In his address to the Munich conference February 10, the Russian president said that the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in central Europe could trigger a new arms race, and accused the U.S. of ignoring international law and imposing its own rules on other countries.
Putin's envoy, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Putin's speech contained true information that Western officials were prepared to discuss only behind closed doors.
"This is why it had the effect of a 'cold shower', not a Cold War," he said, adding that Russia had lost patience trying to draw the Western officials' attention to the discrepancy between their declarations and practical actions.
Putin's speech in Munich aroused international concerns of a renewed Cold War, but Yastrzhembsky rejected the possibility.
"We are no longer in ideological conflict with the West," he said. "Russia is a totally different country."
Yastrzhembsky said Putin's speech targeted the European audience above all, but it also highlighted global issues and aroused interest in other regions of the world.
"With that in mind, I want to reiterate that Russia is back as a major world player," he said, adding that Putin's words were tough rather than aggressive, which, he said, was fully in keeping with the currently applied principles of international politics.
In an apparent reference to the United States, the presidential envoy said Russia, which had been pushed into the background of global politics in the past few years, did not agree with efforts to impose a unipolar world order.
Yastrzhembsky said others shared that opinion, but only tacitly, and cited an opinion survey showing that at least 60% of Germans agreed with Putin's Munich observations.
"Political elites are trying to smooth over these differences, but ordinary Europeans in the street (let alone Arabs) are so anti-American that it is sometimes difficult to believe in such opinion polls," he said.
When asked whether Putin's remarks were so harsh in response to U.S. criticism of Russia's domestic and foreign policy, Yastrzhembsky said that could have been one of the reasons.
"The United States feels free to speak openly about its concerns over Russia's domestic affairs and its relations with ex-Soviet neighbors. We understand this," he said.
"Therefore, the U.S. should recognize Russia's right to speak directly about our concerns over the U.S. policy in various regions of the world," Yastrzhembsky said.
Russian leadership has been harshly criticized for its policy in Chechnya and accused of violating human rights and freedoms in the troubled North Caucasus republic and all over the country. Moscow has attacked Washington for its war in Iraq and its attempts to impose a Western-style democracy on the Muslim Middle East nation.
