You're reading: Putin: Sarkozy “good friend” but Russia will “respect the choice of the French people”

Moscow - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, May 8 that outgoing French President Nicolas Sarkozy is "a good friend" of his and Dmitry Medvedev's, former Russian president who is prime minister now, but that Russia would "respect the choice of the French people."

"There was indeed a struggle there not just between two contenders but between two ideologies," Putin said in fielding questions from deputies during a State Duma session that confirmed Medvedev as prime minister,

"The outgoing president is a friend and colleague of mine and Dmitry Anatolyevich’s, he is an advocate of the well-known theory that belts need to be tightened to ensure the restoration of macroeconomic levels, subsequent economic growth and the solution of social problems on that basis," Putin said.

"The Socialist Party proposes another path. They also believe that macroeconomic levels must be restored, but slowly, softly, over a larger number of years. And the problems should be solved after that," he said.

He mentioned a French Socialist Party plan to lower retirement age, which "the former president has raised."

"You and I won’t discuss now which is good and which is bad, we will respect the choice of the French people. But we do know that we have recovered earlier than others, and we don’t have the situation that exists in countries with developed market economies," Putin said.