BRASILIA, November 14. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the situation in Bolivia as power vacuum.

"You can see that the situation has emerged where there is a power vacuum. All incumbent authorities have resigned. Senate deputy speaker [declared herself interim president], a special decision had to be made by the Constitutional Court, and the opposition did not agree with it. So there is a power vacuum," Putin told reporters on Thursday after the BRICS summit.

The current situation in Bolivia is reminiscent of that in Libya, he added noting that even though there is no direct outside intervention in Bolivia, the country is on the brink of chaos. "This is, of course, a worrisome signal," Putin stressed.

“We hope that for whoever comes to power in Bolivia, the interest towards developing relations with Russia will remain,” Putin said. “For our part, we are ready to cooperate with any government that receives a legitimate mandate of the people.”

"Everything changes really fast here in Latin America. But we hope that common sense and understanding of people's interests in those countries, responsibility for them will prevail in the end over some personal or group political partisan ambitions," Putin noted. He added that Russia is categorically against any direct interference into internal affairs of such countries as Venezuela.

The Russian leader said that social-economic problems are the root cause of crises in Latin American countries. "There is uncertainty and problems that have not been addressed on time. Even though we always talk abouth this, there are elements of external interference, but they always emerge where there are internal issues," he said.