Defends Putin remark

Salmond defends his remark that Putin has ‘restored a substantial part of Russian pride’:

When people see the comments I made, they will see that they’re perfectly reasonable. I said I deprecated Russian actions in Ukraine and also its human rights record. I pointed out that the western press underestimated Putin and that’s obviously true … When I was talking about the pride issue, it was in the aftermath of the Sochi [winter] Olympics, which was obviously a restoration of Russian pride. Those are reasonably balanced remarks.