MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of the threat of large-scale deindustrialization and the loss of millions of jobs in Europe amid the current events in the world.
"Global markets are declining, while the value of shares of companies in the American military-industrial sector is only growing. Capital is flowing to the United States, depriving other regions of the world of development resources," Putin said at a meeting on supporting the aviation industry on Thursday.
He added that "the attempts by all means to transfer Europe to expensive American liquefied gas" are "the same kind of thing."
"As a result, Europeans are not only forced to fork out, but, in fact, to undermine the competitiveness of European companies with their own hands, remove them from the global market. For Europe, this means large-scale deindustrialization and the loss of millions of jobs," the head of state concluded.
Taking into account the rising prices for food, gasoline, electricity, housing and communal services, such actions can also lead to a radical decline in the standard of living of citizens, he added.
"This is the price that the ruling Western elites are offering people to pay, as I said, for their ambitions and short-sighted actions - both in politics and in the economy - including for the economic war that they are trying to unleash against Russia or, one might say, already unleashed," Putin concluded.