© Pavel Bednyakov/RIA Novosti
The United States was unable to manage the responsibility of being the world's only superpower after the Cold War ended, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the World Youth Festival (WYF) on Wednesday.
The WYF runs in Sochi from March 1-7, hosting some 20,000 young people from Russia and abroad for sporting and cultural events, competitions and panel discussions.
Addressing participants at the festival, Putin noted that after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US elite had an opportunity to take advantage of their new "monopoly on world leadership."
"I believe that the United States has failed to handle the burden of responsibility that fell on its shoulders."
The president predicted that as the multipolar world develops, "fundamental changes will also occur in Europe."Despite the current hierarchy in the Western world, the "desire for independence and protection of one's sovereignty still breaks through to the surface. This is inevitable for the whole of Europe," the president noted.The expansion of the BRICS alliance has been viewed by many economists as marking the end of undisputed US hegemony in the international arena.
"The growing appetite for an alternative to the prevailing international order is important in itself — and marks a failure of US leadership," business and finance news outlet Bloomberg wrote last year.The combined GDP of the BRICS countries has already overtaken that of the G7, and will grow further, Putin predicted.
BRICS, which previously comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, grew in size this January with the inclusion of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
In the past year, the members of the grouping have moved away from using the dollar and euro in internal settlements, instead shifting towards the use of national currencies. Western sanctions related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict have forced Moscow to move away from Western currencies and the SWIFT system and to further develop its own MIR system of payments.
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