Putin erklärt die Situation mit der Ukraine
Putin explains the situation with Ukraine https://wp.me/paI27O-5uZ
Putin erklärt aus seiner Sicht bei einer Pressekonferenz die Situation mit der Ukraine: hochinteressant!
https://anti-spiegel.ru/2024/putin-im-o-ton-ueber-entscheidungen-der-bundesregierung/
And here is the translation into English with deepl.com
Nord Stream and bombardment of Russia
Putin in an original soundbite about the German government’s decisions
Russian President Putin spoke to the international press for three hours. The head of the German dpa asked Putin a question about the German government’s policy, to which Putin gave a very detailed answer.
by Anti-Spiegel
7 June 2024 08:00
Russian President Putin spent three hours answering questions from 15 representatives of international news agencies, including the German dpa and leading agencies from the UK, France and the USA. I will be translating what I consider to be the most interesting questions and answers over the next few days. Incidentally, this event is already remarkable because it is unthinkable that Biden (or Scholz, Macron, etc.) would spend three hours answering questions from international news agencies, including Russian, Chinese, Syrian, Iranian and so on.
Here I translate the question from the German dpa and Putin’s answer from the press briefing.
Start of the translation:
Moderator: Now a country has the floor towards which you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, will probably never adopt an indifferent attitude – Germany. We have with us the head of the German Press Agency, Martin Romanczyk. Martin Romanczyk knows our country at first hand, by the way, because he worked as a DPA correspondent in Moscow in the 1990s. Please, Mr Romanczyk, your question.
Romanczyk: Good evening, Mr President, good evening, everyone!
Chancellor Scholz has declared his willingness to supply weapons to Ukraine. Please tell me, if Scholz changes his mind, how would you assess that? And what do you think will happen to Germany? Did you somehow warn, admonish or threaten the Chancellor when he made the decision to supply weapons to Ukraine?
Putin: What makes you think that we are threatening anyone? We don’t threaten anyone, especially not the head of another state. That’s not a good tone.
We have our own position on certain issues. We know the position of the European states, including Germany, on the events in Ukraine.
Everyone believes that Russia started the war in Ukraine. But nobody, I would like to emphasise this, nobody in the West, nobody in Europe wants to remember how this tragedy began. It began with the coup d’état in Ukraine, the unconstitutional coup d’état. That was the beginning of the war.
But is Russia to blame for this coup d’état? Have those who are trying to put the blame on Russia today forgotten that the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France came to Kiev and signed the document on the settlement of the internal political crisis in order to guarantee that the crisis would be brought to a peaceful and constitutional end?
People in Europe, including Germany, would rather not remember this. And if they do, the question arises: why did the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany and the other signatories of this document not demand that the putschists in Ukraine return to the constitutional legal framework? Why did they not fulfil their obligations as guarantors of the agreements between the opposition and the government of the time? They are to blame for what happened, together with the forces in the USA that provoked the unconstitutional seizure of power.
Is it not known what followed? What followed was the decision of the inhabitants of Crimea to secede from Ukraine. What followed was the decision of the inhabitants of Donbass to disobey those who carried out the coup in Kiev. That was the beginning of this conflict.
And then Russia made every effort to find a formula for a peaceful settlement, and in 2015 the so-called Minsk Agreement was signed in Minsk, which, incidentally, was constituted by a decision of the United Nations Security Council. This is a document that should have been implemented.
No, they decided to solve the problem with weapons. They started using artillery, tanks and aeroplanes against the civilian population in south-eastern Ukraine. For some reason, neither in Germany nor in the other European countries or in the USA – nobody, I repeat, nobody – wants to remember this. Very well.
We facilitated the signing of the Minsk Agreement, but as it turned out, nobody wanted to implement it. Both the former German Chancellor and the former French President have publicly stated this.
Dear Mr Romanczyk, how are we to understand this? They have publicly said that they did not want to implement the Minsk Agreement, but that they only signed it in order to arm Ukraine and create conditions for the continuation of hostilities. We were simply led around by the nose. Is that not the case? How else can you explain what has happened?
We have been trying to find a peaceful solution to this problem for eight years. Eight years!
The former German Chancellor once said to me: ‘You know, in Kosovo, yes, back then NATO acted without a Security Council decision. But there, in Kosovo, there were eight years of bloodshed.’
And here, when the blood of Russian people was spilt in Donbass, was it not blood, but water? Nobody wanted to think about it or take note of it.
After all, what were we forced to do when the Ukrainian government at the time declared that it did not like any of the clauses of the Minsk agreement and when the foreign minister said that they would not fulfil them?
Do you realise that both economic and social decline began in these areas? For eight years. I’m not even talking about the killings, the constant killing of people: Women, children and so on.
What were we forced to do? We had to recognise their independence. We didn’t recognise their independence for almost eight years. We waited until we could come to a peaceful agreement and resolve this issue. Eight years! What did we have to do when it became clear that no one was going to implement any peace agreement? We had to try to force them to do so by armed means.
We did not start this war. The war started in 2014 after the coup d’état and the attempt to crush those who disagree with the coup d’état by force of arms.
Now for the people who follow international events and international law. What happened then, what did we do? We did not recognise them for eight years. What did we do when we realised that the Minsk peace agreements were not going to be implemented? I would ask everyone to pay attention: we recognised the independence of these self-proclaimed republics.
Could we do that from the point of view of international law or not? As Article 1 of the UN Charter says, we could. That is the right of peoples to self-determination. And the UN International Court of Justice made the decision – it was written down on paper – that says that any territory of any country that makes such a decision is not obliged to appeal to the higher authorities of that state when deciding on the issue of independence and self-determination.
All this was done in the context of Kosovo. But there is the decision of the International Court of Justice of the United Nations, which says that a territory that decides in favour of independence is not obliged to turn to the capital to implement this right. But if that is the case and that is what the decision of the UN Court says, then these unrecognised republics – Donetsk and Lugansk – had the right to do so.
They did it. And did we then have the right to recognise these republics? Of course we had. How else could we? We recognised them. Then we concluded an agreement with them. Could we conclude a treaty with them or not? Yes, of course we could. The treaty stipulated that we would help these states in the event of aggression. And Kiev waged war against these states, which we recognised eight years later. Eight years.
Were we able to recognise them? Yes, we could. And then we assisted them in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. You know, no matter what anyone says here, I told Mr Guterres the same thing, this logic step by step. Where is the mistake here? Where are the violations of international law? There are no violations from the point of view of international law.
Yes, then we hear the answer: But you attacked anyway. We didn’t attack, we defended, so that everyone is clear. And the first step towards war was taken by those who supported the bloody anti-constitutional coup d’état.
Now to the subject of arms deliveries. Supplying weapons to a conflict zone is always a bad thing. Especially when it is linked to the fact that those who supply them are not only supplying weapons, but also controlling these weapons, and that is a very serious and very dangerous step. We know, and the Federal Republic does not deny it – I don’t know how it got into the press – when a Bundeswehr general talks about where and how they should strike: the Crimean bridge or any other objects on Russian territory, even on the territory that nobody doubts belongs to Russia.
When the first German tanks, German-made tanks, appeared on Ukrainian soil, it caused a moral and ethical shock in Russia, because the attitude towards the Federal Republic was always very good in Russian society. Very good. If it is now said that missiles will also appear that will hit objects on the territory of Russia, then of course this will destroy Russian-German relations once and for all.
But we understand that, as a well-known German politician said, the Federal Republic of Germany was never a sovereign state in the full sense of the word after the Second World War.
We have been in contact with Mr Scholz, we have met with him several times, and I do not want to make any judgements here about the quality of the work of the Federal Government, but these judgements are made by the German people, the German voters. The elections to the European Parliament are just around the corner and we will see what happens there. As far as I know – I am not indifferent to Germany of course, I have many friends there, I try not to touch them so as not to expose them to any kind of obstruction in their country, I try not to have any relations with them – and I have known these people for many years, I know they are reliable friends, and I have many of them in Germany. As far as I know, if I’m not mistaken, the CDU/CSU is now at around 30 per cent, the Social Democrats at 16 per cent, the AfD at 15 per cent, and everyone else is falling further behind. That is the voter’s reaction. That is the mood of the Germans, the mood of the German people.
I understand the dependence of the Federal Republic in the area of defence, in the area of security as a whole. I understand the dependence in the area of politics, of information policy, because wherever you poke, with every major medium – I don’t know where you work – the ultimate beneficiary is an American foundation. Thank God, I applaud these American foundations and those who pursue this policy, well done for keeping the information sector in Europe so firmly in their interests. They also try not to appear themselves.
All of this is understandable. But the influence is enormous and it is very difficult to resist. Understandably so. But some elementary things, it’s about these elementary things. It is even strange that nobody in the German leadership today is defending German interests. It is clear that Germany does not have full sovereignty, but the Germans do exist. One should at least think a little about their interests.
You see: Someone has blown up the pipelines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Nobody is outraged, it’s as if that was the right thing to do. We supply gas to Europe through the territory of Ukraine. We do supply it. There were two pipeline systems, but the Ukrainian side closed one of them, turned off the valve, just closed it and that was it, although there are no reasons for this. Only one pipeline system remained – okay. But gas goes to Europe through this system and European consumers receive this gas. Our gas goes through Turkey via Turkish Stream to Europe, and European consumers receive it.
Well, one Nord Stream pipe was blown up, but one Nord Stream pipe is alive, thank God. Why doesn’t Germany want to get our gas via this pipeline? Can someone explain to me what kind of logic that is? You can get it through Ukraine, you can get it through Turkey, but you can’t get it through the Baltic Sea. What kind of nonsense is that? There is no formal logic here, I don’t even understand it.
Would they say that Europe shouldn’t get any gas at all? All right, we’ll survive that, Gazprom will survive that. But you don’t need it, you have to buy overpriced liquefied natural gas transported across the ocean. Don’t your ‘environmentalists’ know how liquefied natural gas is extracted? Through fracking. Ask people in the USA where this gas is extracted, sometimes they get mud instead of water from their taps. Your ‘environmentalists’ who are in government don’t know that? They probably do.
Poland has closed its Yamal-Europe pipeline. The gas was channelled to Germany via Poland. We didn’t shut it down, the Poles did. You know better than I do what impact cutting off energy links with us has had on the German economy. It is a sad result. Many large industrial companies are looking for new locations, not in Germany. They are opening up in the USA and Asia because the conditions at home are such that they are no longer competitive. And that can have serious consequences for the European economy as a whole, because the German economy – as everyone knows, especially Europeans – is the engine of the European economy. It will sneeze and cough – and everyone else will immediately catch the flu. Everyone knows that France’s economy is also on the brink of recession at the moment. And if the German economy goes downhill, it will shake the whole of Europe.
You know, I’m not calling for a break in transatlantic relations, I don’t want to do that, otherwise they’ll start – you or someone else – and someone will hear what I’m saying and say: here he is calling for a split in transatlantic solidarity. No, listen, in my opinion you have a wrong policy, simply a gross mistake at every step. I think what is happening now is a big, capital mistake for the USA itself. Because they want to maintain their leadership role, they are harming themselves by the means they are using. But it’s even worse for Europe. Yes, you could say: ‘We support you here, here and here, but this is our business. But listen, if we undermine our economy, it’s bad for everyone. We can’t do that under any circumstances, we’re against it, it’s taboo, don’t touch it.’
But neither does the current federal government. To be honest, sometimes I’m even at a loss as to the logic behind this behaviour. Well, they wanted to undermine the Russian economy and thought that would happen within three or four or six months. But everyone can see that this is not happening. Last year our economy grew by 3.4 per cent; this year, in the first quarter of this year, the Russian economy grew by 5.4 per cent. Moreover, the World Bank has recalculated – we have set ourselves a target – that according to international financial and economic structures we are in fifth place in the world in terms of purchasing power parity and we have set ourselves the target of reaching fourth place.
I think that you are following the opinion of colleagues from the international financial institutions. The World Bank recently, I think just last week, calculated our GDP and came to the conclusion that we have overtaken Japan. According to the World Bank, Russia is now the fourth largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity. So this goal has been achieved.
Of course, this is not the most important thing, it is not an end in itself. The most important thing is to keep up the pace, to make further progress, and we have succeeded in doing that so far, because in the first quarter, as I said, the growth rate was 5.4 per cent. But why do I say that? Not to brag, but so that those who are trying to hinder us, harm us and slow down our development realise that what they are doing is harming them more than us. Once they have realised this, they should draw some conclusions and somehow correct their behaviour. For themselves. No, that’s not happening.
I don’t want to offend anyone, but the level of education of those who make decisions, even in Germany, leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.
End of translation
