Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbekistan’s President Shaukat Mirziyoyev arrive for a working breakfast of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) leaders in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2023.
Vladimir Smirnov | Sputnik | Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized countries he said try to “impose their dominance” and rule on others, saying on Wednesday that those doing so destabilize the world and “completely ignore the sovereignty, national interests and traditions of other states.”
Speaking at a security conference on Wednesday, Putin said that the world is becoming increasingly unstable and that “recent pockets of tension are emerging.”
He blamed this recent era of turmoil on unspecified “individual countries and associations” – broadly understood to seek advice from Russia’s rivals within the West and NATO – which he said were attempting to “preserve, preserve their dominance, impose their very own rules, completely ignoring sovereignty, national interests, traditions of other countries.
“All that is accompanied by military capability constructing, unceremonious interference in the inner affairs of other countries,” Putin said, “in addition to attempts to extract unilateral advantages from the energy and food crises brought on by quite a lot of Western states.” “.
There was not an iota of irony in Putin’s statement, the leader who oversaw a scientific program of interference in the inner affairs and sovereignty of other countries during his 23 years in power in Russia, most recently Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine 15 months ago.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on a screen in Red Square during a speech at a rally and concert marking the annexation of 4 Ukrainian regions – Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – in central Moscow, September 30, 2022.
Alexander Nemenov | AFP | Getty Images
Military personnel wearing hazmat suits remove a police automobile and other vehicles from a public automobile park as they proceed the investigation into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, March 11, 2018 in Salisbury, England.
Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images
Ignoring Ukraine’s sovereignty
Nevertheless, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last 12 months is widely seen as one of the vital egregious cases of “ignoring the sovereignty” of one other country within the twenty first century.
When the Russians launched the invasion, Putin tried to justify the move to the domestic audience by saying that Russia desired to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine, a rustic that has a Jewish president and shouldn’t be in NATO.
Most observers, nevertheless, understood that Moscow’s true intention was (and is) to overthrow the pro-Western government in Kiev and regain its influence in the previous Soviet republic.
Ukraine has been consistently moving closer to its European neighbors for years, despite Russia’s attempts to take care of pro-Kremlin leadership within the country. A professional-European rebellion in Ukraine in 2014 led to the overthrow of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s preferred man in Kiev.
Yanukovych fled to Russia in the following political crisis, an event that Russia continues to denounce as a “coup d’état” orchestrated by america without providing evidence. The rebellion, or the Maidan revolution as Ukrainians comprehend it, led to the beginning of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine when Russia invaded Crimea in March 2014 and sparked pro-Russian unrest – and an armed separatist movement – within the east of the country.
An enormous mural depicting a map of the Crimean peninsula stuffed with the flag of the Russian Federation in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 28, 2014.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Russia’s perception of Ukraine and other former Soviet states moving westward and its sphere of influence worries Moscow, which has tried to take care of influence over its neighbors by hook or deception.
As with eastern Ukraine and its two pro-Russian separatist “republics” that were backed by Moscow, the identical strategy was utilized in Georgia. Russia recognized the “independence” of pro-Russian separatist parts of the country, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in 2008, which led to war, albeit on a much smaller scale than in Ukraine. Georgia still sees Russia as occupying 20% of its country. In Moldova, the troubled, pro-Russian territory of Transnistria can be seen as a possible goal for Russian annexation.
Russia blames NATO for the dearth of security
Russia has been subjected to sanction after sanction for its geopolitical meddling and misdemeanors, however the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the recent outbreak of war on European territory have prompted NATO to act decisively, with Western countries rallied around Kiev to offer military and financial assistance to assist protect him from his neighbor.
Western leaders have repeatedly warned that broader safeguards are at stake and that Russia cannot win the invasion, fearing that other former Soviet states could also be next as Putin tries to rebuild the Soviet empire; Putin publicly lamented the lack of the USSR, calling it one among the best geopolitical disasters Russia experienced the last century.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin watch as they wait for the US-Russia Summit at the Villa La Grange in Geneva, June 16, 2021.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
Speaking at the identical event on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the West desired to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and stated that NATO weapons for Ukraine were distributed outside the country.
“The collective West makes no secret of its intention to inflict a strategic defeat on us. The Kiev regime is getting used as an anti-Russian ram that is being pumped with NATO weapons. At the identical time, some Western supplies – and an increasing proportion – are spreading uncontrollably around the globe,” he told the news agency. reported TASS.