Western rivals are willing to incite new conflicts in the post-Soviet space, Russia’s president claimed
Russia’s adversaries in the West are willing to create crises and unleash violence anywhere in the post-Soviet world, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Thursday.
Addressing a meeting with the heads of intelligence for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Putin said Russia’s “geopolitical adversaries” are prepared to turn any country “into a ground zero of a crisis,” and to unleash “bloody massacres.”
“We also know that the West is devising scenarios for inciting new conflicts in the CIS. But we already have enough of them,” Putin said by videolink.
He pointed to the current military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, as well as “what is happening on the borders of other CIS countries,” an apparent reference to recent border clashes between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan, as well as between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
All such conflicts have resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin said, noting that this was “understandable.”
“But the risks of destabilisation are growing again, including the risks of destabilisation in the entire Asia-Pacific region,” he added, claiming that “the notorious collective West” was unable to accept the inevitable collapse of the “old unipolar hegemony.”
“We are seeing the difficult process of the forming of a more just world order,” the Russian president said.
