
one interview - (from my country)
What do you think of Trump’s speech in Congress?
“A lot of self-praise and announcements of big changes. It all starts with him. So from the moment he took power, everything before that was a complete disaster. Constant standing ovations like the Soviet leaders used to have. And then a series of incredible announcements that some people find truly terrifying. The idea that he will have Greenland, one way or another, that he has to take over Panama. Announcements of tariffs on everyone and everyone. That doesn’t bode well.”
Is anyone on par with all of that?
Well, I was amazed by the trends from the Republican Party itself, first of all the idea of making his birthday a national holiday, then allowing him an unconstitutional third term, then having his image carved next to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. And my people, who is leading this. Are we going to have a relay race and parades there soon?
What do you think about the development of the situation with Ukraine? Yesterday he said he was suspending delivery, now it seems that intelligence is being stopped. Is America still an ally of Ukraine at all?
I would rather say that America is now waging war against Ukraine to the last Russian. Until now, we had the thesis that the Americans are waging war against Russia to the last Ukrainian, but in this way we can only conclude that America is waging war against Ukraine to the last Russian using Russian help.
So, the whole concept of stopping the war, as he imagined it, is to put pressure on the weaker side to give in, capitulate, or as the late Đuro Utješanović once humorously put it, ‘if no one defended himself who was attacked, there would be no war’. But that is not the way international politics is conducted. So what are the principles and what do you stand behind? If force is your only principle, then it does not bode well for the whole world.
How would you comment on the meeting between Zelenski and Trump in the Oval Office? Was Zelenski ambushed?
That was my first impression, actually, that Don Vito Corleone was trying to collect a racket from the owner of a pizzeria that was burned down, and the pizzeria was burned down by a rival mafia clan and now the owner of the pizzeria, Zelensky, explains to Don Vito Corleone that the old man doesn’t have to pay the racket if he doesn’t protect me, and this one says no, no, you still have to pay the racket for what we’ve protected so far.
He tells me that you protected me when my pizzeria was burned down. So, this level of discussion, where everyone owes someone something, leads to absurdity. And what if Zelensky asked the question of who will compensate me for the seized nuclear arsenal of 1900 nuclear warheads of the Tupolev strategic bombers.
The medium-range missiles that are, but they are for some 150 billion euros that they had to give to the Russians under the threat of American sanctions. Who will compensate me for the war damage and the destroyed cities because you didn’t send the aid that you had to send on time. So, we could go on and on. In this way, and later, Trump’s accusations of European colleagues that we are not helping the American war effort enough can be put in a completely different way. Who will reimburse the costs of fighting in the American wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan?
Putin is suddenly now a good man who is in some war, no one knows how or why. The war began with Putin’s attack on Ukraine, a brutal attack and the destruction of everything and anything that was in his path. And now you are telling Zelensky in the Oval Office that you know the war is terrible, that is completely bizarre.
Is this actually some strategy to not criticize Putin, so that it will be better to negotiate with him?
Behind it all are two bizarre ideas. The first is Trump’s obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize, which has been going on since 2017, and the second is the idea that rapprochement with Putin can get Putin on America’s side in a future conflict with China, forgetting that Putin is so indebted that this cannot happen. After all, when you draw a line from China’s western border northward, you have 1.4 billion Chinese people down there and 20 million Russians up there.