MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. Europe, which lately has been striving to attain greater sovereignty and autonomy, is increasingly posing a threat to US hegemony, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview with the Razvedchik (Intelligence Officer) magazine.

"Europe, which has lately been seized by the desire to attain sovereignty (otherwise known as strategic autonomy), is also posing an increasingly greater threat to the hegemony of the United States," he said.

The top Russian security official noted that the Ukraine conflict had been orchestrated by Washington and London in order not only to defeat Russia strategically but also "to weaken that Europe in which Germany used to be the leader of the pack."

Meanwhile, in attempting to maintain its dominance, the West itself has inadvertently destroyed those tools that worked for it even better than the war machine, Patrushev said, referring to the freedom of movement of goods and services, transport and logistics corridors, a common settlements system, the global division of labor, and networks for creating added value. As a result, he maintained, Westerners have been isolating themselves from the rest of the world, while the United States’ share in global GDP is shrinking rapidly. "This decade will proceed under the slogans of import substitution and walking away from the dollar," he underscored.

The strategy of maintaining dominance merely by printing money, just like the Western financial system as a whole, will be viable only as long as the United States and its satellites continue waging new colonial wars, according to Patrushev. "However, no pyramid scheme can last forever. This is an absolute law of economics," he emphasized.

Very soon, he continued, the United States will have to reconcile itself to being just one of many poles in a multipolar world, while Europe, which has agreed to play the role of a US vassal, will have to work overtime to regain its geopolitical independence.