Sept 11 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that events in Europe, including the far-right victory in a German state election, were the result of “system errors” committed by globalists in the West.
Putin, speaking to reporters in a pool report on the first day of a visit to India, also said the conflict in Ukraine was the fault of the West for constantly putting pressure on Moscow and seeking to “drag” Ukraine into the NATO alliance.
The Russian president said he would offer no comment on Sunday’s top result for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, but then added that Western elites were to blame for events on the continent, including the election.
“I think that everything happening in Europe right now is basically the result of system errors by the so-called West … the Western globalists in politics, security, and economics,” Putin said.
Western countries, he said, had also disregarded Russia’s opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion.
After a Russia-friendly president was forced to flee Ukraine in 2014, he said the West “immediately set the goal of dragging Ukraine into NATO. And this ultimately turned out to be the main reason for today’s tragic events in Ukraine.”
“It is the Western globalist elites that are to blame for this, though they keep shifting the blame onto us all the time.”
“People in Europe, I think, understand what is going on,” he told reporters. “Hence, today’s results in Germany and tendencies in Europe as a whole.”
Western countries, he said, were “scaring their people with a fake threat from Russia, supposedly arising since the times of the Soviet Union. But there is no such threat and there never has been.”
Putin is to attend a BRICS summit from Saturday in India, along with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The AfD came first in last Sunday’s election after promising to curb migration and restore ties with Moscow. The AfD must now attract defectors from other parties or reach an agreement with the small far-left BSW party to form a government.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Tom Hogue)
