……Spiralling tensions have come to resemble the situation before World War II. …………… “I strongly hope that such ‘hot’ global conflict is impossible now. It would mean the end of civilisation,” he said. “But the situation may become unpredictable and spin out of control. There is a real danger that we will face a downturn in global development fraught with an all-out fight, attempts to solve contradictions by searching for internal and foreign enemies, and the destruction of basic traditional values.”
Putin attributed the worsening economic situation to a Western liberal economic model that he said “foments social, racial and ethnic intolerance with tensions erupting even in countries with seemingly long-established civil and democratic institutions”.