Putin says Russia’s mission is to create ‘new world’

By AFP 5 October 2023, 7:05 pm

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This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Russian President Vladimir Putin attending the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club forum in Sochi on October 5, 2023. (Sergei GUNEYEV / POOL / AFP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Russia’s mission is to create a “new world” and blames Western hegemony for Moscow’s grinding offensive in Ukraine.

Putin has portrayed Russia’s full-scale military intervention in Ukraine — launched in February 2022 — as part of a long-standing confrontation with the West.

“We are tasked, essentially, with building a new world,” Putin says, adding the West is aiming for global “hegemony.”

“The West always needs an enemy,” he says.

As Moscow grows more isolated in the West and faces unprecedented sanctions over its Ukraine campaign, Putin accuses the West of trying to create a “new Iron Curtain” with Russia.

“Europe is fencing itself off from us and creating a new Iron Curtain,” says Putin, who served in the Soviet KGB.

“We are not the ones shutting the door. It’s Europe that’s shutting the door,” he adds.