09:52

Over in Greece today, a conversation that allegedly took place at the height of the euro debt crisis between the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is causing ructions.



Did he or didn’t he? That is the question on the lips of many as the fallout from revelations in a book about the French president, François Hollande, reverberate around Athens. In the tome, entitled “A president shouldn’t say that”, Hollande is cited as saying Putin had confided that in summer 2015, Tsipras asked him if Russia would consider printing drachma in the event of Athens being ejected from the eurozone.

Putin is claimed to have said: “Greece has asked us to print drachma in Russia, since it no longer has a printing press to do it. I wanted to tell you so you understand that we don’t want something like that.”

But did Tsipras ever utter such words? Sources close to him swear not – even if it is now well known that his request for a €10bn loan from Russia was refused at the time. Earlier today, the deputy defence minister, Dimitris Vitsas, a close confidant, fiercely denied the claim, calling it “nonsense.”

Officials in Moscow have also rejected the allegation.

With Tsipras and his Syriza party now enthusiastically embracing the eurozone, despite the immense price Athens is paying in terms of bailout-induced austerity, the spat is overshadowing a much-anticipated Syriza congress.

In a speech opening the three-day event last night, Tsipras insisted that leaving the euro would have destroyed Greece and was not an alternative the progressive left could adopt.