The original article at Wall Street Journal is behind a paywall, so I’ve only been able to see a couple of excerpts and summaries by other outlets such as the one below from RT. A few thoughts come to mind.
First, if this report is true, then German Chancellor Schotz, after Zelensky’s refusal, should have publicly declared that Germany’s official position on Ukraine’s membership in NATO would be to veto it. The fact that he did not shows that at the moment of truth, Schotz chose to defer to a provocative agenda and the ridiculous position of Ukraine’s president, at the expense of Europe’s long-term stability and security. Ditto for Macron of France. Neither had the backbone to be a true statesman in the runup to this war.
Another thing this report reveals is that Zelensky – far from being the one-dimensional superhero he is being made out to be in western media – is an arrogant fool who wildly misjudged his leverage and the people of his country are paying a horrible price for it. – Natylie
Zelensky rejected peace offer days before Russian offensive – WSJ
German chancellor Olaf Scholz had offered Volodymyr Zelensky a chance for peace just days before the launch of the Russian military offensive, but the Ukrainian president turned it down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported.
Scholz had made what the US outlet described as “one last push for a settlement between Moscow and Kiev” less than a week before the Russian forces were sent into Ukraine on February 24.
The chancellor told Zelensky in Munich on February 19 “that Ukraine should renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal between the West and Russia,” the paper writes. The daily also claims that “the pact would be signed by Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, who would jointly guarantee Ukraine’s security.”
However, Zelensky rejected the offer to make the concession and avoid confrontation, saying that “[Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin couldn’t be trusted to uphold such an agreement and that most Ukrainians wanted to join NATO,” the WSJ reports, without revealing its sources for the information.
“His answer left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading,” the report points out…
Editor’s note: This article was edited in order to conform with Russian legislation criminalizing references to Russia’s current action in Ukraine as anything other than a “special military operation.”
Anna Afanasyeva, a fifth-year nursing student at St. Petersburg’s Pediatric University, admits she was feeling vague anti-war emotions as she went about her business in the city center March 2. But she says she had no intention of participating in any protests.
Nevertheless, she suddenly found herself grabbed by police near the Gostiny Dvor metro station in downtown St. Petersburg, where no rally even seemed to be happening, and thrown into a police van along with several other people.
She spent two nights in police detention before being taken to court. A sympathetic judge considered the charge of participating in an illegal assembly, noted that Ms. Afanasyeva had no previous record, and let her off with a light fine. That was just the beginning of her troubles.
“Without even waiting for the court decision, my university summarily expelled me,” she says. “There was no due process according to the rules for expelling a student. I was just told to leave. I am trying to solve this, hopefully without suing the university. If I go that way I can lose a year or more of studies. … I am just so upset about all this. I’ve heard that there is a blanket order to expel all students who participate in anti-war activities, and I just fell victim to it.”
Welcome to Russia in the second month of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, where the social and political atmosphere – never very receptive to dissenting opinions – is rapidly chilling. Military conflict can have harsh effects on any society, proscribing criticism and tarring anti-war sentiments as treason. But for many Russians trying to find their feet and feel their way through frightening political restrictions not seen in the lifetimes of most, the dangers remain the source of deep uncertainty.
Timur, another St. Petersburg student, was briefly detained by police for alleged illegal protesting and let go. But he has been expelled from his university. The vice rector called Timur into his office and told him that “you are the kind of person who would stab us in the back and spit on the graves of our soldiers. … You are not wanted here.” Timur has retained a lawyer to appeal the expulsion, and faces military conscription if he can’t get the decision reversed. “I really want to finish my studies,” he says.
According to the Latvia-based online news service Zerkalo, a dozen members of Russia’s National Guard from the southern region of Krasnodar refused to deploy to Ukraine in late February on the grounds that their duties were confined to Russian territory, and were immediately fired. They appealed to lawyers and sued for reinstatement.
One of the lawyers, Mikhail Banyash, says that of the original 12 guardsmen, most have quit and only 3 are still pressing the case.
“The pressure they have been subjected to testifies that their case is sound,” says Mr. Banyash. “But it’s a complicated case, and I can’t predict how it might turn out.”
“True patriots” vs. “scum and traitors”
The tone has been set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently adopted rhetoric that hasn’t been heard in Russia for a very long time. Apparently referring to Russians with a pro-Western point of view as internal enemies, he said: “The collective West is trying to divide our society using, to its own advantage, combat losses and the socioeconomic consequences of the sanctions, and to provoke civil unrest in Russia and use its fifth column in an attempt to achieve this goal. … But any nation, and even more so the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth, spit them onto the pavement.”
So far the police crackdown on people who allegedly express opposition to the ongoing military operation has been relatively mild by Russian standards. According to the protest-monitoring group OVD-Info, about 15,000 people have been detained by police since the operation began, the majority of them receiving administrative fines rather than prison sentences.
The main impact to date of the crisis has been the shock and emotional dislocation that has been disproportionately suffered by more youthful, educated, and professional Russians, with many thousands quitting their jobs or even leaving the country. Critical media voices, both independent and mainstream, have been effectively silenced, with Novaya Gazeta being the last independent outlet to close its doors.
Ironically, the same segment of society has also been affected most immediately and deeply by the intensifying Western-imposed sanctions regime, as a result of being cut off from family, property, work, and travel to the West.
Polls suggest popular support is actually consolidating behind Russian authorities as the conflict intensifies, though Lev Gudkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center, says that under-30s tend to be far more skeptical of official claims than their elders.
“Russian youth are far more negative toward the military operation, those between 15 and 30,” who make up about 15% of the population, he says. “They are scared of the consequences of war, particularly young men who face the prospect of military service. … Perhaps half of the youth are opposed to the operation, but many are also indifferent, who don’t want to notice events. But on the whole, there seems little appetite for public protest.”
“I don’t believe that I should hide”
For the moment, at least, many politically active young people seem to think that they can adapt to the situation and navigate around the increasingly draconian laws against “fake news” concerning the special military operation.
Nikita, a liberal political activist, publishes carefully calculated criticism on social media, but says he would rather his full name not appear in a U.S. newspaper “under these circumstances.” Still, he’s happy to discuss the dangerous ambiguities that regulate any sort of political speech in Russia today.
“We are faced with new rules. We just don’t know where the boundaries are, or what it’s going to be like tomorrow,” he says. “I am just not sure what I can say. Will I be punished or not? On the first day [of the operation] I posted a note on one of my social media pages that I believe in diplomacy, but not the diplomacy of the tank. It doesn’t seem to have been noticed, but who knows? … I think we just have to wait, survive, until this operation ends. Then we will see what Russia has changed into, what is the new Russia? Then we’ll have a better idea about how to go forward.”
Egor Kotkin is a left-wing activist who has no problem with speaking plainly. He has long lived an openly gay lifestyle in Moscow, and says he finds Russians to be generally much more tolerant and open-minded than their leaders.
A promotional writer for IT companies, Mr. Kotkin says he never watches TV, has generally opposition-minded co-workers, and mainly encounters pro-Kremlin views through his partner’s family and his relationship with his mother. She is a big fan of Mr. Putin, he says.
“My mother has formed a relationship, through the media, with Putin and the regime. She sees them as part of her life; she trusts them on a personal level. I try not to touch that, because it would spoil my relations with my mom. I guess a lot of families are like that,” he says.
“I don’t believe that I should hide. But we seem to be living under something like martial law. So, anything can change.”
Some of you may be aware of the video (embedded below) that went viral on social media of this American veteran who went to Ukraine to volunteer in the fight against Russia. He described his harrowing experience and warned others that going to fight as a foreign volunteer fighter in Ukraine was “a trap.” His name is Harry Hoeft and Alex Rubinstein of The Grayzone spoke to him.
A decade after Henry Hoeft joined the US Army at age 18, he was back on the battlefield, but this time as a volunteer for a foreign military engaged in a proxy war against a powerful foe. After answering the Ukrainian government’s call for foreign fighters this February, however, the American veteran quickly decided he was being sent on a “suicide mission” against the Russian military.
After escaping with his life, claiming his own allies had threatened to shoot him in the back, Hoeft posted a viral message advising other Westerners against joining the fight in Ukraine. Within days, he was at the center of a global information war, with the military for which he had volunteered publicly branding him a Russian agent.
It was not the first time Hoeft had placed himself in the middle of controversy. Years before his ill-fated mission in Ukraine, his passion for guns and the Second Amendment led him into the ranks the Boogaloo Boys, an enigmatic militia-style organization that confounds even self-styled extremism experts.
Members of the Boogaloo Boys uphold a staunchly anti-communist, anarchistic perspective that incorporates political positions and symbols familiar to both radical right and leftist movements. They have marched in support of Black Lives Matter, to the obvious discomfort of many liberal social justice activists, and protested coronavirus lockdowns, usually while openly toting assault rifles and sporting the Hawaiian shirts that have become their trademark.
Hoeft was a prominent figure in the Ohio chapter of the Boogaloos and appeared at the Ohio statehouse in Columbus to deliver introductory remarks at an armed “unity rally.” There, he emphasized the group’s non-partisan politics and defended a transgender activist from insults.
But Hoeft said it was not his former affiliation with a militia-style organization that drew him back into the field of armed combat. Instead, it was the emotional impact of news flashing across his Facebook timeline about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this February and being taken in by heart-rending stories of civilian suffering. He was a father now, and he saw his own child in the faces of Ukrainian youth fleeing for their lives from the Russian military onslaught.
So the moment Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky implored Westerners to travel thousands of miles across the ocean to join his country’s fight, Hoeft mobilized. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country please come over, we will give you weapons,” Zelensky appealed days after the full-scale war erupted.
When he arrived in Ukraine, however, he was forced to confront the dispiriting reality of a rag-tag volunteer paramilitary thrust into a proxy war against a powerful military machine. After about a week, he decided he had signed up for his own death.
“They’re trying to send us to Kiev with no fucking weapons, no kit, no plates. The people who are lucky enough to get weapons are only getting magazines with like 10 fucking rounds,” Hoeft complained in a viral video rant from the field. “People need to stop coming here. It’s a trap and they’re not letting you fucking leave.”
Hoeft went on to make a series of explosive claims, including that the passports of Westerners trying to leave Ukraine were being torn up; that foreigners were being sent to the front lines without rifles; and that the Georgian Legion was threatening to shoot those who refused.
Once it became clear that Hoeft’s account was undermining Kiev’s public relations campaign, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine denounced him on its official Twitter account, branding the American as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and posting his photo beside the caption “Made in Russia.”
Next, Georgian Legion fighters joined the social media assault, denouncing Hoeft and branding him as a liar. “Whatever may or not be circling right now from Henry,” one American volunteer claimed in a video published by Daily Wire reporter Kassy Dillon, “it is completely false.”
Finally, the corporate media trained its sights on Hoeft.
“Ukraine’s foreign fighters ridicule American Boogaloo Boy who RAN AWAY,” a headline from the Daily Mail tabloid said. “A Boogaloo Boi Tried to Join the Foreign Legion In Ukraine — It Didn’t End Well,” claimed Rolling Stone. And via the aggregator Raw Story: “Boogaloo Boi’s attempt to fight in Ukraine ends in disaster and him fleeing.”
Amidst the corporate media’s taunting, Hoeft agreed to an interview with The Grayzone. He told this reporter that he was determined to set the record straight about his connection with the Boogaloo Boys, his political views, and most importantly, the serious dangers volunteers face on the Ukrainian battlefield.
“There’s no such thing as glory in death,” Hoeft told The Grayzone. “You’re going to die in a trench and you’re going to get left there and it’s gross and it’s bad.”
“We can possibly stop a world war”
When Henry Hoeft signed up for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion in late February 2022, he was convinced his experience as an army veteran trained in infantry tactics and mortar fire would make him a valuable asset. Tens of thousands of foreigners who flocked to Ukraine, pouring across the Polish border with the quiet assent of NATO governments, and zealous encouragement from Kiev, apparently felt the same.
“Being a veteran that has a specific skill set, I felt like I could put it to better use there in Ukraine than sitting here on my couch while watching women and children be targeted by Russian forces,” Hoeft told The Grayzone.
A few days before shipping off to Ukraine, he told The Columbus Dispatch, his hometown paper, about the raw emotion that was driving his decision: “Russia is firing on civilian structures, and there are kids who died. The fact that so many veterans across countries are stepping up, that’s very inspiring to me. We feel like if we can hold Putin for long enough, we can possibly stop a world war.”
Today, Hoeft says, “I still feel the same way. But I never had an intention of going to Ukraine on a suicide mission. I have a child. I have work. I have school. My original intent wasn’t even to be a frontline combat soldier. I intended to volunteer, which I did, and provide training, medical supplies and support.”
Hoeft submitted to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, DC a copy of his passport and proof of his military experience, the sole requirements of foreigners looking to fight for Ukraine.
Once he arrived in Poland, getting over the border was “a very easy process,” he said. “It was very fast paced. It took us probably five, ten minutes to get into Ukraine.”
But as Hoeft explained to The Grayzone, getting out was not so easy.
Inside the Georgian National Legion
After entering Ukraine, Hoeft and a few fellow volunteers made their way to Lviv. “In the town center of Lviv, they’re recruiting people from a bunch of different groups. You had Georgians, Ukrainians from local militias, and you also had more hostile groups like Azov and stuff like that,” Hoeft recalled.
Since the Ukrainian Foreign Legion required a contract, Hoeft opted to join the Georgian Legion, which was conveniently stationed nearby.
Incorporated into the Ukrainian military, the Georgian Legion runs three bases with hundreds of fighters. Previously a unit that fought on the front lines against Donbass, the Georgian Legion is now headquartered in the West where it is led by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a veteran of four previous wars with Russia, including Georgia’s disastrous invasion of South Ossetia.
Mamulashvili and a small group of men he led during the Maidan coup d’etat have been accused by fellow Georgian fighter Alexander Revazishvili of carrying out a dastardly false flag massacre in Kiev’s central square. According to Revashishvili, Mamulashvili ordered his snipers to open fire on a crowd, killing 49 protesters in a cynical attempt to escalate the conflict by pinning the blame on the government they were seeking to topple.
Photos from both 2017 and 2018 posted on Facebook by Mamulashvili show the Georgian hard-man inside the US Capitol rubbing elbows with some of the top figures on the House Foreign Relations Committee. They included then-Rep. Eliot Engel, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, former Rep. Sander Levin, Rep. Doug Lamborn, and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. He posted more photos showing him visiting Senate offices, including that of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee…
The following Le Figaro interview with the French-Russian author Andrei Makine is noteworthy in several respects. First of all, there is Makine’s devotion to thought, and for this same reason his devotion to freedom. This is of a piece with his scorn for propaganda. Of equal interest is his positive proposal, which comes toward the end of the conversation. Makine envisions a Europe that is whole in the sense that it includes Russia. It is a concept which, if desirable, appears to be something now achievable only by a miracle. This interview, conducted by Alexandre Devecchio, was originally published by Le Figaro on March 10, 2022. Published here by Landmarks with the permission of Andrei Makine. (Translation by Matthew Dal Santo.)
“I regret that European propaganda is opposed to Russian propaganda … ” — Andrei Makine.
Andrei Makine, born in Siberia, has published a dozen novels translated into more than forty languages, including The French Testament (Goncourt Prize and Medici Prize 1995), La Musique d’une vie (ed. Threshold, 2001), and, more recently, A Loved Woman (Threshold). He was elected to the French Academy in 2016.
Q.: As a writer of Russian origin, what does this war inspire in you?
Andrei MAKINE. For me, it has been a matter of the unthinkable. I think of the faces of my Ukrainian friends in Moscow, whom I saw above all as friends, not as Ukrainians. The faces of their children and grandchildren, who are in this caldron of war. I pity the Ukrainians who are dying under the bombs, as well as the young Russian soldiers engaged in this fratricidal war. The fate of the suffering people matters more to me than that of the elites. As Paul Valéry said, “war is waged by men who do not know each other and who massacre each other for the sake of men who know each other and do not massacre each other.”
Q: Part of the press calls you a pro-Putin writer. Are you?
It was an AFP journalist who first glued this label to me about twenty years ago. It was just after Boris Yeltsin’s departure, whose record was catastrophic for Russia. I explained to him that Yeltsin, in a state of permanent intoxication, with responsibility for the atomic button, represented a real danger. And that I hoped that Russia could become a little more rational and pragmatic in the future. But she produced the headline: “Makine defends Putin’s pragmatism.” As it was an AFP dispatch, it was repeated everywhere. And when I entered the Académie française, a prominent weekly newspaper, whose name out of charity I will keep silent, published, in turn, a report entitled: “Makine, a Putinist at the Academy”… This says a lot about the world of lies in which we live.
Q: You condemn the Russian intervention…
My opposition to this war, to all wars, must not become a kind of mantra, a certificate of good citizenship for intellectuals in need of publicity, who all seek the anointing of the moralising doxa. In repeating common places, we contribute absolutely nothing and, on the contrary, entrench a Manichean vision that prevents any debate and understanding of this tragedy. We can denounce Vladimir Putin’s decision, spit on Russia, but it will not solve anything, it will not help Ukrainians.
To be able to put a stop to this war, we must understand the background that has made it possible. The war in Donbass has been going on for eight years and has left 13,000 dead, and has left as many injured, including children. I regret the political and media silence that surrounds it, the indifference to the dead when they are Russian-speaking. To say that does not mean justifying Vladimir Putin’s policy. Just as questioning the warmongering role of the United States, present at all levels of Ukrainian governance both before and during the “Maidan Revolution,” does not amount to clearing Putin of his share of responsibility. Finally, we must keep in mind the precedent set by the bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of Serbia by NATO in 1999 without obtaining the approval of the United Nations Security Council. For Russia, this has been experienced as a humiliation and an example to remember. The Kosovo war marked the Russian national memory and its leaders.
When Vladimir Putin says that Russia is threatened, it is not a “pretext”: rightly or wrongly, the Russians really feel besieged, and this stems from this history, as well as military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. A conversation reported between Putin and the President of Kazakhstan summarizes everything. The latter was trying to convince Putin that the installation of American bases on his territory would not pose a threat to Russia, which could find an accommodation with the United States. With a smile of regret, Putin replied: “That’s exactly what Saddam Hussein said!”
Again, I do not legitimize this war in any way, but the important thing is not what I think, nor what we think. In Europe, we are all against this war. But we must understand what Putin thinks, and especially what the Russians, or at least a large part of them, think.
Q: You present Putin’s war as a consequence of Western politics. But hasn’t the Russian president always harboured revenge against the West?
I saw Vladimir Putin in 2001, shortly after his first election. He was another man then with an almost shy voice. He sought an understanding with democratic countries. I do not believe at all that he already had an imperialist project in mind, as is claimed today. I see him more as someone who reacts rather than as an ideologue. At that time, the Russian government’s goal was to integrate with the Western world. It is stupid to believe that the Russians have a disproportionate nostalgia for the gulag and the Politburo. They may well have nostalgia for economic security, and the absence of unemployment. Understanding between peoples too: at Moscow University, no one made any difference between Russian, Ukrainian and other Soviet students … There was a honeymoon between Russia and Europe, between Putin and Europe, before the Russian president took the position of the betrayed lover. In 2001, Putin was the first head of state to offer his aid to George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11. Through its bases in Central Asia, Russia then facilitated American operations in this region. But in 2002, the United States left the ABM Treaty, which limited the installation of missile shields. Russia protested against this decision, which it believed could only revive the arms race. In 2003, the Americans announced a reorganisation of their forces towards Eastern Europe.
Putin became noticeably tougher starting from 2004, when former socialist countries joined NATO even before joining the European Union, as if it were necessary to become anti-Russian to be European. He understood that Europe had been vassalised by the United States. Then there was a real turning point in 2007 when he gave a speech in Munich accusing the Americans of preserving NATO structures that were no longer needed and wanting a unipolar world. However, in 2021, when he came to power, Joe Biden said exactly this when he declared “America will run the world again.”
Q: It seems that you would make the West and Russia equivalent in responsibility. But in this war, Russia is the aggressor…
I’m not making them equivalent. But I regret that European propaganda has become the mere reverse face of Russian propaganda. On the contrary, it is time for Europe to show its difference, to impose pluralistic journalism that opens the debate. When I was a child in Soviet Russia and there was only Pravda, I dreamed of France for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the ability to read different opinions in different newspapers. War is a terrible blow to freedom of expression: in Russia, which is not surprising, but also in the West. It is said that “the first victim of war is always the truth.” That’s right, but I wish it hadn’t been the case in Europe, in France.
In my view, the closure of RT France by Ursula von der Leyen, unelected president of the European Commission, is a mistake that will inevitably be perceived by public opinion as censorship. How can we not be revolted by the deprogramming of the Bolshoi at the Royal Opera in London, the cancellation of a course dedicated to Dostoyevsky in Milan? How can we claim to defend democracy by censoring television channels, artists, books? This is the best way for Europeans to fuel Russian nationalism, to achieve a result opposite from the one expected. On the contrary, we should open up to Russia, especially through the Russians who live in Europe and who are obviously pro-European. As Dostoyevsky rightly said: “every stone in this Europe is dear to us.”
Q: Russian propaganda still seems delirious when Putin speaks of “denazification”…
The Azov battalion, which took over the city of Mariupol from the separatists in 2014, and has since been incorporated into the regular army, claims its neo-Nazi ideology and wears helmets and badges bearing the emblem of the SS symbol and the swastika. It is obvious that this presence remains marginal and that the Ukrainian state is not Nazi, and does not devote unconditional veneration to Stepan Bandera. But Western journalists should have seriously investigated this influence and Europe should have condemned the presence of Nazi emblems on Ukraine’s territory. It must be understood that this revives among the Russians the memory of the Second World War and of the Ukrainian commandoes who rallied to Hitler, and that it gives credit, in their eyes, to the Kremlin’s propaganda.
Q: Beyond the debate on the causes and responsibilities of everyone in the war, what do you think of the European response?
Bruno Le Maire has been criticized for talking about total war, but he has had the merit of telling the truth and nailing his colours to the mast, instead of the hypocrisy of those who send weapons and mercenaries and intend to ruin the Russian economy, but claim that they do not wage war. In truth, it is indeed a question of causing the collapse of Russia, the impoverishment of its people. It must be said clearly: the West is at war with Russia.
However, if there is a positive aspect for the possible democratization of Russia, it is that we will destroy the oligarchic structure, which has been a real tumour since the 1990s. I invite European leaders to expropriate predatory oligarchs, to confiscate these billion rubles stolen and invested in London and, rather than blocking them as we do today, to give them to the poor in Europe and Russia.
Q: What else can be done?
To stop hostilities, to give Ukraine a future, we always think that we must move forward; sometimes we must, on the contrary, go back. It must be said: “we were wrong.” In 1992, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we had come to a fork in the road. We took the wrong way. I really thought then that there would be no more obstacles, that NATO would be dissolved because America no longer had an enemy, that we would form a great peaceful continent. But I also sensed that it was going to explode because there were already tensions: in the Caucasus, in Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh… At the time, I wrote a letter to François Mitterrand.
Q: What was the content of this letter?
I don’t know if he received it, but I was talking about building a Europe that had nothing to do with the bureaucratic monster represented today by Mrs. von der Leyen. I dreamed of a Europe that respects identities, like the Mitteleuropa of Zweig and Rilke. A Europe that is ultimately more powerful because it is more flexible, to which Ukraine, the Baltic States and why not Belarus could have been added. But a Europe without weapons, without military blocs, a Europe composed of sanctuaries of peace. The two guarantors of this architecture would have been France and Russia, two nuclear powers located at both ends of Europe, legally mandated by the UN to protect this whole.
Q: Is that realistic?
Mitteleuropa is not a utopia, it existed. I want to believe in it, and I will continue to stress the importance of this idea. A few years ago, I met Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, who shared this vision of a Europe from Paris to Saint Petersburg. But the Americans decided otherwise. This would have meant the end of NATO, the end of the militarization of Europe. A Europe supported by Russia and its wealth would have become too powerful and independent. Nevertheless, I hope that a new president will take over this idea. Europe is a sinking Titanic and from one crisis to another, we are fighting for survival.
This situation is so tragic, so chaotic, that we should propose a radical solution, that is to say, return to the 1992 bifurcation and recognize that we should not restart the arms race and instead resume a democratic and peaceful direction that could very well include Russia. This would stop in their tracks extremist tendencies in Russia. This would allow us to avoid the political and economic collapse that is affecting the entire planet. It would lead to an honourable outcome for everyone, and it would make it possible to build a Europe of peace, a Europe of intellectuals and of culture. Our continent is a living treasure, it must be protected. Unfortunately, we prefer to pursue the opposite of this proposal: to ban Dostoevsky and to wage war. This means guaranteed destruction, because there will be no winner.
