Translated material
Bildspoperation
Why Putin decided to directly turn to the Germans and why he jerked the facts
During an interview with Vladimir Putin, BILD to journalists, Sochi, January 5, 2016
One day in early April 1994, NATO Secretary General, German Manfred Werner, found the strength to get out of bed in his house in Aachen, in the west of Germany, and went to Brussels, where a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (CAS), the main governing organ of the Alliance, was planned on that day. Many influential NATO members believed that the bloc should not interfere in the war in Bosnia, from which the civilian population suffered more and more, because it was originally created for collective defense from the threat from the East. Werner adhered to the opposite point of view: he must, moreover, immediately. Werner tormented cancer, he has already lost almost 20 kg of weight. When he, accompanied by the attending physician, appeared in the SAS meetings, with intravenous nutritional tubes, visible from under the collar of the shirt, some referents covered his face with their hands, unable to restrain tears. Four months later, in August 1994, 59-year-old Werner died. But his trip to Brussels, contrary to the disease, with the last forces, became one of the most memorable episodes in the history of NATO. He managed to push his decision: from now on, local operations to maintain the world, coupled with skillful diplomacy, should become the sphere of NATO competence. Any foci of instability in Europe is a zone of its responsibility. It was Werner, deeply shocked by the war in Yugoslavia, who developed the concept of NATO promotion to the east. And not at all in order to be closer to the Russian borders and threaten the Russians from there. He was sure: gradually involving the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in his orbit, where all decisions are made on the basis of consensus, NATO was insured by the continent from the Yugoslav relapses, from all Milosevichs, Mladichs of different colors and shades. Actually, this was the political heritage of Werner, possibly the most charismatic Secretary General of NATO in his entire history.
Did the general secretary of NATO actually spoke
What did Putin attribute to him? At Werner himself
Now you will not ask
After more than 20 years, January 5, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin subjected this to a verbal revision. In an interview with the Springerian Bild (Hamburg), Putin suddenly recalled Verner: “After the Berlin Wall was in, they said that NATO would not expand east. This was said by the then general secretary of NATO, a citizen of the federal republic, Mr. Werner, as far as I remember. "
The former and NATO
In general, the starting interview of the year by the Western European tabloid - for the leader of the country, who, by his mercy in the international isolation, was immersed, by his mercy, in the crisis, in essence, a good idea: which is not a way to reach the hearts of at least 10 million ordinary Germans that the Bild is regularly read - since the German political elite is already in the way. Crimea appeared “polite people”, closed her hearts from the Kremlin’s owners to the castle. And at the same time, give intelligible honest explanations to their fellow citizens: where we stand, where we go.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, but an insurmounted by the fault of NATO split Europe - Putin from the first minutes of the interview decided to play the historical feelings of the Germans. Did the general secretary of NATO actually say what Putin attributed to him? You won’t ask Werner himself. The ex-head of the NATO Military Committee, also German, Klaus Naumann, in a conversation with the author of these lines six years ago, assured that no one had ever given no promises and assurances about non-expanding the Alliance, nor oral or written. One way or another, the war in Bosnia, which prompted Werner to rethink NATO's concept, did not begin in 1990,
And in the spring of 1992. And from that moment he could definitely not say anything like this. Contrary to Putin's ideas, no one then thought to move the invisible walls to the east. Everyone thought about what to do with the decaying Yugoslavia, with ethnic purges and Miloshevich’s disadvantageous dream of “Great Serbia”.
Meanwhile, for Putin “NATO Easting to the East” is still a key element of the threat of Russia from outside. He repeats it like a mantra, from time to time. Following him are lower ranks. True, it did not occur to the Bilda to journalists to notice Putin that he created this “threat” himself. Because until 2014, NATO, as it turned out, had no headquarters in the territory of the new member countries, nor tactical military units, nor armored vehicles-only air patrolling borders and political declarations. Now, after Ukraine and Crimea, there is everything.
Putin, who did not fail to notice in an interview that he still considers himself young, remained in 1990, when Germany became one and his beloved Dresden suddenly found himself in the territory of Germany.
Here is our president-a clear homework-reveals to German journalists the details of negotiations in February 1990 in Moscow of the delegation of the Social Democrats of the Federal Republic of Germany with the head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee Valentin Falin. The delegation has been Egon Bar, well familiar to the Soviet nomenclature since the time of Willy Brandt and Karsten Foygt. Bara Putin mentions the Patriarch of European Politics nine times. Because the “old smart German” bar allegedly proposed to create a new block in Europe instead of NATO (in fact, Bar questioned the feasibility of membership in the united Germany in NATO) and thereby build a new architecture of Euro -security, and Europe did not listen to it, as a result, we all have what we have: NATO is getting closer to the Russian borders. Partaygenosse Bara - Foygt - Putin mentions only once, although it was Foygt that headed that delegation. Why? Is it not because - and this is already known - that the FOIGT, like many others in the SDPG, adhered to a different point of view on the problem of European security.
I wonder who told Putin that this “home blank” could work? What was the calculation for? What do the Germans do not know who the bar really was? What exactly did he still support from the German side the “secret channel” of communication with the Kremlin, established by the KGB, on behalf of Andropov, was considered a festony negotiator in the CPSU Central Committee, and his views were largely formed during his sincere-this must be admitted-friendship with Falin?
Arguments from the evil one
Be that as it may, the appeal to the "old smart German" Bar will not help Putin restore trust in the West. The interview “Bild” showed his unwillingness to at least move from the previous, also introduced by propaganda attitudes. In the best case, these installations are clothed in the form of crawling and rhetorical fraud.
For example, Putin reproaches the Americans that they continue to create their own pro, despite the agreements on the nuclear program of Iran, to which the Americans previously referred to the main incentive motive to develop the entire system. But after all, Russia previously not so much stood up for Iran, how much opposed the creation of the “third positional area of the pro” - the placement of elements of the American system in Poland and the Czech Republic. President Obama canceled these plans of the Bushevsky administration. And what - Russia did not notice this?
From left to right: Henry Kissinger, Egon Bar and Valentin Falin, Germany, 1993
Putin does not notice the crimes of the regime of Bashar al -Assad in Syria. Assad is forced to fight those who “came to him with weapons in their hands,” the president says. But those residents of Homs and Deraa who came out in 2011
At the demonstration, they stumbled upon the bullets of the Assad soldiers, after which Syria began to crawl into a large-scale conflict, they were certainly without weapons ...
Another important and indicative episode of the interview is Crimea. Putin justifies his alienation from Ukraine by the right of nations to self -determination, which the West used to apply to Kosovo: if Kosovars have such a right, then why, they say, the inhabitants of Crimea - not?
But does the President of Russia do not know that, in contrast to the right to self-determination for the people who passed the war and ethnic cleaning, the same right for the population of the individual territory is not provided for by the UN Charter-no one oppressed the Russians in the Crimea, and the Crimean referendum, which was praised by Putin, is not provided for by both constitutions-both Ukraine and Russia. Not to mention the fact that the reference to the Kosovo precedent in the mouths of our president is insolvent in itself: after all, many remember how Putin personally criticized the decision of the UN International Court in Kosovo.
Link to Kosovo precedent in our lips
The president is insolvent in itself:
After all, many remember how Putin personally
Criticized the decision of the international
UN vessels in Kosovo
The interpretation of the Minsk agreements is no less elegant. Putin convinces the interlocutors that the execution of the key point - about the transfer of control over the border with Russia - should occur subject to Kiev constitutional reform by the end of 2015, which has not been done: “Look, we have everything marked,” the president, who has prepared, who seemed to interview him, offers reporters. What is interesting there? After all, the Minsk agreements are not a secret for seven seals. The beginning of the restoration of Ukrainian control over the border in them is not linked to the constitutional reform, but with local elections in "individual regions of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions." And they are still outlined, respectively, for February (LPR) and March (DPR). And there, how Putin will decide ...
Politics is a dirty business, it is customary to say what is currently convenient. But when Putin insists that not a single person died as a result of the weaning of Crimea ... "Not one!" - exclaimed the president for a boring conviction. About the Ukrainian ensign Sergei Kokurin, who died in Simferopol during the assault on the Crimean “militias” under the combat cover of “polite people” of the 13th photogrammetric center of the main department of the APU, apparently none of the assistants reminded ...
Dashing numbers
The president continues to live in its world that the country is sliding in its world, operates only with the only facts and numbers to him, says eloquently the “economic part” of the interview says. The fall in GDP by 3.8 %, inflation growth of up to 12.7 % is, of course, a lot, but “we have a positive balance of foreign trade, and for the first time in many years the volume of export of products with high added value has increased significantly,” the president explains to the Germans. And the fact that the income from the sale of oil went down is even good - “... when the income from them (oil -eater) is high, then the destruction of their own development occurs, especially in high -tech industries.” Everything is fine in theory, but only where are they, these high -tech industries? Where is at least their shadow?
Finally, according to Putin, Russia has approximately 340 billion gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank plus two reserve government funds of $ 70 and $ 80 billion each. Knowledgeable people talk about something else: there is no “plus”, the entire financial pillow is already filled with reserves from these two funds, that is, Putin accidentally or intentionally mistaken in $ 150 billion.
Putin's errors of the 10 millionth audience "Bild", of course, is a side effect. Chancellor Merkel and other European and world leaders by and large. But we live with it. And in the 2016 coming, which, judging by the exchange rate of the ruble and price tags in stores, and most importantly, the rhetoric of our president, does not promise the country anything good. And, apparently, further.
*Photo: Peter Kneffel/AFP*