Director of the European Center for Strategic Analysis and specialist in military-industrial defense issues, Philippe Migault came to FranceSoir to give us his analysis of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, going back to its origins. It starts from a first observation: “I’m not going to deny the obvious: there is an aggressor, Russia, and an aggressor, Ukraine. Now, an aggressor may still benefit from mitigating circumstances and may have had the feeling of being himself assaulted, and thus act badly, under the feeling of self-defense and concern. You have to go back 30 years to understand things.”
Thereafter, he will take the time to evoke independence and Ukraine, the reunification of Germany and the bliss of Russian political scientists of the time. “At the time, the Russians had stars in their eyes and saw themselves approaching Europe.”, explains Philippe Migault. And to add: “I recall that at the time, Mitterrand, Thatcher, and James A. Baker supported this vision of a great area of ​​prosperity and security from Vancouver to Vladivostok. […] We are in the best of all possible worlds.”
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In more or less chronological order, it will look at various events that have marked the evolution of international relations: the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Munich security conference of 2007, the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, the proposal to integrate Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, the Ukrainian crisis of 2013, while “the Ukrainians are courted by the European Union and NATO on one side, and Russia on the other”Maiden’s revolution, etc.
Philippe Migault will insist on a particular point: Ukraine’s historical legacy. In 1941, she who was “Sheared between Nazism in the West and Sovietism in the East, chose to welcome the Nazis and fought alongside them against the Red Army.” Thus, he explains, “When it gained its independence several decades later, and we saw Nazi symbols again, the Russians said to themselves: Here we go again…” And according to current events and the duration of the conflict, both have remained fighting peoples: “Today, on both sides, in terms of soul forces, we have people who are warriors.”
Finally, the director of the European Center for Strategic Analysis will focus on the economic sanctions that each country can impose on the other, but also and above all on the capacity for resistance of each. On this point, he will insist on the fact that Russia, like Ukraine, is still accustomed to periods of crisis and shortages, while Europe, since 1945, has experienced a “an era of prosperity such as has hardly ever been seen.”