Greece’s ambassador to the United States Christos Panagopoulos pointed the finger at Turkey as the cause of the European refugee crisis, telling NPR’s Renee Montagne “that it’s obvious that all these hundreds of thousands of people, they don’t come from the Mars from the outer space,” adding that “almost exclusively, all these huge amount of desperate people, they are coming through Turkey in order to be pushed to the Greek shores.”

Panagopoulos also said the European Union has been slow to give the aid it has promised and called the refugee crisis a “shame of Europe.”

Listen to Ambassador Christos Panagopoulos’ NPR interview here: