Back to Brussels Blog homepageNegotiating with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and former president, is hard enough even when Europe’s relations with the Kremlin are going well - which they haven’t been for some while. For an insight into Putin’s brutal, hard as nails character, have a look at the official Russian government transcript of a conversation he had with some Moscow-based western reporters last week.
The discussion, which centres on the shut-off of Russian gas deliveries to the European Union via Ukraine, turns at one point to the possible deployment of EU monitors along the pipeline route through Ukrainian territory. “We hope that the issue will be resolved expeditiously. We don’t want a group of men and women to come to Kiev and just sit in a hotel and sip horilka [Ukrainian vodka],” Putin says.
Expressing impatience with what he sees as the European Commission’s slow, bureaucratic procedures, he warns: “You should get cracking. In such conditions, two hours would be enough. Instead, they are quibbling over details. They have no mandate? Let them get it.”
He directs even heavier fire at Ukraine’s leaders: “We are witnessing a political collapse inside Ukraine. I regret to say that it indicates a high level of corruption in Ukrainian government structures, which today are fighting not over the gas price but for the possibility to keep certain mediators in the game, in order to use the dividends for personal enrichment and to raise the necessary funds for future political campaigns.”
Answering a question on how anyone can know who is telling the truth about the gas crisis, Putin once again uses Ukrainian food imagery. “If you are not sure, send your own observers to the border between Russia and Ukraine, and to the border between Ukraine and western Europe. Go ahead. Sit there and watch from morning to night, eat salo [pig fat] and chase it down with horilka. They have excellent pig fat in Ukraine. My friends send it to me from Ukraine.”
Only at one point is there a hint of Putin’s KGB background, and of the personal world view that such a background helps to shape. He admonishes the reporters: “I don’t know what you’re going to write and what directions you will get from your bosses. Everything points to the fact that there are some directions, because the picture being presented is absolutely biased…”
Whew. Time for some horilka, I think.
I have been the FT's Brussels bureau chief since September 2007 and was previously the bureau chief in Frankfurt and Rome. In this blog you'll find my thoughts on everything from the European Union's foreign and economic policies to the fortunes of its political leaders - as well as the more light-hearted aspects of life in Europe.
