Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised Europe’s single currency while criticizing the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency in Berlin on November 26.

“As you know, there are currently problems in Portugal, Greece and Ireland, and the euro is a bit unsteady, but the euro is a stable world currency,” he told business leaders. “And certainly it must play its own role. I think, what went wrong in the last decade and what needs to be done: We have to get away from the overwhelming dollar monopoly. It makes the world economy vulnerable and unbalanced.”

Putin went so far as to say that he believed Russia may one day join the euro. “The rapprochement of Russia and Europe is inevitable,” he said.

Ahead of his visit, he proposed a European free-trade area that included Russia in an editorial in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Putin’s latest statements follow on from an agreement between Russia and China to abandon the U.S. dollar in favor of using their own currencies for bilateral trade, announced by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russia’s Putin on November 23.

Russian government-funded news channel Russia Today shed some important light on how the Russians see the world. Max Keiser, news anchor for the network, said, “The crisis is only adding to Germany’s ability to ultimately break away from the euro and to compete head to head with China for competition in terms of being the 21st-century superpower. It’ll be Germany and China. The U.S. is gone, the UK is long gone, continental Europe, outside of Germany, doesn’t produce anything.”

“I predict the rise of Germany again,” he continued. “This is something that after World War ii was attempted to be outlawed, but Germany is back. And of course Germany has excellent relationships with Russia. The Russian leadership speaks German, the German leadership speaks Russian, so there is a lot of talk there.”

“We’re talking about a complete reconfiguration of the global money system,” he said.

This is how Russia views the world. And its view is more accurate than America’s. The United States is going down; Germany and China are the rising superpowers.

Expect Russian foreign policy to reflect both a fear of Germany and a desire to draw close to what Moscow sees as the next superpowers.