‘Pull the plug’ on Putin or look weak
Fifa president Sepp Blatter announces Russia as the host nation for the 2018 World Cup Photograph: CHRISTIAN HARTMANN
NICK CLEGG has demanded that Russia be stripped of the right to host the 2018 World Cup following the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines jet by Moscow-backed rebels.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the deputy prime minister said it would be “unthinkable” for Putin to enjoy the prestige of hosting the global football tournament and called for “tougher sanctions” on Moscow.
He said the Russian president’s behaviour had “reached a tipping point” and was “beyond the pale in this day and age”. He warned that failure to “pull the plug on the World Cup” would “make the rest of the world look so weak and so insincere”.
“After this terrible, terrible downing of that jet, it is essential that the European Union gets tough on Vladimir Putin,” said Clegg.
“We’ve got to take tougher sanctions, but also we’ve got to make it quite clear that he cannot
