Washington/Prague, Oct 28 (CTK) – Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis has protested against being ranked among pro-Russian politicians in an article entitled “Russia’s New Kind of Friends” by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post (WP), in his letter sent to the U.S. paper.
Applebaum ensues from the “Dialogue of Civilisations” international conference annually held in Rhodes under the patronage of its founder Vladimir Yakunin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Czech President Milos Zeman attended this forum last year and his predecessor Vaclav Klaus went there this year, she adds.
Applebaum considers the conference participants the people who agree with the Russian elites’ anti-Western view of the world.
Apart from Zeman and Klaus, she names Deputy PM, ANO chairman and billionaire businessman Babis along with the Slovak and Hungarian PMs, Robert Fico and Viktor Orban, among the politicians who are turning to Russia.
In Babis’s case she points to his critical stance on the Western anti-Russian sanctions, which he expressed last year, as well as his recent stance on migration.
Babis said in September the unregulated migration threatens Europe much more fundamentally than Russia.
“Andrej Babis, the Czech finance minister, and Milos Zeman, the Czech president, once a regular at the forum, frequently echo or repeat Russian slogans, as occasionally does the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico. In August and early September of 2014, all three argued against Western sanctions on Russia, using similar language. Zeman called them ‘ineffective,’ Babis called them ‘nonsense’ and Fico called them ‘pointless,’ Applebaum writes.
“Later, they shifted their rhetoric, and began to point to the refugee crisis and radical Islam as the ‘real’ threats to Europe,” she adds.
She also says “Babis, who is one of the Czech Republic’s richest men, owns companies that consume a good deal of Russian gas.”
Babis in his reaction writes that his politics and the politics of his ANO party are clearly pro-Western supporting NATO and the Czech Republic’s membership of the EU.
Scepticism about the efficiency of the sanctions against Russia and the EU’s refugee policy are part of a European dialogue, Babis argues.
He stresses he would never promote a pro-Russian orientation.
The Czech Republic is and must remain a pro-Western, stable European country with a Transatlantic orientation, he writes.
Babis expressed surprise at being tarred with the same brush as Zeman (Czech PM in 1998-2002) and Klaus (PM in 1993-97). Babis writes that during these men’s governments corruption and cronyism expanded in the country, which was one of the reasons why he entered politics. He adds that unlike them he has never attended pro-Russian conferences and events at Russian embassy and does not visit Putin’s Russia.
The Washington Post published the article on October 16 and Babis reacted to it a week later.
