The high representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (EU), Josep Borrell, lamented this Sunday in Nairobi that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has disqualified him this week “directly and personally”.
Borrel was speaking to the EFE agency in the Kenyan capital about the war in Ukraine, after having met this Saturday with the elected president of Kenya, William Ruto.
Last Wednesday, Putin disqualified the high representative for his speech at the European security conference in Prague on European support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, which he allegedly called a “fascist regime.”
For his part, Putin said that if Borrell had lived in the 1930s, in Spain, at the time of the coup, “he would have fought on the side of the coup plotters, because today he supports the same coup plotters in Ukraine.” ”, He said at the VII Eastern Economic Forum, in Vladivostok.
The translation that was made from Spanish to English in Prague was: “At the moment we do not have a concrete plan on how to defeat fascist Russia and its fascist regime.”
But the former Spanish minister told EFE that those were not his words: “It is a montage made by the Russians, because I did not say that. That’s what a deputy said. I answered a question from a deputy.”
For his part, the spokesman for foreign relations of the European Commission, Peter Stano, pointed out that the official Russian agency TASS, “did not say the words that can be heard in translation”, only mentioned “the statement of one of the members of the European Commission”. Parliament that used that expression.
Borrell said he was still “comfortable” with these personal attacks, and that Putin’s remarks “concern him not personally, but politically.”
He added that the incident “is part of the Russian disinformation process, that is to say what is not said, to make it easier to criticize.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that Russia had asked Borrell’s office to transcribe his words in Spanish, but had not yet received them.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine has already caused the flight of almost 13 million people -more than six million internally displaced persons and almost seven million to neighboring countries-, according to the latest UN data, which places this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).
The Russian invasion was widely condemned by the international community, which has responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia in everything from banking to energy to sports.
The UN presented as confirmed 5,587 dead civilians and 7,890 wounded, emphasizing that the real figures are much higher and will only be known at the end of the conflict.
Source: Observadora
