Although establishment media and European government leaders are generally cowards, putting all the blame for the crisis in Eastern Ukraine on Russia, the number of insiders who express their disagreement is growing.
In Germany, former government official Horst Teltschik and former Bundeswehr Chief of Staff and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee General Harald Kujat (Luftwaffe, ret.); and in Italy former intelligence coordinator Giampiero Massolo and former ambassador to NATO Sergio Romano, all said the West bears at least part of the responsibility and should change policy.
• Horst Teltschik, then Ministerial Director at the Federal Chancellery, who negotiated German reunification with Gorbachev, said in an interview with BR radio, that Putin “has started a cold war, if not a hot one.” With that, Gorbachev’s dream of a common European house is gone. However, Teltschik said Putin is not the only responsible party. In November 1990, there were 34 European countries that signed the Charter for a New Europe, whose idea was to build a common European house “where all residents would have the same security. We defined principles and instruments but ... those instruments have not been sufficiently used.” Teltschik also mentioned disarmament treaties unilaterally canceled by the U.S.: “We can certainly say that Americans and Europeans share a large part of responsibility, not using the tools that were available.”
• Gen. Harald Kujat, former Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, and then Chairman of the NATO Military Committee said in an interview with the weekly Focus, that now the danger of war is increased. “Before, the demarcation line was between Ukraine and two separatist regions; now it is de facto between Ukraine and Russia. So the risk of a major military confrontation has increased,” Kujat said. He called for strengthening the OSCE mission and finding a way to solve Ukraine’s relationship with NATO. “This cannot be done with a treaty that is binding under international law, as Russia wants. But neither can it be achieved by declaring that accession is not on the agenda.… During their visits to Moscow, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Scholz made proposals that would also allow for negotiation approaches from Putin’s perspective. Both should now press for serious negotiations to finally begin.”
• Giampiero Massolo, former Italian intelligence coordinator, current chairman of the largest European shipbuilder Fincantieri and head of ISPI foreign policy think tank, said in an interview with the daily Il Tempo, that what is happening with Russia and Ukraine “is a classic script,” already seen in Georgia and Transnistria. How do we get out of this? Massolo proposed that the trans-Atlantic nations should “show compactness” but at the same time understand that Russia’s concerns “are not completely without foundation on a general level, and therefore require a dose of listening.”
• Former Italian Ambassador to NATO (1983-1985) Sergio Romano said in an interview to the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano that “It was a double blue pencil mistake” to make Ukraine imagine it could join NATO. “In my opinion, after the Cold War, the West should have started the demobilization of NATO. It was a structure born at the time of the conflict with the Warsaw Pact. When the latter collapsed, it didn’t make sense to continue a military structure that would have been seen as a structure of pure aggression.” Not only has the West neither dismantled nor remodeled NATO, but it has considered “pointing the guns” at Moscow. And this is the second mistake. “How would have we viewed it, if the military structure that opposes us had taken root in Switzerland, a stone’s throw from Milan? Would this situation have been destabilizing or not?” Romano asked. Romano proposed that Ukraine become a neutral country, a sort of eastern Switzerland. “In my opinion, Ukraine must become a demilitarized territory, a buffer between the West and the East, a Neutral Country.”
