In his annual keynote speech at the Valdai Discussion Club, this year in Sochi, Putin addressed the United States. “All the time, we hear, ‘You must’, ‘You have to’, We’re seriously warning you’. Who are you anyway? What right do you have to warn anyone?

Maybe it’s time you yourself got rid of your arrogance and stopped behaving that way towards the world.” Putin said Russia saw all civilizations as equal and was ready for “constructive cooperation” while the West, which he accused of having forgotten the meaning of compromise and seeing any country that opposed it as an enemy.

Putin also suggested that the plane crash that killed Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in August was caused by hand grenades detonating inside the aircraft, not by a missile attack. The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was travelling to St. Petersburg crashed north of Moscow on Aug. 23, killing all 10 people on board.