US President Donald Trump’s election victory should be attributed not to some foreign influence but to the fact that many Americans were left behind by globalization and Trump saw it, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said.

“The middle class in the US has not benefited from globalisation; it was left out when this pie was divided up,” Putin told the Financial Times ahead of the G20 summit when asked to comment on the US president’s policies.

“Trump looked into his opponents’ attitude to him and saw changes in American society, and he took advantage of this,” he explained, while calling the perceived Russian influence on the US 2016 election “mythical.”

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Putin also assumed that globalization could have divided US society – at least in an economic sense. “In the US, the leading US companies — the companies, their managers, shareholders and partners — made use of these benefits. The middle class hardly benefited from globalization.”

“The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump’s victory, rather than in any alleged foreign interference,” Putin said. Trump’s “extravagant” policies might be a sign of the US president’s attempts to right some wrongs in accordance with his own “distinct world outlook.”

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He seems to believe that the results of globalization could have been much better for the US than they are. These globalization results are not producing the desired effect for the US, and he is beginning this campaign against certain elements of globalization.

Putin argued, one of the major problems in the US, but in Europe as well, is that the “ruling elites have broken away from the people.” The elites continue to entertain so-called liberal ideas and seem to be quite happy with the ongoing developments while people are increasingly concerned by such issues as mass immigration, the Russian president believes.



The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.

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