Online Desk: The United Kingdom and France blame Russia for the dissolution of their colonial empires and have retained this historical resentment to this day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
“Some former colonial empires – Great Britain, France – hold us responsible for the collapse of their colonial empires. And this historical memory, this historical negativity still remains, I can see it, oddly enough,” Putin told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin in an interview published on Sunday.
The Russian president said that he could see it in certain small things that sometimes are amusing to observe.
“But the thing is that after World War 2, the United States, alongside the Soviet Union by the way, worked to some extent to dismantle these empires. They worked to assist colonies in gaining their independence and sovereignty,” Putin said.
Moreover, President Vladimir Putin discussed the roots of the contradictions between the West and Moscow in a previously unpublished segment of an interview for the documentary Russia.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:
“It wasn’t just disregard — it was clearly tied to an explicit desire to gain geopolitical advantages.”
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 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:
“A man in uniform, while performing his duties, represents the state. To treat him that way is to show contempt for our country.”
Meanwhile, Relations between Russia and China are the most stable, mature and strategically valuable among major countries in the modern world, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Beijing.
Wang welcomed Lavrov’s visit to China to take part in a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Foreign Ministers Council, according to a statement published by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
“Chinese-Russian relations are the most stable, mature and strategically valuable relations among major countries in today’s world,” Wang was quoted as saying by the ministry.
The top Chinese diplomat added that both sides had always treated and developed cooperation in all areas “from a historical depth, strategic height and long-term perspective.”
In addition, Wang said that at present, “the priority direction is the joint preparation for the next stage of high-level contacts, deepening comprehensive strategic cooperation, promoting the development and revitalization of both sides, as well as jointly responding to the challenges brought by an unstable and changing world.”
