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War of Words
Prince Charles compared Putin to Hitler. 'Unroyal behaviour' says the Russian President
Charles reportedly made the comment to a Polish woman, who had fled the Nazis as a child.
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin says that remarks attributed to Britain’s Prince Charles comparing his actions to those of Adolf Hitler were unacceptable and not worthy of royalty.
“I did not hear this expression. If it was said then of course this is unacceptable,” Putin told foreign news agency journalists in Saint Petersburg. “I think he himself understands that. He is an educated man…This is unroyal behaviour.”
Russia had earlier this week lodged a furious protest with after Prince Charles reportedly made the comparison.
The Russian deputy ambassador to London went to the Foreign Office for urgent talks following the reported remarks by the heir to the throne during a trip to Canada.
Charles made the apparently unguarded comment, which drew a parallel between Hitler and Putin’s actions in Ukraine, during a private conversation with a Polish-born woman on a trip to a museum.
“If these words were really said, then undoubtedly they are not worthy of a future British monarch,” foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in Moscow.
“We have requested an official explanation from British authorities over the statements.”
The Russian embassy in London issued a separate statement saying deputy ambassador Alexander Kramarenko would raise the “outrageous remarks made by Prince Charles in Canada” in his meeting on Thursday.
The Prince’s office, Clarence House, declined to comment on the Russian reaction but it said on Wednesday that Charles ”would not seek to make a public political statement during a private conversation.”
The comments by Charles to the Polish woman, who had fled the Nazis as a child, were reported by the Daily Mail on Wednesday.
“I had finished showing him the exhibit and talked with him about my own family background and how I came to Canada,” 78-year-old Marienne Ferguson told the newspaper.
“The prince then said: ‘And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler’.”
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