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Putin vows "to have a word" with his "alter ego" over Western economies’ problems

On Monday, there was a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko

SOCHI, May 23. /TASS/. At a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it pretty clear he took with a hefty dollop of humor the hackneyed speculations he was the mastermind and root cause of all economic misfortunes the West was experiencing these days.

"They (the Western countries) have obviously underestimated what has been happening to them. They’ve lived with the habit of trusting their mass media too much all along. In the end, they’ve got inflation and what not. Now they say that Putin is to blame. Putin is to blame for everything," Lukashenko said at a bilateral meeting with Putin on Monday.

"I’ll have a serious talk with him about that," Putin smiled in response.

Lukashenko thanked the collective West for "giving an impetus to our own development."

"We have a vast market, we have resources and we have technologies," he said.