Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Western nations of damaging their own economies through money printing while wrongly blaming their problems on the Ukraine conflict.

“The latest price hikes, inflation, problems with food and fuel, gasoline, problems in the energy sector are the result of systemic mistakes in the economic policy of the current US administration and the European bureaucracy,” Putin said on Friday at a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

Putin said years of quantitative easing have expanded the money supply in the US and Eurozone by 38% and 20%, respectively.

He accused Western nations of using those vast amounts of newly printed cash to buy up global goods, noting that US imports of agricultural produce soared 40% from $250 billion in 2019 to $350 billion this year.

The president also urged the West to stop blaming their inflationary woes on Russia and its military operation in Ukraine, and to change policy course.

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