Interfax: Putin claims he would sue West over sanctions

Putin Descending a Staircase file photo

ST. PETERSBURG. May 23 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Western sanctions imposed over Crimea so far concern the people from his close entourage, and that he would have started a legal action if he were in their shoes.

“But for now all these sanctions boil down to picking someone close to me from my personal entourage, and finish them off , as they say in our intelligentsia circles, i.e. punish for no good reason. If I were them, I would have filed a lawsuit long ago,” Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“They have nothing to do with the events in Ukraine, in Crimea. And they picked, as if deliberately, two Jews and a Ukrainian,” the president said.

“I gave my vision of what was happening in Ukraine. I believe that everything that happened there is largely the responsibility of our European and U.S. partners. They backed this coup and plunged the country into chaos, and now they want to pass the buck to us so we clean up after them. This is what these sanctions are designed for,” he said.

[featured image is file photo]

Comment