MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. The United States wishes to make Russia succumb to its influence, but no one has ever managed to achieve this or ever will, President Vladimir Putin told the forum of the All-Russia People’s Front on Tuesday. He was speaking in reply to a remark by film director Yuri Kara, who said that the United States was trying to humiliate Russia.

“This is not so. The United States is not trying to humiliate us, it wants to subdue us, to settle its own problems at our expense. To make us succumb to its influence,” Putin said.

“No one has ever managed to achieve this aim in relations with Russia or ever will,” he added to draw applause from the audience.

In the meantime, Putin said, the United States has been successful in spreading its influence to its allies or “as some propagandists would say, its satellite states.”

As a result, Putin said with certainty, many of the US allies have been forced to neglect their own interests “to try to defend somebody else’s - for obscure reasons and with very hazy prospects.”

“I sometimes feel utter confusion,” Putin said. “Protection of the so-called pan-European, Western influence to the detriment of one’s own national interests as a rule is fraught with several problems.” Firstly, Putin said, there are no criteria of these common interests. Secondly, he explained, behind one is bound to find the geopolitical interests of one country or a group of countries which do not necessarily agree with the interests of their own peoples.

Putin believes that nobody in the world, including the masses of the US population would like to see soaring world tensions.

Putin also said most of Russians like the American people and America but disapprove of the policy of its authorities.

“I think that our people rather like than dislike America and the American people. But most likely, the majority of our citizens have negative attitude towards the policy of the /US/ ruling class,” he said at a question and answer session.