I interrupt regularly scheduled programming to bring you a welcome piece of news: at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which just ended yesterday, Vladimir Putin made an important announcement — as important as the one he made at the Munich Security Conference almost two decades ago, in 2007.

At that conference, Putin essentially announced the following:

1. The then current system of international security has outlived its usefulness;

2. International law is being replaced by ever less effective use of force;

3. The unipolar model, where all decisions are dictated by only one country (the United States), is dangerous, unfair, and is doomed to failure.

One of those in attendance responded with a sarcastic question: “Who is Mr. Putin?” The mostly Western audience responded with some satisfied chuckling. Indeed, who was he to dictate terms to them, the undisputed masters of the world? Russia, to them, was a remnant of the successfully dismembered USSR, itself slated to be dismembered to benefit Western corporations and to enrich their shareholders. Putin was just a bureaucratic placeholder, there to demonstrate how Russia has been tamed and defanged by the almighty West. “What gave him the right to wag his finger at the entire world order?” they thought.

What they did not understand was that Putin wasn’t speaking as a politician. He was making a prophesy. He was and is a statesman whose vision will have shaped a fair bit of the 21st century while the people in that audience in Munich were just some crash test dummies in fancy suits unable to realize — as crash test dummies never do — that they are headed for a crash. But now the crash is happening — in slow motion, for now, but picking up pace — and Putin drew a line under his Munich 2007 prophesies because they have come true.

To make this point, Putin did not need to offer any estimates or opinions; just the dry fact sufficed:

• There is no longer a global hierarchy with the US at the top. BRICS accounts for approximately 40% of global GDP by purchasing power parity; the G7 accounts for less than 29%. Thus, “The very paradigm of global development is changing.”

• Economic growth is no longer in the West; it has shifted to new development centers in the Global South, which are the new loci of global trade.

• Global trade is no longer centered on the West. Settlements are in national currencies. New transport corridors bypass Western gatekeepers.

Thus, the collective West is losing ground in the global economy and is now making a last-ditch effort to use force, be it in the former Ukrainian SSR or in the Persian Gulf.

In 2007, Putin gave the West a fair warning and offered cooperation. The West rejected his offer and now faces the consequences exactly as Putin described them. Now Putin’s message is even simpler: it’s over for you, the world has changed, the old rules no longer apply. The new global system is Russia’s system — of equal and multipolar relations with other global partners.

Who are these partners? The SPIEF was attended by representatives from 120 countries. They see Russia as an essential partner, which owns 80% of the global nuclear energy portfolio, has by far the most advanced military gear (battle-tested in the former Ukrainian SSR), and is a major exporter of food, energy, fertilizer, strategic minerals and metals and much else.

As a side note, Putin put paid to Western efforts to stifle Russia’s economic growth by imposing sanctions: he “does not see any threats to the Russian economy either now or in the near future.” The result of these sanctions so far is that the Russian economy grew by 10% while European economies grew by less than half that while suffering trillions of euros in economic damage, bringing to mind the footballer term “own goal.”

Finally, Putin unequivocally expressed his opinion of any prospects of any peace talks with the Kiev regime or with its increasingly frustrated and discombobulated minders in Washington or in Brussels:

“Comrade soldiers and sailors! Comrade petty officers and warrant officers! Comrade officers, admirals, and generals! The whole country is looking to you, the whole country is proud of you, and hopes for you. Keep working, brothers!” (Applause.)