French newspaper: President Putin has outstanding geopolitical knowledge

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Reuters

Understanding of geography, knowledge of the political map of the planet and the main features of each country and people play an important role in Russia's success in the international arena, the newspaper notes.

For example, the newspaper cited an incident where Mr. Putin interrupted the speech of Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev, who was talking about supplying pork to Indonesia. The president explained that Mr. Tkachev had made a mistake, saying that since Indonesia is a Muslim country, where this religion is followed by 87% of the population, they could not supply pork there. Unlike other world leaders, President Putin is aware of cultural differences in education and thinking of other countries, which allows him to pursue a more thoughtful policy, the newspaper noted.

At the same time, for many years now, Western leaders who completely do not understand the problem have been opposing the Russian leader. For example, Nicolas Sarkozy and George Bush did not know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis at the beginning of their presidencies, which led to disasters in their policies in the Middle East.

Western leaders' limited knowledge of geography makes them completely ignorant of important international geographical issues and eager to gain short-term benefits. Figaro explains this by the fact that Islamist rebels were considered opponents of French interests in Mali, but in the war with Bashar al-Assad in Syria they became allies.

According to Figaro, the poor state of the education system in the West is the main reason for this.