Putin: U.S. wants to subdue Russia, but will fail

MOSCOW, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- With relations between Russia and the West getting frostier, President Vladimir Putin has a warning for the United States.

Responding in a televised interview Tuesday to the suggestion that the U.S. is trying to humiliate Russia, Putin said that was not in fact the case.

"The United States is not trying to humiliate us," he said. "It wants to subdue us, to settle its own problems at our expense. To make us succumb to its influence."

Putin recently returned from G20 meetings in Australia, where he was pressed to back off Ukraine by leaders from around the world. On Tuesday, he told the All-Russia Peoples' Front the West's attempts to influence Russia would fail.

"Throughout history, no one has ever managed to [subdue us] -- and no one ever will," he said.

Putin noted the U.S.'s increasing efforts to reach out to the eastern European states that have long been in Russia's orbit, accusing the U.S. of forcing its allies to neglect their own interests in the meantime.

"I sometimes feel utter confusion," he said. "Protection of the so-called pan-European, Western influence to the detriment of one's own national interests as a rule is fraught with problems."