Russia made mistake by failing to assert its national interests straight after USSR collapse - Putin
MOSCOW. Jan 11 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that many mistakes in global politics could have been avoided, had a new Russia asserted its national interests back in the 1990s.
In an interview with the German Bild newspaper, Putin was asked whether Russia has made any mistakes in the 25 years since the end of the Cold War.
"Yes, it has. We have failed to assert our national interests, while we should have done that from the outset. Then the whole world could have been more balanced," the Russian president said.
When asked whether it meant that in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia failed to clearly assert its national interests, Putin replied: "Absolutely."
"After the Soviet Union collapsed, equally adverse processes emerged inside Russia itself," he said. "Those included a drop in industrial production, the collapse of social system, separatism, and the most evident onslaught of international terrorism," Putin said.
"Certainly, we are responsible, there is no one but us to blame. At the same time, for us it was an obvious fact that the international terrorism was also used as a means of fighting against Russia, while everyone either turned a blind eye on that or provided support to terrorists (I refer to political, information, financial or in some cases even armed support to the actors fighting against the Russian state)," Putin said.
"At that moment we realised that discussions and geopolitical interests are completely different things," the Russian president said.
