Russian president Vladimir Putin called it a mistake for the Soviet Union to invade Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Putin said this during a session of the Eastern Economic Forum, when answering a question from a moderator who cited statements from the Czech and Hungarian leadership about the “USSR behaving like a colonizer, when it drove its tanks into Prague or Budapest.”
“We have already long recognized that part of the Soviet Union’s policy was wrong and only led to tense relations,” said Putin (as cited by TASS).
He said that “one shouldn’t do anything in the field of foreign policy which directly contradicts the interests of other peoples,” and added that these are the mistakes now being made by the West, specifically the U.S.
According to Putin, Russia has never been a colonizer, but rather “our cooperation has always been built on the basis or with the desire to help and support.”