Khrustjovs oldebarn er professor i strategiske studier og intervjues. Jeg lærer at Ukraina betyr "på kanten, "on the edge"). Hun ser for seg at Putin er i gang med Stalins utrensking som begynte i 1937, det er en dimensjon vi ikke har sett vektlagt i større grad.
Given your descriptions of Putin—his nationalism, his militancy—how should people be thinking about ways to end this conflict, or off-ramps for him?
I think that this time is gone, but until February 22nd, there was a possibility, which unfortunately wasn’t taken, because now [Volodymyr] Zelensky has said, We’re less interested in nato. We would like to be more part of the European Union.
We would like to be neutral.
All this could have been done by February 22nd. But, at that time, everybody was too much dug in to give the Russians an off-ramp. I firmly believe that that moment was there. What I know from, for example, the Cuban missile crisis—of which, of course, Khrushchev was a major participant—is that, you think you’re going to push and your opponent is going to blink. Then you push and your opponent doesn’t blink. What do you do with that?
It seems to me that the United States was pushing and nato was pushing and Putin wasn't blinking. Then Putin himself was pushing and America wasn’t blinking, and so they got to this point. I don’t know if there is any off-ramp anymore, because it does seem that, at this point, Putin feels like he really has nothing to lose, except for going further and going deeper.
I’m sure you know that all they do is say it’s all going according to plan and it’s all hunky-dory in Ukraine,
but in Russia itself, the environment is really nearing 1937 with the Great Purges, where you cannot say anything. You cannot think anything. People are just walking the streets and they’re stopped by police. I know people who have been stopped randomly and asked to show their phones and had their messages searched. The last time I was in Moscow, in January, you wouldn’t even imagine anything like that. There were police, but you couldn’t imagine anything like that. In this sense, it seems to me that it’s just really getting into an absolute dictatorial state in which they feel that they have to pull their own Iron Curtain on themselves.
I don’t really know if there is an off-ramp, except just one last thing, maybe Xi Jinping, because Putin has to rely on Xi Jinping to somehow survive. But it’s not in the Chinese interest to stop this conflict for Putin, because, of course, Xi Jinping is having a great time right now because everybody is looking at him. Everybody wants his help.
The great-granddaughter of Stalin’s successor discusses Ukrainian identity and the lingering wounds of the Cold War.
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