Putin: Russia will end the era of the golden billion

The unipolar system of the world is breaking to be replaced with a more harmonious, just and safe option. The transformations that are happening in the world now lead to the end of the dominance of the "golden billion", Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

A new stage in world history is coming, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at "Strong Ideas for a New Time" forum.

The outgoing unipolar system of the world was an obstacle in its development.

"The model of the total domination of the golden billion is unfair, as it divides peoples into first and second grades and is therefore racist and neo-colonial. The liberal, globalist ideology which makes the basis of this model acquires features of totalitarianism and hinders free historical creation. The elites of the golden billion are terribly afraid that other centers of world development may present their development options," Putin said.

"No matter how Western and so-called supranational elites try to preserve the existing order of things, a new era is coming. This is a new stage in world history, and only truly sovereign states can ensure high growth dynamics,” he said.

Putin clarified that "sovereignty is the freedom of national development — of every person that is." He believes that sovereign states will serve as an example for others in standards of "the quality of life of people, the protection of traditional values, high humanistic ideals", where a person becomes "not a means, but the highest goal."

Putin has repeatedly spoken about the unipolar world being unacceptable as a model of global development. His most famous and brightest speeches on the matter is the speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.

In the Munich speech, Putin said that the unipolar world is "one center of power, one decision-making center, the world of one master, one sovereign." Such a world, he said, has nothing to do with democracy and is destructive for everyone who lives within this system. Multipolarity in the world would be growing as new centers of world were developing — Brazil, Russia, India and China, he then added.

Back in 2007, Putin warned of the need to think about the entire architecture of global security. It should be built on "the search for a reasonable balance between the interests of all subjects of international communication," he said.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in January 2022 that Putin's goal was to regain influence over post-Soviet space. According to Blinken, the world of the spheres of influence was a recipe for instability, conflicts and world wars.