MOSCOW, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on
Thursday that the world faced the most dangerous decade since World War
Two as Western elites scrambled to prevent the inevitable crumbling of the
global dominance of the United States 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 Two."

Russia did not consider the West to be an enemy of Russia despite the
current phase of confrontation, he added.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 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 United States came
closest to nuclear war.

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," Putin
"The sower 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. Kyiv
flatly rejects both 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.

https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-says-west-is-playing-dangerous-bloody-dirty-game-2022-10-27/