MOSCOW, February 28 (Itar-Tass) —— in his article “Russia in the Changing World” published on Monday, February 27, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a strong but accurate assessment of Western countries and called things by their proper names, an expert said.
“Putin spoke quite strongly about a group of countries that calls itself the world community, i.e. the West. But such assessments are very accurate and call things by their proper names. The premier made a number of scathing remarks with regard to the West concerning, among other things, the use of force beyond the U.N. Security Council mandate in order to overthrow regimes, which often has nothing to do with democratisation of a certain country or creation of better conditions for life in those countries,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Russian World Foundation, told Itar-Tass.
“Russia is not one of the East European countries that act on consonance with Western capitals on each matter. And in posing itself as an independent state, Russia will certainly build relations of, preferably, equal partnership with all other centers in the world modern,” he said.
Nikonov noted that Putin “spoke quite benevolently of the international community as a whole, understood to be composed of 193 U.N. member states”.
“The presidential candidate paid a great deal of attention to Russia’s relations with emerging centres of force: China with which we are building strategic partnership; traditionally friendly India; with our partners in the BRICS group. These countries are still adjusting to each other and do not always take identical positions on international issues, but it is obvious that they can seriously influence the balance of force in the world and the assertion of the principles of international law in the world,” the expert said.