Current conflicts risk bringing world order to collapse, Vladimir Putin told the annual Valdai Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The Cold War's "victors" are dismantling established international laws and relations, while the global security system has become weak and deformed, with the U.S. acting like the "nouveau riche" as global leader, he said.

"The Cold War has ended," Putin said. "But it ended without peace being achieved, without clear and transparent agreements on the new rules and standards."

Russia has clashed with the U.S. over conflicts from Syria to Ukraine, sending relations between the two countries to levels not seen since Soviet times. Putin, whose nation is on the brink of recession because of U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine, also offered asylum to fugitive American government intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

"Global anarchy" will grow unless clear mechanisms are established for resolving crises, Putin told the invited group of foreign and Russian academics and analysts. The U.S.'s "self-appointed" leadership has brought no good for other nations and a unipolar world amounts to a dictatorship, he said.

Enemy Image

Putin also attacked globalization, which he said has "disillusioned" many countries and risks hurting trust in the U.S. and its allies. More nations are trying to escape dependence on the dollar as a reserve currency by forming alternative financial systems, according to the Russian leader.

Russia doesn't want to restore its empire or have a special place in the world, Putin said. While it's not seeking superpower status in international relations, it wants its interests to be respected, he said.

Putin also commented on Crimea, whose annexation by Russia in March triggered U.S. and European Union sanctions that have since been intensified over the insurgency in Ukraine's east. Absorbing the Black Sea peninsula that was earlier part of Russia complied with United Nations norms and followed an armed seizure of power in Kiev, he said.

While the Ukraine crisis isn't the prime cause of Russia's worsening relations with the U.S and its allies, attempts are being made "once again to create the image of an enemy, as during the years of the Cold War" and to divide up the world, Putin said.

The sanctions undermine World Trade Organization rules and Russia remains ready for dialogue over normalizing economic ties, he said.

Even so, Russia won't "beg for anything" in response to the sanctions, nor is it walling itself off from the world, Putin said. "External pressure, just as in the past, is only consolidating our society, not weakening it."