Putin: US and NATO want to ‘sit on the throne in Europe alone’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended his policies in Ukraine and Crimea and slammed NATO expansion and the United States. He also said he trusts German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed western sanctions against his country as “geo-political” rather than aimed at solving the crisis in Ukraine and criticized NATO expansion and the United States for trying to impose its will, in a wide-ranging interview published Monday in the popular German daily newspaper “Bild.”
Putin pinned the crisis between the West and Russia on NATO expansion into Central Europe despite promises the Alliance would not infringe on Russia’s borders. In an argument made previously, the Russian president said NATO and the US took advantage of a weak post-Soviet Russia to expand its influence instead of cooperating with Moscow.
“NATO and the USA wanted a complete victory over the Soviet Union. They wanted to sit on the throne in Europe alone. But now they are sitting there, and we are talking about all these crises we would otherwise not have,” Putin said.
“If we had presented our national interests more clearly from the beginning, the world would still be in balance today,” Putin said, referring to economic turmoil and domestic issues that took up much of Russia’s attention following the collapse of communism.
