On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed his country’s parliament in his annual address. He summarized Russia’s achievements over the past year, noted the overwhelming domestic support for the special military operation, and warned that Western countries, blinded by Russophobia, want to drag Russia into an arms race.
The United States is doing everything it can to counter China and Russia to prevent “economic inevitabilities,” but a multipolar world is rising, Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security expert told Sputnik’s fault lines on Thursday.
The comment came while discussing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual address, which covered domestic and foreign affairs and came two weeks before the Presidential election in Russia. Sleboda noted that Western countries are still attempting to interfere in internal Russian politics, referring to their leaders’ embrace of Yulia Navalnaya. “You cannot be more interfering in domestic political affairs [than] declaring who the leader of the Russian opposition is and giving her a platform… it’s beyond the pale [and] is tantamount to political war.”
In addition, the West has continued its domestic propaganda war against Russia even as the message has become increasingly muddled.
“After [Russia] finishes with Ukraine… Poland and then a few days after that, Lisbon, and then they’ll be in Peoria,” Sleboda said, describing Western media’s portrayals of Russia’s intentions. “At the same time [they say] Russia is losing and it’s Nigeria with snow and they’re fighting with shovels,’ on the other hand ‘Russia is building doomsday weapons in space and it’s about to take over everything.’”
The reason for this contradictory propaganda, propping up figures opposed to Putin and the NATO-funded proxy war in Ukraine all stems back to the loosening grip of Western countries on the global economy. “Since 2014, but especially since 2022, Russia’s economy grew faster than the American economy… there is an argument to be made that in the medium to long term, these [Western] sanctions [on Russia] have made Russia stronger.”
“The G7 is falling in relative terms of global economic might and BRICS is rising,” Sleboda continued. “A new multipolar world is riding and these are economic inevitabilities. However, the US doesn’t take to competitors well, and they’re doing everything possible – not just economically but politically and militarily – to stop, in particular, China and Russia [and] do everything possible to reverse that economic decline.”
