Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Putin Tounge-Lashes NBC Journo: I Did Not Say What You Have Just Said About Liberalism

In an interview with the Financial Times, you seem to suggest that you predict the end of liberal democracy

and that was interpreted as you celebrating success over the United States and the western way of doing things.

This is not a correct interpretation of what I have said, or rather it is a very loose one.

This is how the problem is interpreted by those who want to believe that this is how we formulate our policy, that we do it as you said.

I did not say what you have just said. I did not. Where did you get it?

This happens very frequently when one notion is replaced with another. First the replacement, and then criticism based on this false information.

I said in an interview with The Financial Times that the liberal model has no right to claim domination and to believe that it is the only correct model in the world.

No, the world is much more diverse; it is developing comprehensively, and one and the same model cannot be forced on everyone without distinction.

This is what I said then, and I am ready to repeat it here.

Take Asia. Look at how it is developing, how it is growing. Look at the Asian countries history and culture.

How can Western patterns as they are used in the United States and Europe be applied to Asian development?

No, this would stifle any development there.

There would be chaos, just as it happened in Libya and Iraq

when those western countries attempted to reproduce their liberal pattern there. And it could have been even worse.

That is what I said. I did not say that the liberal model has no right to exist. Did I say that?

No, of course, not. If it works well, let it work. But it has lost all flavour even where it still works,

and the enforcement of this model often comes across resistance even in the countries where it has been widely used for years.

Take some European countries. Why are they talking about the migration crisis all the time?

The migration crisis is a result of this liberal model. They simply take everything too far.

It would be better to invest in the developing economies, so as to cut short the growth of poverty.

Let us advocate this process in the World Trade Organisation.

Let us stop subsidising agriculture in the West and open up our markets to agricultural products from the developing countries.

Let us invest the necessary funds in them, giving the people an opportunity to work and live in their home countries, making a living for their families.

You do not want to do this? Then you will have migrants.

The liberal model does not allow for stopping the inflow of migrants.

And the result is discontent among the people and the growth of extreme views and far-right movements.

This is what I said. I still believe this.