Putin: Migration Crisis Were Created By Western Countries Themselves

The Western states created migration crises themselves, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with host of "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" Pavel Zarubin.

"It is important to remember where the migration crises came from. Is it Belarus that discovered such problems? No, there are reasons that were created by the Western countries themselves, including European countries. They are both of military and economic nature," Putin said.

Elaborating on the military causes, Putin mentioned the conflict in Iraq. "Because everyone took part, say, in operations in Iraq, and now there are a lot of Kurds from Iraq. They [the West] fought in Afghanistan for twenty years, and now there are more and more Afghans there," the Russian President explained.

According to him, "Belarus has nothing to do with it." "Migrants went through other channels as well. The fact that now they have gone through Belarus is not surprising, because Belarus has a visa-free entry to the country from the countries of exodus, as Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko explained to me," Putin went on.

Speaking about the economic reasons for the migration crisis, the head of the Russian state recalled that in Europe there are very high social benefits for migrants. "For example, a person who works well amid high unemployment in the Middle East, including in oil producing countries, even a worker in the oil industry, earns much less than a social allowance a non-working migrant receives, say, in Germany. Of course, people are heading there," Putin concluded.

Instead of working in turbulent conditions where no basic safety rules are observed migrants prefer to move to Europe, not to work and get two to three times more with their families, Putin noted. "Because they pay for both adults and children, and education is free, and, as a rule, medical care is free. I repeat, this is the policy of the leading European countries," the Russian leader summed up.