Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a
"60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday that his country supports legitimately elected governments and accused the United States of doing the opposite in places such as Ukraine and Syria.
Correspondent Charlie Rose asked Putin specifically about his support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the United States opposes.
"It's my deep belief that any actions to the contrary in order to destroy the legitimate government will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya where all the state institutions are disintegrated," Putin said. "We see a similar situation in Iraq."
Rose said that the United States sees Assad as someone who kills his own people, but Putin argued that the United States backs terrorists in the battled because they want to overthrow Assad. The United States backs the Free Syrian Army in the three-way war between the Assad regime, the Islamic State (ISIS) and the FSA.
Putin also accused the United States of backing the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was friendly to Moscow.
Putin will address the United Nations on Monday, and denied he wants Russia to play a larger role in the world as a goal in itself.
"But you are in part a major power because of the nuclear weapons you have. You are a force to be reckoned with," Rose said.
"I hope so. I definitely hope so," Putin replied, laughing. "Otherwise why do we have nuclear weapons at all?"
Putin denied the belief in America that he is a czar-type figure or evil autocrat. He said he simply wants to see Russians who were split from their families be able to see each other again. Those bonds were split overnight when the old Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980s, he said.
Putin said he and President Barack Obama listen to each other after a fashion, "especially when it comes to something that doesn't go counter to our own ideas about what we should and should not do."
Rose noted that GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio has described Putin as a gangster.
"How can I be a gangster if I worked for the KGB?" Putin asked. "Come on. That does not correspond to reality."