"Economic Suicide": Putin on European Countries

Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the energy policy of European countries to be "economic suicide," according to TASS.

"It is obvious that by abandoning Russian energy resources, Europe will also lose the opportunity to increase its economic activity. Such an economic truce, or suicide, is of course an internal affair of European countries," Putin said while speaking at a meeting dedicated to the development of the oil industry.

"Abandoning Russian energy resources means that Europe, in a systematic and long-term perspective, is becoming the region with the highest value of energy resources in the world. This could seriously disrupt the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry," the Russian leader predicted.

This could seriously disrupt the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is losing competition against companies in other regions of the world, and some experts believe this loss could be irreversible.

Putin is confident that all these processes will only accelerate going forward.

He also stated that Europe is setting itself the task of abandoning Russian energy sources while ignoring the damage inflicted on its economy. "Europeans openly admit that they still cannot completely abandon Russian energy resources, and it is even more obvious that some EU countries, where the share of Russian hydrocarbons in their energy balance is particularly large, will not be able to give up our oil for a long time. However, they have set such a task, we see this, they are placing it without paying attention to the damage they have already caused to their own economy," he noted.