"Speaking of the situation in the Middle East and the complexity of the issues the region is facing, former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon once told me, when I was with a visit in Israel, ‘Mr. President, you are now in a region where you can never trust anyone with anything'," Putin said in an interview for a documentary aired by Showtime on Wednesday night.
Putin added that "by that time he [Sharon] had seen so many various tragic events that he stopped believing in a possibility of any positive developments."
"But, to my mind, sooner or later the region will calm down, and people will find balance in which the region will be able to exist in a relatively safe manner, however difficult it may seem today to solve these issues," Putin said.
Sharon was elected Prime Minister in 2001 and oversaw a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Experts tipped him for an easy reelection, but he suffered a stroke in January 2004 and went into coma. He died eight years later, in January 2014.
