the president of RussiaVladimir Putin on Friday blamed the West for world inflation and the sharp increase in the prices of food, energy and raw materials, and their negative impact on the development of the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
“This has nothing to do with the special military operation that Russia is carrying out to defend Donbas,” said the head of the Kremlin in his speech on the second day of the virtual summit of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China , and South Africa) in which several invited heads of state participated, including the Argentine, Alberto Fernández, and the Kazakh, Kasim-Yomart Tókayev.
In the telematic meeting, chaired by the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, Putin stressed that the increase in inflation is the result of “many years of irresponsible macroeconomic policy of the G7 countries, of uncontrolled emission and the accumulation of debts without backing. ”.
He added that this process was aggravated by the drop in supply and demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Putin stressed that all the participants in the meeting are in favor of a “truly democratic multipolar world” and that world trade and finance be free of barriers and restrictions for political reasons.
“Interaction with partners who share our values is more necessary in the current conditions of imbalance in international relations,” he said.
The Russian president pointed out that, to preserve their dominance, “some countries are trying to replace the existing global architecture based on the central role of the UN with an order based on certain rules, invented by it is not clear who.”
“The attempts to contain the development of States that are not willing to live with invented rules, the reckless use of illegitimate sanctioning instruments, multiplied by the coronoavirus pandemic, have only aggravated the crisis phenomena in the world economy,” he asserted.
The most affected market, Putin pointed out, is that of food, the increase in the prices of basic products has mainly hit developing countries, where flour and bread are vital for the subsistence of broad layers of the population.
According to the Russian president, some Western countries act with the cynicism of the phrase “if they don’t have bread, let them eat cake”, attributed to Marie Antoinette, by destabilizing global agricultural production with sanctions on Russian and Belarusian fertilizer supplies, and by hampering Russian grain exports.