BELGRADE, January 9. /TASS/. European countries are losing billions of euros in their support for the conflict in Ukraine, but even these amounts of funding for Kiev are insufficient as Ukraine is still losing to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina entity) President Milorad Dodik said in an interview with Radio Television Republika Srpska (RTRS).
"What about Europe? Which Europe? It lost billions to the conflict in Ukraine and is still losing. But who is winning? Putin is, because he was right from the very beginning. It was he who said in 2007 that we should not do this (expand NATO - TASS)," Dodik stressed.
The Republika Srpska president paid special attention to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's statement about arming Kiev, also noting that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel (in office from 2005-2021) also resorted to misleading within the Minsk agreements. "Why do they blame Putin for protecting Russia? Would they really stop at that point? If you don't allow yourself to be harmed, then you will at least have something. If you allow yourself to be hurt, you've accepted that you're being harmed," Dodik said.
Earlier, he argued that Russia was legitimately defending its interests in Ukraine by protecting the rights of the residents in the regions that became part of Russia. He pointed out that "Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in Munich about the unacceptable expansion of NATO, but his concerns were ignored. Subsequently, they admitted to violating the Minsk agreements in order to arm Ukraine."
Putin's speech at the Munich Conference
Putin delivered a keynote speech on foreign policy at the Munich Conference in 2007, which caused a broad international reaction. He then emphasized that "unilateral, sometimes illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem, and often generate new hotbeds of tension," while "certain norms of some states, primarily the US, overstep their limits and impose them on other nations." The president noted that "international law should be universal."
A "balance of interests" is needed in the field of security, and the world can develop only in a multilateral way, Putin emphasized.
A number of experts agree that much of what the Russian leader warned about is coming true these days. NATO expansion, a unipolar world, disarmament problems, the degradation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Iranian nuclear problem, European energy security - these and other issues raised by Putin in Munich in 2007 have become even more acute today.