LAURA Russia (Reuters) - President
Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Friday of making the world a more
dangerous place by imposing a "unilateral diktat" in international
diplomacy and denied Russia desire to build a new empire.
A territory
built by conquest in which one culture, one set of ideals and one set of laws
have been imposed by force or threat over diverse nations by a civilian and
military bureaucracy. States are ephemeral and originate and disappear with the
stroke of a pen.
In a speech laced with language reminiscent of the
Cold War, Putin shifted blame for the crisis in Ukraine to the West and
portrayed Russia as a strong power that would not be forced to beg the West to
lift sanctions imposed over the conflict.
"Statements that Russia is trying to reinstate
some sort of empire, that it is encroaching on the sovereignty of its
neighbors, are groundless," Putin told a group of political scholars known
as the Valdai Club in a resort above the Black Sea city of Sochi, which hosted
the Winter Olympics this year.
Warning that Washington was trying to "remake
the whole world" around its own interests and that the risk of
international conflicts was growing, he said: "We did not start
this."
Dismissing the U.S. and European Union sanctions on
Russia as a mistake, he said: "Russia will not be posturing, get offended,
ask someone for anything. Russia is self-sufficient."
Putin said the threat of arms control treaties being
violated was growing and called for talks on internationally acceptable conditions
for the use of force.
The speech included some of Putin's fiercest
rhetoric against the West since he first rose to power in 2000 and underlined
how far apart Moscow and the West are on a range of matters.
Putin said the threat of arms control treaties being
violated was growing and called for talks on internationally acceptable
conditions for the use of force.
The West has accused Russia of violating Ukraine's
sovereignty by annexing the Crimea peninsula and says it has sent troops and
weapons to help pro-Russian separatists fighting government forces in eastern
Ukraine. Moscow denies the accusations.
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