Big politics thrive on big pictures. When Michael Kretschmer, Prime Minister of Saxony, sat down on an old sofa in April 2021 and spoke to Vladimir Putin through the handset of a dial phone that was at least as old, the mockery was not long in coming. Because the sofa, telephone and the Prime Minister were not in Dresden, but in Moscow. Kretschmer traveled there specifically to maintain dialogue with the Kremlin. Only: Its doors did not open for Kretschmer. He made the call on the premises of the German embassy.
One can now call it persistent that a good one and a half years later and a war of aggression against Ukraine waged by Russia in violation of international law, he was sticking to his idea of dialogue. It is his “deep conviction” that “we need negotiations”.
The outgoing Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk has invited the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, to visit Ukraine. “You are playing into Putin’s hands with your absurd rhetoric about freezing the war,” Melnyk said.
It is more obvious to call this attitude naive. Because of course there are attempts to reach a negotiated solution with Russia in order to end the war. The Ukrainian government team led by Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly submitted proposals for such talks. So far, however, no idea has come from Moscow that could seriously be described as a basis for discussion.
Vladimir Putin and his apparatus rule openly in a totalitarian manner. The question is not whether Europe should seek a negotiated solution (of course it should), the question is whether Russia is a suitable counterpart. It is utterly absurd to sit down at a negotiating table with a warring faction that, very fundamentally, does not recognize a nation’s right to exist. Its propagandists just this week declared Germany a legitimate target for Russian missiles and compared Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Hitler.
None of this indicates that the Russian side is showing signs of relaxation and a willingness to negotiate. The most important question is whether the West is up to this authoritarian challenge. If the West fails, that is an invitation to the regimes of this world: You have nothing to fear from us. And that would be the worst result ever.
