ULAN-UDE, March 14. /TASS/. Modern international problems began after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin said while answering a question of one of the employees of the Ulan-Ude aircraft-building plant during a visit to the enterprise on Tuesday.
"Of course, all the problems began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why? Because the then world order - in a sense it still exists today - was built after World War II by the countries that won that war. First of all, the United States and the Soviet Union," Putin said.
He recalled that the states then "distributed the zones of their influence among themselves and did not interfere with each other."
"Of course, there were enough problems, including the Caribbean crisis, but nevertheless [the USSR and the US] coexisted," he said.
Putin stressed that the system of the bipolar world "began to crumble down" after the collapse of the USSR, when geopolitical interests turned out to be more important for the West than confrontation with the Soviet Union.
"Frankly speaking, it seemed to the people of my generation, including myself, and even a little bit younger ones, that yes, it was regrettable that the Soviet Union collapsed, but nevertheless, the basis for confrontation between the former Soviet Union and modern Russia and the Western world was gone, that that basis disappeared and there were no ideological foundations for confrontation anymore," Putin said. "It seemed that now everything would be fine forever. It turned out that this was not so. It turned out that the geopolitical interests of our <…> partners were much more important than, among other things, contradictions with the former Soviet Union," he added.