Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday vowed to defend Russia's "homeland and values" in a defiant speech from the Kremlin in which he announced Russia was annexing four regions from Ukraine and said the West feared Russian culture.
Presenting a long list of grievances against the West, Putin accused the United States and its allies of waging a "hybrid war" against Russia and the separatist administrations it backed in eastern Ukraine.
He said the West had broken its promises to Russia and had no moral right to talk about democracy, and that the countries of the West were acting as the imperialist states that they had "always been".
Putin blamed the West for the leaks that have been discovered in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Baltic Sea gas pipelines.
Referring to Britain and the US, he said, "they have turned to sabotage. Unbelievable, but true. By organizing explosions on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines... they have in fact started destroying the common European energy infrastructure," he said during a televised state address.
Putin had already spoken of an "act of international terrorism" with regard to the leaks, without apportioning blame. Russia has also requested an urgent debate on the matter in the UN Security Council.
Putin said that Russia was "not striving" to recreate the Soviet Union as he prepared to annex four Moscow-occupied Ukrainian regions at a Kremlin ceremony.
"The USSR is no more. We can't bring the past back. And Russia doesn't need it anymore. We are not striving towards that," Putin said.
He also accused the last leaders of the Soviet Union of "destroying our great country".
Putin was speaking at a televised ceremony to formalise the annexation of four Russian-held regions in Ukraine, where pro-Moscow authorities conducted hastily organised referendums, denounced by Kyiv and the West as a sham.
In his speech, Putin also claimed the West wanted to see Russia as a "colony".
"It is out of greed, with the aim of maintaining its unlimited power. These are the real reasons for this hybrid war that the West is waging against us... They want to make us into a colony," Putin said in televised remarks.
"They don't need Russia at all," he said.
"The West is ready to step over everything to preserve the neo-colonial system, which allows it to parasitise, and, in fact, plunder the whole world," Putin added.
He claimed it was "critical for them that all countries surrender their sovereignty to the United States".
