6 May 2024
“Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory”: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants
The Kremlin adviser explains how Russia views the war in Ukraine and the fate of liberalism.
By Bruno Maçães
A former presidential adviser to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Sergey Karaganov is honorary chair of the Moscow think tank the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy. He is associated with a number of key ideas in Russian foreign policy, from the so-called Karaganov doctrine on the rights of ethnic Russians living abroad to the principle of “constructive destruction”, also known as the “Putin doctrine”. Karaganov is close to both Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and he formulated many of the ideas that led to the war in Ukraine – though he has also expressed disagreement with the idea of a long-term occupation of the country.
In 2021, Russia’s foreign policy seems to have entered a new stage. Let us call it the “constructive destruction” of the previous model of relations with the West. Elements of this policy kept piling up for some fifteen years, approximately since Vladimir Putin’s well-known speech in Munich in 2007. But residual attempts to fit into the Western system with a defensive approach still prevailed in politics and rhetoric.
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2024/05/russia-cannot-afford-lose-need-victory-sergey-karaganov-what-putin-wants |
Moscow and Kyiv has each accused the other of committing war crimes in the same episode — the Russians accusing Ukraine’s forces of “mercilessly shooting unarmed Russian P.O.W.s,” and Ukraine’s commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, saying Russian soldiers had opened fire during the act of surrendering.
“We are aware of the videos, and we are looking into them,” Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Human Rights Office, told Reuters on Friday. “Allegations of summary executions of people hors de combat should be promptly, fully and effectively investigated, and any perpetrators held to account.” Under international law, the French term “hors de combat” refers to people who are “outside of combat” because of their surrender, being unarmed, unconscious or otherwise unable to defend themselves.
|
Putin: What else is done with those who allow themselves to wipe their feet?
"Как еще поступают с теми, кто позволяет вытирать о себя ноги?"
The right translation:
“Today, the EU’s main partner, the US, is pursuing policies leading directly to the de-industrialization of Europe. They even try to complain about that to their American overlord. Sometimes even with resentment they ask ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ I want to ask: ‘What did you expect?’ What else happens to those who allow feet to be wiped on them?” Putin said. |
Schlaraffenland (German) is a fictional land in German fairy tales inhabited by lazy people, literally the land of lazy monkeys, from (Middle Upper German) sluraff – lazy, Affe – monkey and Land – earth.
It is described as a country where everything is in abundance – a land with milky rivers and jelly banks, in which animals run and fly fried, houses are made of gingerbread, instead of stones there is cheese everywhere. Pleasure is the virtue of the inhabitants of the country, and hard work - a drawback. |
Poitín translates as "small pot" in Irish and is pronounced as "pot-cheen". The super-strength spirit gets its name from the copper pots where it was traditionally distilled as a homemade Irish moonshine – an illicit category of alcohol associated with bootlegging. Ironically, the spirit was first created in convents and monasteries some 1,500 years ago.
Throughout the 16th and 17th Centuries, almost every sizeable farm had its own personal distillery, and by 1661, poitín became so endemic that it was deemed illegal by the British Crown in an attempt to control its untaxable spread. It wouldn't be re-legalised until 1997, but despite the legislation, people have continued to secretly distil poitín in hidden stills to avoid taxation. The drink is now a symbol of Irish culture and determination, and when celebrating St Patrick's Day, perhaps no other drink better encapsulates Ireland's heritage and identity than this ancient spirit.
|
Coping with Russia will demand a long-term strategy, one that echoes containment, which guided the United States through the Cold War, or what President John F. Kennedy called a “long, twilight struggle” against the Soviet Union.
More than 75 years have passed since the diplomat George Kennan first formulated that strategy in his famous “Long Telegram” from Moscow and then in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym “X.” In his 1947 article, Kennan described containment as a political strategy reinforced by “the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.” The goal was to avoid direct conflict with the Soviet Union while halting the spread of Soviet power.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/americas-new-twilight-struggle-russia
Чтобы справиться с такой Россией, потребуется долгосрочная стратегия сдерживания вроде той, что Соединенные Штаты придерживались в период холодной войны или того, что президент Джон Кеннеди называл "долгой сумеречной борьбой" с Советским Союзом.
|
PUSSY CAN SIT BY
THE FIRE AND SING
Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, Pussy can climb a tree, Or play with a silly old cork and string To 'muse herself, not me. But I like Binkie my dog, because He knows how to behave; So, Binkie's the same as the First Friend was, And I am the Man in the Cave.
Pussy will play man-Friday till It's time to wet her paw And make her walk on the window-sill (For the footprint Crusoe saw); Then she fluffles her tail and mews, And scratches and won't attend. But Binkie will play whatever I choose, And he is my true First Friend!
Pussy will rub my knees with her head Pretending she loves me hard; But the very minute I go to my bed Pussy runs out in the yard, And there she stays till the morning-light; So I know it is only pretend; But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night, And he is my Firstest Friend!
РЕДЬЯРД КИПЛИНГ «КОШКА ЧУДЕСНО ПОЁТ У ОГНЯ...»
Кошка чудесно поёт у огня, Лазит на дерево ловко, Ловит и рвёт, догоняя меня, Пробку с продетой верёвкой.
Всё же с тобою мы делим досуг, Бинки, послушный и верный, Бинки, мой старый, испытанный друг, Правнук собаки пещерной.
Если, набрав из-под крана воды, Лапы намочите кошке (Чтобы потом обнаружить следы Диких зверей на дорожке),
Кошка, царапаясь, рвётся из рук, Фыркает, воет, мяучит. Бинки — мой верный, испытанный друг, Дружба ему не наскучит.
Вечером кошка, как ласковый зверь, Трётся о ваши колени. Только вы ляжете, кошка за дверь, Мчится, считая ступени.
Кошка по крышам гуляет всю ночь, Бинки мне верен и спящий: Он под кроватью храпит во всю мочь — Значит, он друг настоящий!
Перевод С.Маршака
|
Nuland and O’Brien’s statements are the Beltway equivalent of happy bedtime stories the establishment tells itself in order to keep the wolves of reality, conscience, and failure from the door. They are highly improbable accounts of the current situation on the ground where, according to former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine has suffered 500,000 dead in its war with Russia, losing “30,000 people a month in the war as killed and seriously wounded.” |
By the time I was there doing research for my first book, The Grace Effect, which is, in a sense, a history of Ukraine, there was a growing desire among many Ukrainians, some 16 percent, to reunite with Russia. Sixteen percent isn’t a majority, but it isn’t nothing, and it reflected the ideological fractures within this historically unstable region. My own interpreter on one of these visits, a Ukrainian, talked incessantly of his admiration for Stalin. He was not an anomaly at that time. |
Shevchenko has never been known for clarity, as Anna Reid convincingly shows in her "Borderland".
Shevchenko’s poems are an odd mixture of pastoralism, xenophobia and self-hatred punctuated by hysterical shout-outs against the treachery of Ukrainians who were quite satisfied to be the slaves of Moscow and the riff-raff of Warsaw. Shevchenko over and over cast scorn on the slavish habit of his countrymen to give way to pressure without raising much ado. As the shameful Ukrainian proverb says, “My hut is far from the fray, I don’t know anything”.
= "Моя хата з краю, ничого не знаю" |
|
