MINSK, 24 June (BelTA) – The economic crisis began before the launch of the special military operation in Ukraine, Russian political scientist Nikolai Starikov said in an interview with BelTA.
Nikolai Starikov noted that it is important not to confuse the consequence and the cause. “Now there is a lot of talk in the West that Russia's special military operation pushed prices up, and all this nonsense about Putin's inflation. With all this lamenting we begin to forget the sequence of events,” the political scientist said. “The world's powers, those who control the world's money, the federal reserve system, the world's bankers, call them whatever you like, decided to unleash another very serious global crisis. They created it through the rise in prices for energy and everything else. This crisis began to unfold even before the start of the special military operation,” the expert said.
He added that it is worth remembering the COVID-19 restrictions that delivered a blow to the economy, supply chains, living standards and, to a lesser extent, to the pandemic. “The war in the territory of Ukraine helps explain to the Western audience why things went wrong. They cannot say: ‘everything is fine with us, because we are a democracy', because the situation has become much worse although their democracy, political parties and politicians remained the same. They needed to put a blame on someone. They chose Russia as the culprit and this happened even before the start of the special military operation. Therefore, this lamenting that everything is bad because of Russia, Putin, and so on, is just a continuation of the information campaign to shift the responsibility for the crisis to the Russian Federation. This is done mainly in the information space,” Nikolai Starikov said.
He recalled the Ukrainian grain. “The ‘conscientious' British press blames Russia for world famine, because 2% of grain will not reach the global market. Why these 2% are so important and how they can feed the entire African continent remains outside the scope of these articles,” the political scientist added.
