Putin Tells Rossiya TV, Migrant Crisis Came from U.S./Europe Wars in Southwest Asia

Nov. 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Pavel Zarubin, host of the Rossiya-1 TV network broadcast “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” this morning, put the responsibility for the crisis on the West. “It is important to remember where the migration crises came from. Is it Belarus that discovered such problems? No, there are reasons that were created by the Western countries themselves, including European countries. They are both of military and economic nature,” he said, mentioning both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Putin also stressed that Russia is not involved in the border crisis. “I want everyone to know that we have nothing to do with it,” he said. “Everyone is trying to impose any responsibility on us for any reason and for no reason at all.” The transcript is posted to the Kremlin website.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also denied the accusations against Russia, calling them absurd. “The core of these accusations resembles some kind of absurd situation. All accusations in this regard are addressed to one state, Belarus, although there are already accusations that we [Russia] allegedly had a hand in this, which is generally absurd,” Grigory Lukyantsev, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights envoy, told Russian reporters at the UN.

“On Friday (Nov. 12) representatives of Poland [in the UN] and the European Union, who made a general statement, mentioned that it was all the fault of the ‘criminal Lukashenko regime’ (President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko) and so on. At the same time, they turn blind eye to what is happening in relation to the migrants themselves. They either hush it up, or say that all these are necessary measures. These are outright double standards in assessing the relevant situation,”

he said.