For the second time in a week, Newsweek has allowed itself to be a platform for Vladimir Putin’s June 14 peace proposal, including the part about a new security architecture. Moscow’s Ambassador Anatoly Antonov argued that the West missed a key message that focused on upending the post-Cold War balance of power, wrote Newsweek Deputy Editor Tom O’Connor in an article dated June 25. “Experts and political scientists (I’m not sure about the officials—they most likely heard everything but prefer to remain silent) seem to have ignored the key points of the President, who called on the international community, primarily on the Eurasian continent, to agree with the need for a new security architecture,” Antonov told Newsweek. “Meanwhile, ideas and suggestions included in our proposal explain a lot both in terms of opposition to the West and its ‘Ukrainian project,’ and with regard to Moscow’s systemic efforts to deepen normal, mutually respectful cooperation with the Global South.”
“Let me emphasize that on June 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a peaceful plan for ending the Ukrainian conflict. In response, we only saw new supplies of weapons to the Kiev regime,” Antonov said. “Thus, the reaction of Washington is obvious: local politicians do not need peace. They only focus on war with the objective of inflicting strategic defeat on Russia.”
Antonov is showing O’Connor and Newsweek’s readership a way out of the maelstrom, but O’Connor shows that he’s not ready to follow. O’Connor claims repeatedly that Russia’s aim is to undermine U.S. global leadership and, at least once, attributes that view to Antonov. He never acknowledges that such “leadership” has already brought catastrophe to many places in the world and has brought us to the brink of nuclear war. Nevertheless, he appears to be letting Antonov speak.
