In one heck of a foreign policy speech on Thursday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin trolled the United States, calling it an “empire” and saying “[they] often think they can make some little mistakes … because they’re so powerful. But when the number of these mistakes keeps growing, it reaches a level they cannot sustain.”

He added that this “impunity” is “the result of the monopoly from a unipolar world…luckily this monopoly is disappearing. It’s almost done.”

He wasn’t finished though.

Putin also said the United States bears “some responsibility” for the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a U.S. resident and a Washington Post contributor. Khashoggi disappeared after walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 and, according to Turkish investigators, was brutally murdered by a Saudi assassination squad inside the consulate general’s office.


Putin added that the “hypersonic” weapons (which he has previously compared to a “meteorite” and “ball of fire”), against which the U.S. cannot defend itself, would be the best in the world.

Responding to a question from the audience, he said that while Russia wouldn’t use the weapon — which can reportedly carry a nuclear warhead — in preemptive strike, that “retaliation is inevitable” and that Russians “as victims of aggression, as martyrs, will go to heaven.”