Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen, who is running for a new term, has admitted it was a mistake not to diversify gas sources and suggested he had allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to fool him, as he had "fooled the whole world".

In an interview with Pulse24 television, Van der Bellen was asked about previous statements where he said it was "easy to talk to Putin", explaining that it was easy to talk to him because he spoke German and that during the visit he was interested about his family history, which is connected to Russia.

-Either he was already planning a colonialist war of aggression or he changed over the years. It certainly doesn't matter what it is, I believe that Putin deceived me, as he deceived the whole world - he explained.

Regarding the increasing criticism of the sanctions, Van der Bellen said that now is not the time to think about ending them.

- Those sanctions are terribly harmful to Russia, and the war in Ukraine has also entered a stage where it is clear that Putin clearly misjudged the situation. At first, he must have thought that he would quickly conquer Kyiv, but now he is losing. The situation was further aggravated by the partial mobilization in Russia, which caused hundreds of thousands of young people to leave the country. Putin made mistakes on several issues. It is not clear to me what the Russian intelligence service is doing, or maybe Putin does not trust it - he said.