‘I’d Take a Bullet for Putin,’ Says Ex-Formula 1 Boss Bernie Ecclestone

The former chief executive of Formula 1 has defended Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and said he would “still take a bullet” for the Russian president.

Bernie Ecclestone told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that Putin was a “first-class person,” doing “something that he believes was the right thing,” and that his invasion of Ukraine “wasn’t intentional.”

“Unfortunately he’s like a lot of business people, certainly like me, we make mistakes from time to time,” the 91-year-old, speaking from Ibiza, said.

Referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the “other person in Ukraine,” Ecclestone continued: “I mean his profession I understand used to be a comedian, and I think he seems if he wants to continue that profession, because I think if he’d thought about things, he would have definitely made the big enough effort to speak to Mr Putin, who’s a sensible person, and would have listened to him and probably could have done something about it.”

Ecclestone was chief executive of Formula 1 up until 2017. In 2019 he told the UK’s Times newspaper that he would like Putin “running Europe.”

“I am not a supporter of democracy. You need a dictator,” he said.

Meanwhile in 2009 he described Adolf Hitler as a person who was “able to get things done.”

Responding to Ecclestone’s comments on Thursday, a Formula 1 spokesperson said: "The comments made by Bernie Ecclestone are his personal views and are in very stark contrast to the position of the modern values of our sport."