Podcast: Waffenlieferungen für die Ukraine - wer sagt was und warum? | Lanz & Precht

Land and Brecht, good morning Richard, good morning Markus, I hope you are well, I wanted to talk to you today about what happened in the early morning of February 24, 2022. We will not forget that morning when Putin attacked. In Ukraine, over the weeks, almost exactly a year since then, we have seen an incredible amount of suffering, we have experienced great surprises, we have seen the crazy bravery of Ukraine on the one hand, this terrifying weakness, the corruption on the other. on the side of the Russian military, this callousness when it comes to killing civilians and raping them tomorrow I greeted Paul Ronsheimer, who was in kyiv two days ago again and said that Russians are still dying en masse at a ratio of about 5 to 1, for so there is bloodshed on both sides.

I'm wondering how to access these numbers, so if I've learned anything this year, I don't believe in any numbers at all. I don't believe in any at all, so I give. the number of the US Head of State who spoke of 200,000 dead and 100,000 seriously injured. On the Russian side 100,000 on the Ukrainian side is now citing the Ronsheimer ratio of 1 to 5, then Ukraine always publishes some figures showing exactly how many Russian soldiers were killed where I always wondered who does the counting and where you know yes, drones , drones, they know a lot, so now I found out from Sönke Knights that I saw this army on video tomorrow, I absolutely appreciate it and he said that the Ukrainian general staff of the Ukrainian army almost does not give any reliable information, even to the West.

That means that he says that we are better informed about the conditions of the Russian army than the Ukrainian one and it means that even NATO, for example, is not well informed about it and that is why I suppose that we do not know the real number of victims of any of the sides, we don't even know exactly, but the only thing I can imagine is that it is simply indescribable. suffering and if we take this benchmark of 200,000 dead and seriously injured that the Americans talk about, then it's just an incredible number, yes it is, I just want to.

Also, when you say that we are better informed about the Russian figures, I think this is indisputable after this year, especially by the Russians, who always send these human waves there, which is exactly what they are doing again now, they say. It is supposed to be a tactic of war and under which an incredible number of people die and then new ones keep coming and whether in the end it is three to one, four to one or five to one, each one of them is a tragedy. , but I wanted something completely different to be sure, there is always It's not actually the anniversary of February 24th, but there is another anniversary after this February 24th, a date that I think we still don't pay enough attention to when it comes to this war and also the question of where the solution lies.

At some point, when will this finally end? And that will be February 4, the Beijing Olympics. That you remember? There's this crazy image of these two men sitting there, Putin, and here in this almost empty stadium and and. They see the Olympic Games and shortly before they promise each other a friendship without limits and if you think about it, maybe we can do it again today in the course of this conversation with the Chinese, then you come to the conclusion that this is the fourth time, In February many more things happened than we really realized. It was always the big question whether the Chinese would give the Russians carte blanche to wage a war of aggression against Ukraine, okay, no, no, no, no, okay, but that's the way it is. very controversial and There was no one in the room except the two of them, but I hear people who deal with the subject say that research now tends to assume that I at least had an idea that something would happen and that then, but And that in turn Once it speaks clearly, however, that they were actually informed about the scope of the dimension, very interesting, it took about a week for the Chinese to find a clear language and position on this war.

They also began to evacuate people. their embassy in kyiv, etc., that means they were also caught off guard and it was not in their interest to say that the Chinese are investing in Ukraine. There must have been large-scale investment in Ukraine. Perhaps this applies to ports and to a large extent to infrastructure, something that is also being done in other Eastern European countries, including EU countries, in Hungary. For example, and yes, well, I mean these Eastern European countries, in particular Hungary or something like that, which we consider problematic member states of the EU, Serbia, yes, and then they will do big business in Ukraine and, if I understood correctly, He tried to explain to me that he had no interest in the war, so they were against the war and secondly that they had no interest in the West winning this war and Ukraine becoming part of Europe and therefore Therefore, he may no longer be an ideal partner. for you, the Chinese, and who have no interest in a Russian victory because then that is over for them too and I think there will be a lot because this volume of investment in Ukraine was enormous, I don't even know if any other country has done it. invested as much in Ukraine in recent years as China, which is interesting because in this document it says no by swearing this great friendship, so to speak, or by swearing this friendship without limits, I looked at it, it's like 14 pages, It's very interesting that this is the language that is sometimes escalating, it is aggressive.

He says NATO should stop expanding further. On the other hand, you are, so to speak, ensuring Russia's loyalty when it comes to Taiwan. and to say that it is a big China and that is non-negotiable for us, but this point with NATO, for example, is a reference to states being sovereign, this sound that says that our democracy talks about its own democracy is largely the same as well like yours, that's very, very interesting and then this war breaks out and at first there's no real language which obviously surprises them but then it says There's a moment at some point where a spokesperson for the Chinese government says, maybe you remember This, who says what they expected when they cornered a country as big as Russia and put it against the wall, so to speak, pushed the wall?

What do you expect it to mean that this narrative is identical to the Russian one? one exactly the Russians who, so to speak, from the Evil West towards the world wage war as wars of self-defense, the great imperial war, yes, and through the Chinese lens what you say is correct, there was a little later, After a week ago, he pointed to it and said, well, we are a peace-loving country and we want them to talk to each other. A few days ago there was another diplomatic escalation. Every speaker somewhere said that the Americans should stop supplying weapons here. because it's actually everyone else who has a stake in this war, which means there's already a very cold consideration, I think, that just says, well, what's the point?

I also think that this friendship doesn't really exist, Potato. Yes, the fact that she is marrying Putin is exactly a good thing, but it has been better in recent years than this devastating situation has always been in the past, so they have already confronted each other militarily in a very bad way, between Maro and the Union there is total enmity and that is more what can be said, adoptive brothers and it is not exactly a brotherly love, but the view through the Chinese glasses is really interesting. Emergency seen through Chinese glasses. I would say that is not the case.

It is completely wrong that now there is someone Putin who is employing the West in this way, who is also weakening us, all of this is costing us a lot of money, it is also costing the Americans a lot of money, so I think that is definitely something that The Chinese We are coldly weighing things, let's see what happens. It's purely a matter of information because I don't know exactly and because I hear conflicting things: From the American perspective, is the war economically worth it or is it a big war? economic problem, that's why I was the argument in favor.

One of them is the entire order book of the arms industry, which is more important to the US than its automobile industry, is by far the largest and most important industry for Germany and, of course, benefits from the times . of war and whoever orders American weapons now in the world should actually make a huge economic profit and speak out against it and that is perhaps also why the word of confidence in the New York Times questioned them both so much , exactly yes, that the international financial world and possibly also say that because the high-tech world of Silicon Valley or something like that had no interest in this confrontation.

They are interested because the advocates of absolute globalization and free trade around the world benefit from it: the more movement there is in the markets, the less direct confrontation there is, the better, so I have the feeling that The question is whether the United States benefits economically or not. That's not only a very interesting point, Richard, I spoke to Janker Oertel about it. this morning, best regards, the place that I really appreciate deals a lot with China, a very intelligent woman who said this in response to exactly this question because that is one of the central accusations, if you look at the big picture and we are trying to do that today also, this story that always exists, well, the Americans are the ones who benefit the most from the fact that this war does not stop and so do others in the West and they supply themselves with purely metal and other Germans. company, but I just want to say that's why I said others too so that everyone benefits.

She said Dresden, just think about who pays for it and that's true, of course, what's true is the weapons that the Americans are now sending to Ukraine. We deliver them. not to Ukraine but to the American taxpayers who paid for them. In reality, these weapons are simply borrowed or read, so there is no need to return them at some point. They really deliver, whether they deliver or not, but first. they have to be produced and paid for at some later time. So if the EU converts after the war, we firmly assume that Ukraine will still exist after this war, yes that is our opinion anyway and would then be rebuilt with incredible sums. , probably triple-digit billions, maybe trillions or something like that and then would there be a possibility of paying off the debts that he owes due to the surrender of weapons?

Could you get guarantees on the natural gas you have in the Black Sea or shares? in companies or I don't know what or something like that I'm not sure yet, but that's what I also know No, I haven't found or read anything good about it, as far as I know, these weapons are. I can't imagine it either. I just don't know, but I can still imagine that what's happening now costs an economy money and that weakened us and when I look at it through the Chinese lens, I don't know. I don't think this is uninteresting. It's also interesting to take a look.

Then I presented a counterargument and said, well, like you, this military machine is, above all, a big driver of American technology, absolutely the same as in Israel. For example, in Israel, one of the reasons why there is such a lively startup scene is precisely this Israeli military machine, which means that they are driving technological developments and so on, and I think we have already talked about it here, there are a direct connection between the Pentagon and the great technological giants of Silicon Valley, the development of the Internet, etc., all of which is not conceivable without the strategic support of the American State and the interest of the military is exactly what is also explained and It's also really interesting, I don't think many people know why they dare to put a red line when the American state comes and says: I want your data, but there are connections and cross-connections.

Silicon Valley was there from the beginning, among them. other things, in the interest of the US military and state funding, right, so it wasn't later when the secret service and the military came, but from the beginning with the ship and when that happened. It's incredibly exciting what was behind this. For example, the flight to the moon, yes, I admit it and so on, that's where it all started. Janka Oertel says it's very interesting, she says it was like that in the Cold War, she says they are very independent today. Technological progress is advancing so fast that actually, the military is no longer needed for that, she says it's rather the other way around and he is giving a very good example of drones that come from the civil sector and at some point the military recognized the possibility of drones and they said it was fine. pay attention, then we will now also use it for reconnaissance transport or even shells to carry rockets as we are seeing now in the Ukrainian war, which is very interesting, but I have the feeling that the question of what interest the Chinese had in This war also emerged a year ago that is still clearly underexposed and they are deceiving the world into believing that such neutrality exists but it does not exist, I know this from many current conversations, I remember Norbert Röttgen,who once said this very In the early stages of the mission, they now supply the Russian defense industry with a gigantic amount of semiconductor chips that they themselves can produce, which in turn has doubled.

The Russians benefit from the Chinese because they then sell them oil. buy it, which can then be sold at a fairly low price and sometimes can be sold on the world market. It's all incredibly treacherous and it's very difficult to get these figures because the Russians stopped publishing trade figures and balance sheets at the beginning of the war. , which means that there is a science like that, that's how he explained it to the partners that I care about now, to be able to use figures from other countries to indirectly conclude what the Russians are really doing and what is really happening there, and then you know it's also from the Chinese perspective, for example, and then I'm also hearing something interesting.

The experiment gives the most traded currency on the Moscow Stock Exchange, the hyenas, the Chinese currency now and the idea, so to speak, of Try something. Yes, the Chinese are afraid of receiving a harsh dollar penalty, for example, at some point if they overdraw. If you trade only two point five percent, I think all world trade is done through the Chinese currency. Everything else is dominated by the dollar and the euro, but above all the dollar dominates. That means we have to see what happens if we suddenly sell our raw materials, oil, for example Russian oil, trading it in our own currency, creating our own currency.

It is much more important to make new exchanges until you can say develop routines. I think all of this is largely in China's interest and that's why this story is consistent with how to stay completely out of this, we are neutral, the story is a fairy tale. story, yes Well, how can you, as a great power and as an economic superpower, China have a completely neutral position in a situation like this? It is clear that they do not have it, so it can positively be said that the Chinese certainly did not have it. Not breaking this war, no and um, the Chinese want and that's what I said before, that neither side wins, they don't want the Russians to win either, but they don't want the Russians to lose for their lives because the West has proclaimed the It was an almost bipolar world order.

You can say that they are, so to speak, the walls of the time to a large extent, that is, something like this complements the rest and something like this is very First of all, it is not China and then other countries that are strongly associated with China and that are more and more Russia and enough has often been said, war with all its consequences leads to a hardening of the blocs and the hardening of the blocs is that China and Russia, who really did not like each other very well, are getting closer increasingly, that's a consequence of this war, right, and that's a consequence that China probably benefits from much more than Russia, what's going on?

You must not forget that the Chinese did not start these wars and we are trying to provoke this war, you know who else is a user, Kim Jong-un for that reason. Nobody talks anymore because he doesn't have that at all. I think he always likes it when the world talks about him. You think not? Actually, I think he is one of the big beneficiaries. This is how people who know the world describe and say it. Now it has approached China very seriously. Yes, they are not at all interested in the fact that he constantly fires new fun nuclear missiles into the air.

Why not, because, of course, you see that around China, South Korea and Japan, for example, pacifist Japan is waging this war. is really on because they are afraid of what I in pink will do next, what happens with partial products and all kinds of things and that is why they have no interest in Kim Jong-un doing rocket tests because the more rockets The South Koreans, the Japanese and others will feel threatened and, as a result, they will become increasingly aware and China does not want to be surrounded by people from states and singles who are actually hostile towards them and who at their Maybe they are starting a real spiral. of weaponry, so that is what is happening right now, which is really dangerous, do you mean that the time of freedom for the fools of North Korea is over?

I don't know if they will definitely benefit from it, no, so the Chinese have to keep them in a good situation. mood and I'll just say no if there's a problem. It's also very interesting to compare North Korea and Ukraine, so the lesson, even after a year of this war, is that if you have nuclear weapons, then don't make the mistake. Give them away, that's what Ukraine did and if you don't have any then make sure you get some. Well, that would be exactly the same story as in 1994, well, Ukraine would have given up its nuclear weapons.

If it hadn't given up its nuclear weapons back then, it would never have been seriously clear as a state. It's not like they thought about it for a long time, let's do it, we won't, no, that was it. a condition that Russia set and without it independence would not have been possible. It just has to be said, that's why it may be a historical error. There was no alternative, totally true, but the lesson was cynical. The lesson from this is that if you have nuclear weapons basically nothing can happen, that's what someone like Kim Jong-un relies on and that now leads to this spiral of improvement that I think can also be very, very dangerous.

Then there will be a new arms race in East Asia with a very uncertain outcome and the trigger is again what emerged in Ukraine a year ago in China and Sakreis, and if there are shocks like the brutal Russian war of aggression, you can imagine that in the Today's globalized world everything influences everything. We have often talked about what this means for Africa. The stock markets are skyrocketing at the moment, wheat prices are, which will trigger gigantic humanitarian catastrophes, which was what was always feared if the war was prolonged. time yes, then that will lead to famines and catastrophes in Africa.

We continue to provoke exactly that most grain ships we have also talked about that. If they don't leave Ukraine, don't leave them for Africa because there will be a gigantic catastrophe as a result of the Ukrainian war, so we could spend the whole episode just talking about the secondary consequences, yes, this exactly 24 I completely agree with you Richard Solo I expressly agree with one sentence Don't say that we are provoking that we did not provoke this war when you said before that the Chinese did not start this war, we did not start the war either. I didn't say that for God's sake.

No, but we are indirect. war party, we are not a direct war party, we support indirect war parties through Ukraine and in this sense we are part of this war, however, careful wording now will be no, exactly, exactly, I have thought of you so many times This week I always think about you, as you know, but if this week was particularly frequent and in two interesting places, the first place was with Lula Scholz on a visit to Brazil, it was really interesting to see how you remember this story. What this Chinese speaker said before, what do you think?

What happens if you just corner a big country like Russia like that? Yes, Lula, the Brazilian president, I mean, Scholz will go there, it's about raw materials, it's about lithium, yes, we need it Lithium will take an unimaginable direction in the coming decades, we have already talked about it several times, without imagine a catastrophe because lithium is obtained this way, yes, there is no other way at the moment, yes, when they see this salt being drained, so to speak, and the song they say to win that all the dust will cover the fields in winter and that it is very poisonous, etc., but that is a different topic, lithium is not a harmless topic, it is exactly not interesting at all, it will be like us again then.

We do this because, as far as I know, lithium is also available in Germany, but we will do it similarly to rare earths, as was also interesting in northern Sweden a few weeks ago. It was invented, I don't know, and there weren't many. But if you can stock up, by the way, there are plenty here too. We could extract them here too, not to that extent, but we could and since that is also a gigantic environmental disaster, similar to lithium, we say then leave it in Sweden. We have nothing left to do, but please on our phone. , of course, that's where we need it, that's right Lola, yes, Scholz actually wants the Brazilians, you know, they still have ammunition for the cheetah.

That's crazy, they have ammunition for that. We would like to have them. send to Ukraine and Dula doesn't say yes to mom, but the Chinese are a very, very important trade thread for Brazil and Lula also tried to put himself in a third-party position to say that we are really neutral and as truly neutral as we can. They provide the forum for negotiations, the problem is, remember, there used to be France and Germany as a forum with the Minsk Agreement and today we are clearly defined not only as morally humanitarian on the side of Ukraine but also militarily, i.e.

Why no longer? We can take on the role of mediator and we desperately search all the time. Yes, we have Erdogan he can do something like that. Besides, we won't have a really relaxed relationship and now Brazil doesn't offer anything. Yes, as a state on its own, but more or less as a host of negotiations or as a base, and that's a good thing, everything that is possible in terms of negotiations has to be taken advantage of at some point because the commitment is definitely. true, even if the stupid guy told you yes, but every war ends with negotiations and at some point, I mean, I think actually between us, I'm sure there will be negotiations all the time, so there will be no negotiations. , so to speak, that we are about to conclude some kind of peace, yes, but these are diplomatic channels, there are German ambassadors in Moscow and so on, where there is a constant exchange of ideas about these things, I can't imagine otherwise, yes These people are paid to do this, where are we very, very far from a solution?

And I know that as long as the Russians are there now. They haven't gotten what they wanted, they won. "I will not enter into negotiations, they will probably not even freeze the current status quo. That was always my hope before they had the military successes of the last few weeks, which were paid for in blood, but before they achieved them, I always had the opportunity. I hope we can at least freeze it for a while, but right now that's probably not even possible, so to be honest, I don't think we can get out of it at all right now.

By the way, I have a theory as to why. Lula the Scholz, you have to look at the number, the Brazilian foreign trade balance, 30 percent of Brazilian exports go to China and then we have exactly this issue again, by the way, I have Richard, maybe we can talk about it Ivan Kastev, who you really appreciate, you already met him on my show, it was a complete program, it was a great program, yes, mega, you have to look at the media library, really great also such a wonderful book that the light went out that. It's a great book in Bulgarian it's Bulgarian exactly intellectual let's let a great guy who says yes how does this war end who says um wars just die wars ducks at the polls the 2024 elections are in Russia, the 2024 elections are in the United States and he brazenly says that he could do something about this war.

I think so too, I think In fact, in America we still don't know who is against who and who is really against Trump or if there is someone else on both sides, so when I see someone in front of the microphone I always think to myself that there will not be another term and if Trump really survives all this and then, in the end, somehow ten times more. I can't imagine that a counted boxer will get back up, although with him you never know, you have to take everything into account , no, but he already said he would end the war quickly, that would probably be the case, yeah, so yeah, I guess he'll be in on the deal, yeah, I mean, getting into some kind of dirty deal.

I don't even want to imagine what it will look like, but I could imagine it. It could also be that the United States is tired by 2024. That's possible, but that would be bad Richard, have you thought about it because I didn't mean I wanted the next Trump deal, I wanted something different, I didn't want to. I want to push you into a weird corner here, I just wanted to say and that the sentence could be bad. You can also misunderstand. I just want to say, imagine for a second that we don't support Ukraine now or that Ukraine can't anymore. recruit people who are now over 60 years old, then we will run out of ammunition and personnel and simply attack the fighters.

It's all very, very bitter and them not losing this war is anything but a foregone conclusion, no matter how we support or the question is what the defeat would be, that can exactly so there are two conceivable defeats, which is a defeat The Russians they get what they don't have yet in Don and what they don't have yet in Saporisha and then we will somehow build a corresponding wall and say that we will continue to shoot at you and what if you don't guarantee us that you won't join NATO and now set a military upper limit.

Thebig variant is, of course, whether the Ukrainian army is really defeated. Yes, then you do what I suspect you didn't plan to do to that extent from the beginning, but then you stop by again. But that is also so. the question of whether that could be expected from the Russian population, because for a siege here that they cannot even imagine, the first time it was a half-false attack, it must be said, so half-hearted attacks are nothing more than my law in This case Americans, there was a strange conversation that did not move from the place Attacks Attacks on airports in the north of kyiv, but the hell in kyiv was the headline of the Bild newspaper every day, so when I think about it. the war cave in Dresden or if I think about a war cave in Tokyo and World War II, that hasn't been the case until now, but then it would be exactly I think I know, that's why I consider this this this, so to speak , this smaller victory is more likely than the big one, but you know, at the end of the day, what would be the consequence, so to speak, if the Russians defeat Ukraine, what do they then take over? then take control of a completely devastated country, completely destroyed all the time.

I can't see that, I can't even imagine that they can. Russia cannot rebuild Ukraine at all. So I can't imagine they can do that completely. Because the country is torn apart and then completely bled dry, the gross domestic product is reduced every year by 30% with the war economy, so many young people of the younger generation lost all the traumas, the damages of the war , the houses destroyed. Who wants to have that in the sense of the conqueror taking over, so to speak, then I think it's a little more likely without having a clue, nobody knows, we don't like to talk to ourselves, yes, I think that too, So anyway, that's not the case.

But it is probably more likely that the goal is not to capture all of Ukraine. That's a guess, yes, but I can't really imagine it. I just thought about it until the end if that were so. It happened and that was it. Obviously, at least at the beginning, the plan was that you would then take control of this battered country and then you would have a guerrilla war that would last for years and decades, Ukraine would continue to develop for more and more generations. more and more until the end, that would be catastrophic, I can't imagine that anyone would be so crazy that they would seriously think about it and think again about my siege on KEF with all that that means, I really don't think so. but I don't know, unfortunately yes, yes I know, no one knows, either, no, but it has to be done.

Yes, think about the scenarios, the big question on Richard's mind after this year is still the question of motive for me. I have often talked about it, you can often read that there are actually wars of this kind, I mean, we are talking about tanks again. When we were driving through the area we all thought it was something retro, that no one does that anymore. , but they are a very traditional warrior, nasty and brutal, sometimes with trench warfare like in World War I, and I had a very interesting encounter with them this week. Conversation again behind the scenes with Joe Käser, the first of Siemens, an interesting man, very sensible and said some intelligent things, has met with Putin several times, described in the program how, so to speak, he met Putin three times, 14 two times ago he met with Putin, who was very open. towards Germany, etc., who wanted to do business, who wanted to build his country, who then met with Putin again in 2014 and described it as a mistake shortly after the annexation of Crimea and then experienced a completely different Putin, someone who , first of all, I denied all this and then I blamed the best people for it anyway and the history of NATO and so on and then I met two people again in Sochi if I had it right in my head and he told me about this meeting again and said it was crazy.

It was a conversation that was scheduled to last 20 minutes, then it lasted over an hour and 50 minutes. That was his feeling, Putin just spouted particularly insulting verbal garbage about Merkel, about the West, about NATO, about NATO. There he met an incredibly angry man and he kept telling him President, if you have a problem with the German Chancellor, you have to talk to her, I'm completely the wrong person to contact, I'm here for Siemens and then he said there was this moment in the one who then told him that if you don't seriously build a structure here with us, Siemens, then we will kick you out and then pointed out that it was very interesting.

I didn't know that Siemens has a big and deep connection with Russia. I was jokingly informed that Werner von Siemens and I believe his brother Karl were in real trouble at one point, they were actually bankrupt when they founded the company in 185054, and it was the Russian Tsar who provided them with fresh money back then and ensured that Siemens continued to exist, so in the corporate culture of Siemens there is something, a deep connection, if you will, with Russia, and it was with those who are in charge of Siemens and have an overview of this historical dimension that in the beginning was a difficult step for them to leave Russia completely because culturally they were incredibly connected to them.

You have to say many, many centuries and it was very interesting that it was not clear to me, but I said we had to do it now, that would not be a question at all, but the anger of this man, this hatred towards the West, that really impressed him and the explanation for it. That would be amazing, since he explained in great detail that he says a Secret Service agent thinks exactly in the categories of loyalty and bicycles and that is basically Putin's psychological DNA and because NATO's expansion to the East was contrary to the promise more or less formulated in the 1997 NATO Russia Law, Putin felt betrayed afterwards, and said this. very clearly at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, in the sense that we really had an agreement, they did not fulfill it, we are becoming more and more isolated here and to the same extent you can say yes, even in parallel to With the increasing expansion of NATO, Putin's heart hardened, so to use this biblical formulation, yes, the heart of Pharaoh against the Israelites, so we have a parallel development, so to speak, with the expansion of the NATO, yes, friendly Putin is changing.

From the Bundestag to Putin we know today step by step and that's basically what happened psychologically and we also know all the people who always warned, so Helmut Schmidt first of all said: "Hey, keep Russian security interests in mind and we will be able to." It is not enough to do that and so on. NATO, in turn, has argued that if these shadows want to enter NATO then it is in the hands of sovereign right and free decision and if they feel threatened by Russia, yes, how justified that even now we would do it. They say it was very justified then, it wasn't so justified then we'll do it and these are the two streams of arguments that still oppose each other today, the ones that say yes, it was their right and, lo and behold, it was.

It's still good that they did it and the others say that if we hadn't even started this then we wouldn't have had all this fateful development that led to this devastating catastrophe in Ukraine and the truth is that that's what bothered me all the time, right? Do both stories coincide? What I have learned throughout this year is to listen to many stories, so as not to have to make a single interpretation of the whole thing when I am in Russia under threat. , the Russians don't see Germany in NATO, they see the US, they haven't forgotten the time when the blocs clashed, now they see themselves virtually surrounded by the enemy, so that's an understandable story, but no it's everything.

The story also includes that the Soviet Union was a colonial empire that had colonies right on their doorstep, they were all Russian colonies basically where they controlled everything from Moscow and they just had the goods right on their doorstep and as a colonial empire the Russians have them . This claim that it is actually us, that it belongs to us, they may not be fully functional like us, but they belong to us and if they then buy American weapons or do business with the US, etc., then Putin thinks treason. In this category and to the same extent that he felt humiliated by nature for the expansion to the same extent that he became a National Socialist National Revanist, great fantasies germinated about I don't know if so much only in his head at least in Russia and the the strongest opposition, if the term opposition is allowed in Russia, yes, these are the nationalists, they are, so to speak, the ultra-Russian AFD, these are the people who are most likely to put pressure on it, yes, and little by little Little has adopted many of his ideas and that is Putin, we live like this today and when I tell the story like this I always see it from two sides, I see, so to speak, what is what. is it from a Russian perspective and what is it, what is it from a Western perspective and why can't I say it's in what it's in what so oh, that's what happened without having to evaluate it, so I have a somewhat logical explanation explanation of how This violation of international law and this war of aggression arose, yes, I think it is about nature, I think it is all that.

To be honest, for hocus pocus and for propaganda, um, I have to remind you that sometimes they even wanted to join NATO themselves, um, but that's pulling NATO's teeth if you participate yourself anything else, the big one has a interesting theory that says there is a man in my eyes who is not even the youngest and now he is at a point at 70 years old where you have to say what have I really achieved, it is about the work of life Russia is economically complete in the abyss the zero transformation works the Russians today are poorer than ever and I don't think they have that at the moment but you look at them anyway no, but at least in the same newspaper so a post-communist country yes China is now a capitalist country with, so to speak, communist icing on top, somehow with a lucky star caught in that, which is a very capitalist state capitalism, yes to a large extent, but not really communist and if you look at this success story and then you look at the Putin's story at the same time, then it was the first five years, it is actually a success. history because you don't have 45% economic growth and then comes the great stagnation, then comes the breakup, just then a mafia type system takes over the whole country, so to speak, and people become obscenely rich in a way until that tonight they were 20% already before that, the honest system was already advertising pages there, yes, but a new system is emerging with Putin as a network like a spider in the web, yes, and before it was, so to speak, a Anarchist oligarchic system with tomorrow and hired killers. and now in the worst way, so you can say: Maybe the mafia rules and then the state mafia reacts.

Yes, it's well said, I'm just trying to get to that point. Not today, so Russians have a lot of Russians at night, 20% of Russians still don't have my bathroom in their apartment or in their house, just to talk of my low per capita income than people in Turkey, etc. So if you say that didn't work and if you have so much raw materials, so much oil, so much natural gas, then you're always going to have to wonder what the hell you really did with all of this. money, it's unimaginable that nothing has been achieved and, um, I think that's why someone like rude Def says that it's actually about national territory, the Russians now have 18% of Ukrainian territory, it's about industry , it's also about work, it's actually something else is quite big.

Village after village, the Russians are a dying people, they have too low a training rate, yes, and they are becoming more and more insignificant in quantitative terms. That's what millions in Ukraine wanted. but not the country, so that is the power of the thesis. I think you're right about the demographic factor and that refers to 2012, which is very interesting. In 2012, Russia passed a law prohibiting Americans from adopting white Russian children and it's really interesting because. I think it's an attempt to keep these kids from learning new ideas about something else. Learn about Western life, for example, which already happened in the 90s.

It wasn't until the Russians who became very rich in the 90s that they realized this. They sent their children to the bad, bad West. There they have a completely different life, a different form of sexuality and also here you knew the freedom that you had a completely different life, probably the problem existed, but this feeling describes it. in the most extreme form, which I think is very well formulated, this feeling that we have to stop the West from having Russian children, that we have to stop that, yes, and you wanted to, so to speak, feel. Right now, as a developing country, yes, children are being adopted from poor countries, yes, and the idea that the West is now taking children from Russia, we are putting them on the same level as African countries, I imagine the Russians. national pride is fierce contradicts exactly and this yes uh custom speaks of an identity panic says that it is about this breakup, so to speak, said that communism did not matter to the Russians,They had a particularly sensual relationship with them, yes, they loved that, that was their country and that was this Russian.

This Soviet empire is us, we are, exactly, and I had to think like that when I heard that about Dimitri Glukowski, who we both really like, who was now on our show again. and who once wrote this great text West and we where it says we knew that you live better we emulate you we learned the name of your brands by heart but for you westla and that was the feeling to this day we are second class citizens yes Well, and that's the same problem. There is a rapprochement between Wessis and Ossis, it cannot be great, of course, we largely had in the people of the West a strong sense of survival, exactly that.

The Soviet people are, so to speak, wired in the same way and that is an appearance and also old Russian clichés. Karl Marx once said that Russians actually only use pigeons to drink and rape women, so there is a saying similar to Karl Marx. , yes, that was, so to speak, the classic image of the Russian that has always existed in the West, primitive people, yes, and among themselves they destroyed the Russians very, very strongly, yes exactly the Lukowski principle back then, somehow, when Gorbachev realized it. the fall of the wall we were so delighted that we thought that all the walls were now also collapsing all the others yes and that describes So I think it is so good that the Iron Curtain was raised and two worlds, the almost black and white socialist and the colorful capitalist one, they looked at each other in amazement We knew you lived better but we had no idea how much better you lived and then you said wonder what happened to us suddenly, what happened that this enthusiasm turned into contempt, so to speak, and. now I hate and says we have a problem, we always have your technologies, we have your hamburgers, we have your way of life, but the phrase Attention, this was always given to us in a package with values ​​with an ideology with a way of life, that is, the feeling is there, it always comes with an instruction manual of how you would like to be and live now maybe totally interesting it's interesting I have Gorbachev's last book, which was published three or four years ago, I read it because I was absolutely curious to know how would rate Putin, yes, and it doesn't matter at all, it is completely known that they do not like each other on a human level, that is exactly what we saw when Gorbachev died and so on.

So, whoever gave half a reference to Putin because from the point of view Russian Gorbachev is the great traitor, the one who does everything so that the Union in the West has revealed it, no, that is basically the one who does that to Gorbachev. but interestingly enough, the criticism that Putin has always expressed in the past is the best, the same also applies to our political security interests, you just dismissed it, you know, NATO expansion and I don't think it's because of nonsense and the rest. The question is not whether, from our point of view, eastward expansion for Russia is a real military danger.

We would deny it. The question is whether the Russians see it the same way, with a history that was invaded by Napoleon. It was invaded by the Germans in World War I and again in World War II. They see it differently and if you mean taking security policy interests into account, then that means at least understanding what motivates the other side. You have to be honest and say it. We didn't put much effort into it. Yes, you're right, you know this book by Tim Marshall about the power of geography that starts exactly with this, which is why I have to think about what you just said for the children's chapter.

Russia because I Putin is a religious person according to everything you hear and I think he sometimes secretly prays that in Ukraine the mountains are finally growing, what I mean is that everyone always came through this northern European plain through Ukraine and they just attacked. and he invaded them, that's right and that is a border that is so long that it can hardly be defended conventionally and since we now have an idea of ​​​​the solar state in which the Russian army is, at least for a country that I see . as a great military power, the second strongest in the world, and now we see how fragile everything is, etc., then you can understand somewhere that, in some way, they have always had this feeling of unease, only for them not to misunderstand us here. , the fact that Russian security interests have been seriously disrupted, that Russian sensitivities have not been taken into account, none of this justifies the crime of February 24, true, true, it explains everything to a certain extent, but the another narrative is that Putin has changed, yes, the former secret service man who feels a betrayal here, yes, the Soviet Union as a colonial empire, yes, that Ukrainians have never been granted serious nation-state status in no moment, only on paper, but not in this their ideology, it is fine and I think the best way to understand this conflict is that you do not say A or B yes, so not according to the motto that it was the evil West with its natural expansion o To say that nationality is completely crazy, crazy but rather to understand this process of mutual promotion I think is an adequate explanation and when I see all the books that have been published recently that only tell one side of the story, I always think.

I think to myself why don't we tell the full story. Yes, the February 24 war of aggression is still as big a crime as it was before because I understand how it came about. No excuses. That is. The right point, after how prepared I was. Yes, it is still barbarism. And just a little final observation because at the beginning we talked a lot about China. It's also incredibly stupid to fight these kinds of wars. It's incredibly stupid when you're the leader of a country. Look at the Chinese and how long it's been since they did it. the last war that was fought and all the countries in the world that don't, these are the countries, there are statistics about them too, these are the ones that are prospering, these are the countries that are growing, wars are destroying countries, including those who start and fight war and who marry and win wartime, the Second World War has the macabre ending that after that Germany becomes an economic world, yes, and the victorious Great Britain lost its status as a power world.

In the end, the real one. The winner of the Second World War was Germany, despite the fact that they were, so to speak, the greatest crimes committed up to that time by humanity and despite the fact that it lost this war in all areas, so it is winning wars and losing wars. , that's an interesting chapter in itself, absolutely how many victories there are at the end, but kurhos is right, if later, after that Greek general there. In an interesting parallel to today, there was a purus who was far superior militarily to the Romans, who mastered the entire Greek art of war, who wanted to follow the Romans at that time, who did not master it, he started from up, he defeated the Romans again and again, he always won and won again and at some point he had no more people and then, after winning without exception, he was able to say goodbye to southern Italy and return to Greece.

He had lost, he had won to the death, that's why the famous man had to say something like that. Victoria, yes, and I lost exactly, Richard, that was exciting, thank you very much for this exchange and, um, yes, I think it will stay with us as a topic for a long time. He thanked you very, very, very intensely and inspired to talk to you and then solution. I can do it up to this point, just give something back and I just hope that we manage to include as many interesting points of view as possible and if we manage to not think about any of the categories when we try to figure out what is currently being done. is presented in the world theater, then we are on the right side of things.

With that in mind, thank you, goodbye, a production of m hoch 2 and Pot Stars at OMR on behalf of ZDF.