MOSCOW, July 20./TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has laced into European governments for urging their citizens to save water and electricity through wild schemes in order to allegedly chip away at Moscow’s energy revenues and thus ‘anger’ the Russian leader.
"A picture was shown to me the day before yesterday, which is being spread across the Internet and Europe’s media outlets. It shows a person with a caption below the picture reading ‘Wash only these four areas if you want to anger Putin’. Showing exactly where - here, here, here and here. What is this? They've gone nuts. ‘Save water, save electricity.’ Total garbage," Putin remarked.
"They’ve made a lot of mistakes, and now they don't know what to do about it, pointing fingers," the president went on to say.
"Some Western countries are facing energy problems today. And one of the components is speculating on ecology," he said. They exploit the topic in the domestic political agenda," scaring people with these problems, and then making unreasonable, miscalculated decisions. And the next step is to point fingers," the president summarized, noting that Russia should not do the same.
At the same time, Putin stressed that in general, the issues of ecology and improving the environment must be addressed. "We have many problems in this area, especially in large cities, in industrially developed large centers," he stated. The president reiterated that 12 large cities are already taking measures to improve the environment, which is a big job.