On Saturday afternoon, former Prime Minister and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker participated in a roundtable discussion on the war in Ukraine alongside historian Inna Ganschow and the head of the Luxembourgish army, General Steve Thull, on RTL Radio.
“We were generally naïve,” Juncker acknowledged, stating that he is “disappointed” in Vladimir Putin, with whom he had many discussions over the past decades. The former Prime Minister and President of the European Commission explained that “this is not the Putin I have come to know in over 20 years”. However, the West also made mistakes, Juncker said.
“You only need one idiot to start a war but 50 geniuses to de-escalate a conflict,” Juncker underlined, before adding that there are “not that many geniuses”. Luxembourg’s former Prime Minister explained that “all of us” did not think that Putin would attack Ukraine in the way he did.
Both Juncker and the head of Luxembourg’s armed forces, General Steve Thull, think that there is no need to worry about an attack on a NATO country. Both men also agree that there is no real risk of a nuclear escalation of the conflict.
Historian Inna Ganschow was born in the Soviet Union, where she also grew up. She later emigrated to Germany and became a German citizen. Today, she lives in the Grand Duchy and is a professor at the University of Luxembourg. She described the Russian community in Luxembourg as “diverse and mixed group” of Russian-speaking people. According to Ganschow, the community is divided on the issue of Ukraine, but the large majority agree that war should have been avoided.
Ganschow also warned against assuming that people in Russia have the same notions of “resistance” or “freedom of speech” as Western nations have. Protesting leads with increasing frequency to imprisonment, she explained, which is why the historian thinks it is unlikely that “100,000 demonstrators” will take to the streets.
Regarding information about the war in Russia, Ganschow pointed out that “alternative points of view” were already rare in Russian media before the conflict started. In addition, Ganschow explained that Russian society has become “very passive” when it comes to politics. A lot of people “distrust everyone” and are “not interested” in political affairs, she said.
Ganschow and Juncker agreed that the West had misunderstood or remained ignorant of certain aspects of Russian culture. While both repeatedly stressed that none of this justifies a war in Ukraine, Ganschow pointed out that this is also among the key reasons why a not insignificant part of the Russian population is not fundamentally opposed to some of the ideological arguments of their President.
General Thull assumes that it is Putin’s goal to annex all of Ukraine. He personally thinks that the Russian army has falsely assessed the situation. The Ukrainian people are resilient and willing to fight, the head of Luxembourg’s army stated.
However, General Thull also acknowledged that “the Russians are stronger”. For this reason, he thinks that it would have been better to send military equipment to Ukraine earlier. At the same time, General Thull stressed that he generally is against military build-ups.
While NATO will not intervene directly in this conflict, member states will invest in military build-ups as the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and other countries are “scared”, the general said.
While Juncker agreed that NATO has to show willingness to defend itself, he expressed his regret over the fact that Europe is falling into a “cycle of military build-ups”, which the former President of the European Commission described as “not what our continent needs”. Instead, Juncker thinks that negotiations about disarmament should take priority.
Juncker thinks that it may well be that Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, adding that Putin himself told him a long time ago that the implosion of the USSR had been “the biggest disaster of the post-war era” in his eyes.
Regarding the exclusion of Russian athletes, artists, and other members of the civil society, both Ganschow and Juncker expressed their doubts over the effectiveness of such measures. Ganschow warned against cutting off the dialogue with all parts of Russian society, with Juncker fearing that such measures may increase the divide between Russia and Europe.
“We must not make the mistake of blaming this war on all Russians,” Juncker stressed, adding that by taking such a stance, Europeans might actually play into the hands of the Russian government.
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