“I would take the bullet for Putin”: Bernie Ecclestone says Russian president is “first-class person”

Bernie Eccleston said he would “still accept the bullet” because of wartime Russian dictator Vladimir Putinwho ‘believed he was doing the right thing’ when he ordered his bloody invasion of Ukraine.

In a bizarre interview at Good morning UKthe former owner of Formula 1 (91) described the 69-year-old dictator as a ‘first-class man’ and ‘reasonable’.

It comes after reports of Russian attacks on apartment buildings and a shopping mall in Ukraine, the latter of which have been branded a war. crime by Western leaders.

Ecclestone said such losses of civilians were “not intentional,” despite being feared by tens of thousands of innocent civilians in this Eastern European country due to indiscriminate shelling.

Speaking from the sunroof of Ibiza, Ecclestone also shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying he was a comedian before the war and that he appears to “want to keep it going.”

The billionaire then insisted that the invasion “could have ended differently” if Zelensky had “talked to Putin”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and F1 Supremo Bernie Ecclestone (right) take part in the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Russia on October 11, 2015 in Sochi, Russia.

Under pressure from journalist Kate Garraway, who asked if she believed a change in Zelensky’s actions, not Putin’s, could have avoided war, Ecclestone replied: ‘Absolutely.’

He added: “What he is doing is something he believed was the right thing for Russia.

‘Unfortunately, like a lot of business people, certainly like me, we make mistakes from time to time, and when you’ve made a mistake, you have to do everything you can to get out of it.’

“I think if this was done correctly – I mean another person in Ukraine, his profession, I understand that he used to be a comedian, and it seems to me that he wants to continue with this profession, because I think that if he thought about things , I would certainly do my best to talk to Mr Putin, who is a reasonable person, and I would listen to him and probably do something about it.

Ben Shephard asked Ecclestone about the thousands of innocent victims killed in Ukraine and asked him, ‘You can’t justify that, can you?’

Ecclestone replied, “No. It wasn’t intentional – look when America moved to different countries, which has nothing to do with America.”

This is not the first time Ecclestone has offered to take the bullet for Putin, his longtime friend.

In 2019, he said he would ‘stand in front of a machine gun’ to save him because he is a ‘good boy’.

He said he did not believe he was behind the infamous Novichok attack in Salisbury and accused people of fabricating it.

He said: ” He didn’t do that. I would be too busy to deal with things like that. The narrators make these things up. ‘

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia were poisoned on November 4, 2018 with the nerve agent Novichok.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died when she came in contact with a perfume jar carrying a novichok on June 30th.

The suspects – known by the nicknames Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – were caught on CCTV in Salisbury the day before the attack and claimed in an interview that they had only visited the city to see the cathedral.

The former F1 boss also said he thinks Putin should lead Europe and that the invasion of Crimea was just to reunite Russia.

He added: “I would like him to lead Europe,” he says. “We don’t have anyone, so it can’t get any worse. He does what he says he will do. . .

“I’m not a proponent of democracy. You need a dictator. As a dictator, you say, ‘I’m going to do this.’ In a democracy, this is diluted. ‘