Putin talks about NATO and how China will beat the United States

TEHRAN – In his year-end press conference with journalists, the Russian president asked about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues that have dominated Russian newspaper headlines for the past 12 months.

The main issue on the agenda is the tension with NATO, which has recently experienced a dramatic escalation. Vladimir Putin emphasized that meeting the Kremlin alone (with NATO or the United States) would not be enough to ease tensions, and insisted: “We do not care about the talks, we want results. They didn’t tell us a centimeter from the east in the ’90s, and look what happened – they let us down so much and visually. ” scandal. “

Last week, Moscow sent documents to the United States and NATO seeking assurances that Western forces and their advanced military units would not expand eastward to Russia’s border in an effort to reduce friction between the two sides. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also revealed that talks between Russian and US officials will take place in early January. Putin said: “Now they say so [NATO] It will also have Ukraine. That means they will spread their weapons [in Ukraine], even if it is not officially part of NATO. ” According to the Russian leader, NATO must now “immediately” provide guarantees, not just “talk about them for decades”.

The Russian leader has long said that Western officials have always promised that NATO forces will not try to fill the void left by the fall of the Warsaw Pact, but instead continue to build Eastern bloc countries such as Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia and Poland. NATO members. Russia is worried that NATO will deploy missiles in Ukraine, a non-member country, which would essentially allow NATO to reduce “flight time to Moscow to seven to ten minutes and only five if hypersonic weapons are deployed.” Russia has warned that it will prevent such threats.

Russia is concerned that NATO is deploying missiles in Ukraine, which is not a member. The Russian president said it was important to “calculate the risks of such a war, even if it is the result of a provocation.” According to Putin, much of Ukraine is historically a “Russian-inhabited Russian land separated from Russia” due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“We have accepted it,” he said. We have helped new countries grow and we have worked with all governments, regardless of their foreign policy. Remember our relationship with [President Viktor] Yushchenko and [Prime Minister Yulia] Tymoshenko? Like today’s leadership, they talked about pro-Western trends. We talked to them, there were some disputes and conflicts, about gas and so on, but we were able to engage in dialogue and we worked with them and were ready to move on, we did not even think of doing anything about Crimea. . “

Among other highlights of the press conference, Putin touched on his country’s relations with the Asian power, China. He predicted that China would overtake the United States in all aspects of its economy over the next three decades, and predicted that Washington would lose its global hegemony in both finance and trade. “Today, the Chinese economy is larger than the American economy in terms of purchasing power parity,” he said. According to Putin, “Until 2035-2050. year you will be overgrown [the U.S.] And China will become the world’s leading economy by all means.

Russia’s president has accused the West of trying to undermine the world’s most populous country and try to curb its economic growth. He says efforts such as the US-led boycott of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing over alleged human rights abuses are a misguided attempt to ensure that China “cannot raise its head” over its competitors. Putin strongly condemned the move, calling it “unacceptable and wrong” and “trying to curb the development of the People’s Republic of China.”

This month, Putin and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, held a virtual meeting as tensions escalated between the two countries, on the one hand, and the West, on the other. Following the talks, Moscow announced that the two sides agreed to launch a joint financial mechanism to reduce independence from US-controlled platforms. Experts say the move appears to be a response to a series of warnings that the West may pursue plans to separate Russia from the international financial system, SWIFT.

At a news conference, Putin said China was Russia’s first partner, saying “we have a great relationship of trust and help us build good trade.”
He says: We are working together on security. The Chinese army is largely equipped with the most advanced weapons systems in the world. We are also developing some high-tech weapons together, “Putin also praised his Chinese counterpart and friend Xi Jinping, saying,” We have a very trusting relationship, and that helps us build a good trade relationship. ”

Putin has once again denied allegations that Russia is deliberately restricting gas supplies to Western Europe in an effort to put pressure on the European Union not to disrupt the Moscow-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The project, which is completed, is awaiting approval from German regulators. The president has vehemently denied the allegations previously made against the Kremlin by Washington and several major Western media outlets. “It simply came to our notice then. [true]. They lie all the time, Gazprom increases the volume [of gas] in accordance with existing contracts fully requested by its partners. “

He added that “[Russia] It is not the only supplier to the European market. But we are probably the only ones increasing deliveries, there were adverse weather conditions last year. Long cold spring. Not enough gas was pumped into the warehouse. The wind turbines did not work. It all created a deficit. “

Asked about opposition spokesman Alexei Navalny, who is currently serving a prison sentence, Putin said it was time to move on. He says that the Russian prosecutor’s office has not even received any documents substantiating the allegations that he was poisoned by “Novichok” before falling ill on a flight to Moscow. “There is no need to talk about it,” Putin told reporters, simply telling reporters, “Let’s move forward.” A Western-backed activist fell ill shortly after his plane took off from the Siberian city of Tomsk. He was taken to a hospital and, at the request of his family (strangely), was taken to Berlin and treated at a clinic there. Doctors in Germany later claimed that Navalny was infected with a toxic nerve-paralyzing substance that made headlines in the West, but Moscow’s requests for samples or evidence to substantiate the allegations fell deaf.

Earlier this year, Navalny returned to Russia, knowing full well that he was likely to be jailed for violating a suspended sentence, which was sentenced in 2014 when he was convicted of embezzling $ 415,000 from two different parties. companies. He was later sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for breaking the law.

In front of Russian journalists as well as reporters from all over the world; Putin touched on many other issues, such as the coronavirus, the economy and Russia’s declining population, but his comments on NATO and China are likely to dominate the news headlines for the foreseeable future.

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