Disgraced Dutch Foreign Minister Resigns After Admitting Lying About Putin’s “Greater Russia” Comment

• Disgraced Dutch Foreign Minister Resigns After Admitting Lying About Putin’s “Greater Russia” Comment
  by Tyler Durden, https://www.zerohedge.com/
  Update: The Netherlands’ foreign minister was facing a tough debate in Parliament Tuesday following his admission that he lied about attending a meeting hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin at his country retreat more than a decade ago.
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  But, Minister Zijlstra just confirmed he is stepping down at the beginning of the debate in the House of Representatives. He called it “by far the biggest mistake of my political life, the Netherlands deserves a foreign minister who is beyond any doubt.”
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  As FD.nl reports, on Monday, the coalition seemed to want to support Zijlstra. But that became difficult when the Volkskrant reported that Zijlstra not only lied about the source of Putin’s message – not he, but then Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer was present at the meeting – but that Zijlstra also misunderstood the content of the message interpreted.
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  In a shocking admission, Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra said he lied when he claimed to have heard President Vladimir Putin describing an ambition to unify Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and Kazakhstan into a single super-state to rival the influence of the former Soviet Union.
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  Zijlstra claimed at a party conference in 2016 that he had overheard Putin outlining the grand plan for a “Greater Russia” in 2006 during a gathering of businessmen. At the time, Zijlstra was working at Shell, RT reports.
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