Putin calls Nato a 'blatant anachronism', accuses US of dominating alliance for global influence

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday criticised NATO as a “blatant anachronism” that the US uses to maintain dominance over its sphere of influence.

In a speech to a conference of Russian experts, Putin argued that the alliance operates under “the diktat of the older brother,” referring to the US.

He contrasted this with the BRICS nations, which held a summit in Russia last month, and which Putin described as an example of constructive global cooperation.

Putin condemned the US for seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine and said a struggle was underway to shape a new world order as the Western-dominated post-Cold War era crumbled.

“We have come to a dangerous line,” Reuters quoted Putin as saying at the Valdai discussion club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, a day after learning that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election.

“The calls of the West to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, a country with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, demonstrates the exorbitant adventurism of Western politicians,” said Putin.

The West had arrogantly sought to cast Russia as a defeated power after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, he said, describing the US-led Nato military alliance as an anachronism.

Russia, he said, did not consider Western civilisation to be the enemy despite attempts by the United States and its allies to isolate Moscow.

The world was changing in any case, he said, and many powerful countries did not want to isolate Russia.

“The former structure of the world is irrevocably disappearing, we can say it has already gone, and a serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding for the formation of a new one,” Putin said.

“The world needs Russia, and no decisions by supposed superiors in Washington or Brussels can change that.”

With inputs from agencies