Putin on Europe's riots: stop blaming Russia, look in the mirror
After European politicians rushed to blame Moscow for the looting and unrest in France and Italy, Putin answered in an interview with Pavel Zarubin. His message: blaming Russia only means Europe will never fix the real causes, and those causes are of its own making.
️Debt and deficits: Public debt above 100% of GDP in many EU countries, close to 140% in Italy, with deficits of over 5% in France and Belgium. Russia's public debt, by comparison, is 17.5%, and its external debt just 2.6%.
️Deindustrialization: Since 2021, industrial production has fallen across Europe's leading economies, by as much as 5.2% in Germany, the eurozone's locomotive, dragging the rest of the bloc down with it. In Russia, industrial production is up 10% over the same period, and manufacturing up 21%.
️The green agenda: Shutting down nuclear plants and coal mines before alternatives were ready. Life has shown it doesn't work.
️Sanctions: Banning everything Russian is "simply stupid," Putin says. Russia never refused to supply cheap oil, gas, coal or uranium; Europe cut itself off, and still buys enough that Russian LNG makes up 20% of its market. It also walked away from the Russian market, with European companies leaving under pressure from their own governments, some of them "almost in tears."
️Foreign policy and migration: Europe's role in the Middle East, combined with mass migration, has created communities that don't assimilate and whose grown-up children increasingly reject the countries they live in. Many have lived there for decades without speaking the language. And how can Europe pass on its traditions, Putin asks, when it's busy destroying them itself?
Russia, he notes, was built over centuries as a multiethnic, multi-faith state where Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists have no other homeland. That's the colossal difference.
His conclusion: Russia shouldn't gloat or press on the sore spot, but it won't stay silent when blamed. Europe's problems grew on European soil, and that's where they need to be solved.
Mike
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