Moscow, Oct. 5 (Prensa Latina) Russia is faced with the task of building “a new world” and at this crucial stage the role and responsibility of intellectuals is extremely important, the Slavic country’s President Vladimir Putin said today.
The President, speaking during a plenary session of the Valdai International Debating Club held in the city of Sochi, recalled that after the fall of the USSR, Moscow took part with all its “energy and goodwill” in the construction of a “new world order” that is “fairer”.
“Unfortunately, some people did not understand our willingness to work together constructively. They viewed it as a submission, an agreement that the new order would be built by those who declared themselves victors in the Cold War,” the Russian leader explained.
The president specified that some saw this as a recognition that Russia is “ready to be guided not by its own national interests, but by the interests of other people.”
“By historical standards, a period of 20 years is not that long, but when it coincides with an era of collapse of the entire world order, time seems to be compressed,” Putin stressed.
The President also noted that humanity’s global problems “require collective action and the search for collective solutions, and selfishness, vanity and neglect of real challenges will inevitably lead to a dead end.”
The Valday International Debating Club is an association of leading Russian and foreign experts in the fields of political science, economics, history and international relations.
The club was founded in September 2004 on the initiative of the RIA Novosti agency, the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, the newspaper “Moscow Times” and the magazines “Russia in Global Affairs” and “Russia Profile”.
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