Putin says he pulled Russia back from the brink

The former KGB spy and leader of the Russian nation claims to have rescued the country from the post-Soviet abyss and promised victory against the West

President Vladimir Putin said this Thursday (19) that he brought Russia back from the brink after the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union and transformed the country into a sovereign power capable of defending itself.

Putin, a former KGB spy who assumed the Kremlin’s top job just eight years after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, is the Kremlin’s longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin, who died at his dacha outside Moscow in 1953. , aged 74.

Asked by the BBC whether he had looked after Russia, something Boris Yeltsin had asked him to do before handing over the presidency at the end of 1999, Putin said yes.

“We have stepped back from the brink,” Putin said.

“I did everything to ensure that Russia was an independent and sovereign power, capable of making decisions in its own interests,” Putin said.

He said the West initially supported Yeltsin, but later changed its mind when Yeltsin spoke out against Western actions such as the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Putin, born just seven years after World War II, promised Russians victory in the Ukraine war, which he describes as a proxy conflict between holy Russia and an arrogant West that he says humiliated Russia while the Soviet Union collapsed.

The Kremlin chief admitted there were problems such as inflation, but said Russia’s economic growth rates currently far exceed those of Britain.

“But we are ready to work with Britain if Britain wants to work with us,” Putin said, adding that Russia would cope just fine without Britain if there was no such cooperation.

With information from Reuters*