On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the world faces the most dangerous decade since World War II as Western elites scramble to prevent the inevitable collapse of the global dominance of the US and its allies.

Putin said in his longest public appearance since his invasion of Ukraine on February 24 that he had no regrets about the so-called “special operations” and accused the West of provoking war and playing a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” game.

“The historical period of Western domination of world affairs is coming to an end,” Putin, Russia’s supreme leader, told the Valdai Discussion Club at a conference titled “post-hegemonic world: justice and security for all.”

“We are at the forefront of history: the future may be the most dangerous and unpredictable and, at the same time, the most important decade since the end of World War II.”

The 70-year-old former KGB spy, who was more than an hour late for a meeting with Russian experts, offered a typically caustic explanation for what he said was the West’s decadence and decline in the face of rising Asian powers such as China.

Asked about his fears of nuclear war, his relationship with President Xi Jinping and his feelings about the Russian soldiers killed in the Ukraine war, he appeared relaxed about the war for three and a half hours, which Kyiv refused this concept.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the war, while the West imposed the toughest sanctions in history on Russia, one of the world’s largest suppliers of natural resources.

Putin blamed the West for the latest nuclear tensions, citing former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, saying she was ready to use London’s nuclear deterrent if the situation required it.

He reiterated the assertion that Ukraine could detonate a “dirty bomb” with radioactive material to frame Moscow – an accusation that Kyiv and the West consider false and unfounded.

He said Kyiv’s allegations against Russia could mean that Moscow’s suggestion that it planned to detonate the device itself was wrong.

“We don’t need to do this. There’s no point in doing it,” Putin said, adding that the Kremlin had responded to what it saw as Western nuclear blackmail.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked the largest confrontation with the West since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, at the depths of the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the United States were closest to nuclear war.

When asked about the potential nuclear escalation surrounding Ukraine, Putin said that if nuclear weapons exist, the danger of nuclear weapons will exist.

But he said Russia’s military doctrine was defensive. When asked about the Cuban missile crisis, he quipped that he didn’t want to replace Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who, along with John F. Kennedy, pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war before de-escalation.

“The power in the world is what the so-called West puts into its game – but this game is dangerous, bloody, and I would say dirty,” Putin said.

“I have always believed and believed in common sense, so I believe that sooner or later, the new centre of the multipolar world order and the West must have an equal dialogue about our common future — and the sooner, the better,” Putin said.

Describing the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia for the fate of East Slav’s second-largest power, he said the war ended in tragedy in Kyiv.

Putin said he often thought of Russian casualties in Ukraine but avoided detailing what the West said were huge losses. But he said only Russia could guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Ultimately, Putin said, the West will have to discuss the world’s future with Russia and other powers.