Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the world faced the most dangerous decade since World War Two as Western elites scrambled to prevent the inevitable crumbling of the global dominance of the United States and its allies, Reuters reports.
In a broadside against Washington and its allies, which he accused of inciting the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said the West was playing what he cast as a "dangerous, bloody and dirty" geopolitical game that was sowing chaos across the world.
Ultimately, Putin said, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the future of the world.
"The historical period of the West's undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end," Putin, Russia's paramount leader, told the Valdai Discussion Club.
"We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two."
Russia did not consider the West to be an enemy of Russia despite the current phase of confrontation, he added.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, triggering the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the depths of the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States came closest to nuclear war.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed while the West has imposed the most severe sanctions in history on Russia, one of the world's biggest suppliers of natural resources.
Asked about a potential nuclear escalation, Putin said the danger of nuclear weapons usage would exist as long as nuclear weapons existed.
