European leaders “will be sweetly wagging their tails” before U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Pavel Zarubin, a correspondent for the Russian state-owned broadcaster VGTRK.
“Trump, with his character and persistence, will bring order there fairly quickly. And all of them — just watch, it will happen fast — will be sitting obediently at their master’s feet and sweetly wagging their tails,” Putin said, commenting on the relationship between the “European political elites” and Trump, which he dismissed as “squabbling.”
According to Putin, even under Joe Biden, European leaders “were happy to follow any order from Washington,” and nothing has changed since. “They just don’t like Trump, they fought against him actively. […] And then they were left bewildered when Trump won,” he added.
Putin also spoke more broadly about the caliber of European leaders today, comparing them to politicians of the past.
Europe once had outstanding global political figures like [Charles] de Gaulle, [François] Mitterrand, [Jacques] Chirac. In Germany, there was Willy Brandt, [Helmut] Kohl — and I would put Schröder in that same league. These were people who had their own opinions and the courage to stand up for them. […] Today, there are hardly any figures like this left. Sometimes you look at what’s happening and wonder — many of them aren’t even educated, and they are clearly in the wrong profession. Just political small fry.
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