“Like a Russian gas station”
Josep Borrell, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in an interview with a Spanish newspaper El Pais He described the Russian Federation as an “economic dwarf”.
“China is a real geopolitical player, and Russia is an economic dwarf, like a gas station with an atomic bomb in its owner’s hand,” the diplomat said.
Borrell admitted in an interview that there are disagreements between China and the EU.
“We are close to the United States, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own interests,” he said.
He added that the European Union is not interested in a “bipolar world” as this would lead to two competing technological systems between which a choice has to be made.
“The EU is like a bankrupt bankrupt”
Borrell allowed himself to insult Russia out of jealousy and desperation, and the association of European countries began to appear bankrupt after the rejection of Russian gas. Wrote Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Telegram.
“The EU is like a bankrupt bankrupt, it has stopped supplying quality fuel within its means. Our fuel is with us, we sell it too. And EU business flowed overseas,” he said.
According to Zakharova, only one EU country has a nuclear arsenal, the rest could not produce it. “There is nothing to be proud of, so they come out in anger,” he concluded.
Presumably, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had France in mind. In addition to this country, the USA, China, Russia, England, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea also have nuclear weapons.
Zakharova also recommended that people who cannot identify their gender “shut up until they can finally determine their identity”.
What do economists say?
in conversation with “socialbites.ca” economist Mikhail Belyaev disagreed with Borrell’s words:
“If you look at the official indicators, both our economic complex and our balance structure are dominated by the fuel and energy complex. And officially, we do not occupy a lot of space in terms of percentage of GDP produced, we do not have such large indicators. Still, Borrell should have known that, according to the latest figures released recently, we are in fifth place overall in the world in terms of purchasing power parity, gross domestic product.
He added that such indicators show that the Russian Federation is “not exactly an economic dwarf.” The expert described Borrell’s metaphor as “completely one-sided” and “one-sided”.
Borrell repeated, in his view, what was said long ago, when, after perestroika, Russia was indeed a country with a “loose economy” but with adequate weapons. This is not the case right now. The economist advised the EU diplomat to read more recent sources and added that there is some truth in Zakharova’s words.
“If you remove the emotional plaque, then indeed European countries are at a stalemate in their development. The European continent is already fully saturated, oversaturated. And we see that the habit of European countries to live well at the expense of a developed economic state is long gone. In other words, although they no longer have an economic basis for this, they continue to live. If you call everything by its correct name, then it can be called bankruptcy, ”said the expert.
blooming garden in the forest
At the opening of the European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges last October, Borrell said: compared to Europe with a “blooming garden” and other continents with a “forest”.
In his view, the EU has created the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that mankind has ever created.
“The rest of the world, most of the rest of the world is forest.
And the forest can invade the garden. Gardeners should take care of the garden, but they don’t protect it by building walls,” said Borrell.
His statement was received negatively in some countries. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, considered his remarks racist. After that, the diplomat apologized:
“Some have misinterpreted this metaphor as: [проявление] “colonial Eurocentrism”. Sorry if this bothered anyone. I thought about it and told EU ambassadors, for example, last week that we are often too Eurocentric, that we need to be more modest and get to know the rest of the world better.”