Arya News - President Vladimir Putin discussed the roots of the contradictions between the West and Moscow in a previously unpublished segment of an interview for the documentary Russia. Kremlin. Putin. 25 Years by Saida Medvedeva and Pavel Zarubin, aired by the Rossiya TV channel.
Journalist Pavel Zarubin shared the segment on his Telegram channel.According to Putin, ideology played a role in the emergence of disagreements, but the real foundation was geopolitical:Western countries, he said, chose to “live by rules they invented for themselves”:“The West decided: "well, the Soviet Union is gone, why should we follow any rules in relation to to Russia, which no longer possesses the potential power the Soviet Union had? Now we’ll just slice things up for ourselves however we want, and live by rules we invented for ourselves, ignoring their interests".”Russia, Putin noted, came to understand that it would not be taken seriously until it asserted itself as a sovereign power capable of defending its future.He also recalled an episode during his time working in St. Petersburg when he refused to engage with a visiting US delegation after one of its members treated a Russian border guard disrespectfully.Putin emphasized that such behavior was completely unacceptable: