PoliticsEurope
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PoliticsEuropehttps://p.dw.com/p/5OavG
Excerpts from the interview:
“I met Putin around 20 times between 2000 and 2005, during my second term as president, when he was still a young president. We belong to the same generation. Back then, we had a lengthy conversation in the Kremlin, and I asked him what his main goal was. He replied: ‘You know, I want to restore Russia’s greatness.’ A ‘great Russia,’ in Putin’s view, cannot exist without Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia. At the time, however, I believed, wrongly as I can see today, that this was simply the dream of a young president who wanted to be among the world’s leading statesmen.”
“In 2022, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine became a historic mistake. But taking on NATO today would no longer be a historic mistake. It would be a mega-historic mistake, because NATO is stronger than Russia, and that is evident. As for military provocations against NATO, he simply does not have the capabilities for that today.”
“There are hybrid provocations against NATO, and there will continue to be. Their purpose is to test how united the allies are, how they respond, how they make decisions, and whether they are strong or weak. In my view, this is another mistake in Putin’s policy.”
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