Putin asserts sovereign, strong Russia against West's sanctions

ST PETERSBURG • President Vladimir Putin has asserted Russia's strength and resilience on Friday against a Western world that he accused of colonial arrogance and trying to crush his country with an economic "blitzkrieg" of sanctions.

Addressing the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, a showcase event being held this year with almost no Western participation, he returned time and again to the theme of Russia's sovereignty in a new global order.

He said: "We are strong people and can cope with any challenge.

"Like our ancestors, we will solve any problem. The entire thousand-year history of our country speaks of this."

Mr Putin drew applause when he reaffirmed his determination to continue the "special military operation" in Ukraine that has unleashed a barrage of Western economic sanctions.

He said the main aim was to defend "our" people in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region of eastern Ukraine - a justification that Kyiv and the West dismiss as a baseless pretext for a campaign that has already cost thousands of lives and led to the occupation of parts of Ukraine far beyond the Donbas.

In his 73-minute speech, Mr Putin said Russian soldiers were also fighting to defend Russia's own "rights to secure development".

"Against a backdrop of increasing risks for us and threats, Russia's decision to conduct a special military operation was forced - difficult, of course, but forced and necessary."

A recorded video address by Chinese President Xi Jinping praising Chinese-Russian cooperation underlined Mr Putin's contention that an era of American domination is at an end.

Mr Putin said the United States considered itself "God's emissary on earth", and that Russia was taking its place in a new world order whose rules would be set by "strong and sovereign states".

He called the campaign in Ukraine the action of a "sovereign country that has the right to defend its security", and accused the West of "active military appropriation of Ukrainian territory".

Mr Putin dismissed suggestions that Russia was responsible for a surge in global prices of basic foodstuffs with the phrase that a failure to export five or six tonnes of Ukrainian wheat and six or seven tonnes of corn "doesn't change the weather".

He said Russia was ready to guarantee the transit of ships exporting Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea, but that Ukraine had five or six alternative routes - through Belarus, Poland or Romania.

Ukraine has been using much more cumbersome road, rail and river routes to try to get around the closure notably of Odesa, its main deep-sea port, where it fears a Russian attack.

But their capacity is at best a third of the more than six million tonnes a month of grain and oilseeds that were shipped from Odesa in the past.

The Russian President said Moscow has "nothing against" Ukraine's possible membership of the European Union, after the European Commission recommended granting Kyiv candidate status of the 27-member bloc.

"We have nothing against it. It's their sovereign decision to join economic unions or not... It's their business, the business of the Ukrainian people," Mr Putin told the St Petersburg forum.

He said "as far as their economic integration is concerned, it is their choice".

"The EU is not a military alliance, unlike Nato," he added.

He said, however, that he believed if Ukraine went ahead with joining the EU, it would "turn into a semi-colony" of Western countries, adding: "That's my opinion."

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE