turkey, Egypt and a number of countries in Asia and Africa. But there was a notable lack of the Western investors and investment bankers who turned up in previous years.
source www.dailymail.co.uk