Writer Wladimir Kaminer took part in a protest camp at the Brandenburg Gate against Russian President Vladimir Putin last year. He explains why Europe cannot harbor any illusions about the Russian President.
Mr. Kaminer, did you expect the invasion of Ukraine at this point in time?
I was particularly surprised by the American reaction beforehand. The Americans have emphasized that the invasion is imminent. At the same time, they ruled out providing military assistance to Ukraine. For me it was an invitation from Putin to invade.
A guarantee of assistance would mean that today Americans and Russians are shooting at each other. That would be World War III. Is military restraint on the part of the USA not a matter of course?
I don’t think Putin would have made the decision to attack if the Americans had put up that stop sign. Now we are all in a very dangerous position.
What has to happen now?
Putin speaks of the need to “denazify” Ukraine. So he turns all Ukrainians who love their country into Nazis. How is such a denazification of Ukraine supposed to work, what do you usually do with Nazis? I see the lives of 40 million people at risk. That’s roughly the population of Ukraine. The Europeans should prepare an evacuation.
You mean an evacuation of the whole Ukraine?
In Putin’s eyes, the Ukrainian people have insulted the Russian leader. We have no other choice if we want to save lives.
Did you follow President Putin’s televised speech recognizing the separatist territories, and if so, what message did you get?
I watched Putin’s speech for an hour and found it extremely interesting. The President began his speech by saying that he had to go back historically to explain his actions. He has now discovered history for himself like ice hockey 15 years ago. But he seems to have had bad teachers. Putin has reiterated his belief that the downfall of the USSR was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, worse than the two world wars. Above all, it was a catastrophe for him. At that time he was in the GDR as a KGB officer and apparently he did a bad job of looking after the Soviet Union. He sees that as a personal defeat. In his speech he repeatedly referred to Lenin and Stalin as if he shared the office with them. The previous Security Council meeting with Putin was also illuminating for me. It became clear that, unlike in the USSR, there is no longer any collective leadership in today’s Russia. Everything is decided in a man’s head.
Putin has repeatedly described the fall of the USSR in 1991 as a catastrophe. What does the end of the Soviet Union mean for you?
For me personally and for many people with Soviet roots, the end of the USSR was a liberation. Then the longest hostage-taking in history came to an end. However, she also had her exciting sides. The long isolation has created its own culture and view of the world. It shapes me and I think everyone who lived in the former USSR to a certain extent to this day. The collapse of the Soviet Union was also a lesson in the fragility of empire itself. The USSR said goodbye overnight at the end of 1991 without saying goodbye.
“Russendisko” is also a story about the new beginnings in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Fear of a hot war is raging in Europe today. What went wrong?
I don’t think much of thinking now about who made which mistakes. Did Bill Clinton react too hesitantly when Russia wanted to integrate into NATO? Was it the snooty Europeans who didn’t want Russia there? Or the Russians, who didn’t seriously want to become part of the West? We don’t have time for such analysis. Because the situation is more dangerous than in the Cold War. At that time there were still discussions in the Politburo in the Kremlin, for example about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Today everything is decided by a man who wants to turn back the wheel of history. And Putin sees the weakness of the West. He observed the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan. The USA no longer wants to be a world power and the Europeans speak with 27 voices. Worse, they are so preoccupied with the future that they fail to understand Putin’s challenge now.
Berliner Zeitung/Paulus Ponizak
To person
Vladimir Kaminer was born in Moscow in 1967. He emigrated to the former GDR in 1990 and has lived in Berlin ever since. In 2000, Kaminer published the collection of short stories Russendisko. In it he processes his experiences as a migrant with Soviet roots in Germany, which has only just been reunited. Kaminer also speaks out in political debates and shows solidarity with the Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin.
What do you mean?
Let’s take climate protection as an example. That is very important to the Germans. Putin is not interested in the livelihoods of the coming decades, but in history, in what he sees as humiliations. And they can be far behind. His thinking is archaic. The Europeans have no answer to that. You live in a different sphere than Putin. And yet they have to find their way back to Putin on earth very quickly. When the neighbor’s house is on fire, there’s no time to water the flowers. Then someone has to put out the fire first.
In Russia’s neighboring countries, it’s not just Putin that is seen as a security risk, but also the Russian tendency towards national self-aggrandizement. It is often said in Poland or Lithuania that even a regime change would not change anything. What do you think?
For me, Russia is part of Europe and no country is necessarily doomed to threaten its neighbors. Russians are not inherently evil and aggressive neighbors, but normal people like us. They want to live free. A Russian proverb says that nobody should confuse the bow tie with the meatball. We’re unlucky with our current leadership. Putin is an ex-intelligence agent. That’s why there are so many prisons in Russia. If he had been a baker, we would probably have many bakeries now.
Is it really that simple? Even the jailed hopeful of the Russian opposition, Alexander Navalny, has moved in nationalist circles.
One problem is that Russia is so big. That is why it can be difficult to find a place in the EU or NATO. However, we should not underestimate the time factor. Putin has been in power for 22 years. Among them were fat years, but now many Russians are tired. One cannot predict when the country will say no to its policies. But we can see that many Russians who don’t agree with Putin are leaving their country. Russia is a dictatorship of open borders. If you don’t like it, you can leave. I believe that Russians are slow to mature. You will understand that restoring the past is a dead end. But outside help cannot change a country. Change has to come from within.
Do you have any hope that we will see a new era of change and opportunity on the continent, without invasions and the threat of war across Europe?
In any case. In fact, I’m sure it could go faster than many people think.