Thomas L. Friedman, one of the most lucid writers of The New York Times, explained how the Russian attack had an impact on the rest of the continent.
A protester holds up a photo of Russian regime chief Vladimir Putin with a mustache and a swastika symbol to commemorate Nazi genocide Adolf Hitler with the caption “You know history when it repeats itself” during a candlelight march calling for peace and showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people, in Rome, Italy, a day after the invasion began (Reuters)
The sentence is brutal: Putin has invaded Europe. Nothing less than Thomas L. Friedman says it in his column this Wednesday, June 1st, when there are three days to go until the 100th day of the bloody and unjustified attack ordered by Russia< /b>against Ukraine. In his article titled I Thought Putin Invaded Only Ukraine. I Was Wrong ( I thought that Putin invaded only Urania. He was wrong ). In recent weeks the winner of the Pulitzser Prizecrossed the Atlantic Ocean to meet with the closest protagonists of Russian barbarism. There he was able to realize the dimension of the acts of the Kremlin . And he compared it to Adolf Hitler. Not once, but several times.
“You see, I thought that Vladimir Putin had invaded the Ukraine. He was wrong. Putin had invaded Europe. He shouldn’t have done that. This could be the greatest act of madness in a European war since Hitler invaded Russia in 1941 ″, he noted in his text. And he described what was seen daily from closer to the facts: “This invasion – with Russian soldiers indiscriminately bombing Ukrainian apartment buildings and hospitals, killing civilians, looting homes, raping women, and creating Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II – is increasingly seen as a 21st-century replay of Hitler’s onslaught against the rest of Europe, which began in September 1939 with the German attack on Poland”.
Friedman explains his hypothesis about the continental invasion in the unprecedented movements that have taken place in the last three months: from the military investment of Germany to the desperate inclusion of Finland and Sweden in the military bloc of NATO or the change of position of Poland in the face of the imminent danger or the Ukrainian refugees or the sanctions imposed by the European Union. “It explains why, virtually overnight, the German government dispensed with nearly 80 years of conflict aversion and keeping the defense budget as low as possible, announcing instead a massive increase in military spending and plans to send weapons to Ukraine. It explains why, practically overnight, Sweden and Finland abandoned more than 70 years of neutrality and applied to join NATO”, says the author.
One of the conversations Friedman had on his trip to Europe was with Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister. “The status quo ante will not return. We are seeing a huge change in Europe in response to Russia, not based on American pressure, but because the perception of the threat from Russia today is completely different: We understand that Putin is not talking only about Ukraine, but about all of us and in our way. of freedom“, Told him. He also added something to it that will endure: “Russia is no longer part of the peaceful order of Europe. There is a complete loss of trust with Putin”.
“You have to ask why? Putin’s army is systematically destroying Ukrainian cities and infrastructure with the apparent intention not to impose Russian rule on these cities, communities and farms, but to wipe them and their inhabitants off the map and forcibly realize Putin’s wild claim of that Ukraine is not a real country”, indicated the author of the column for The New York Times.
The sanctions did not come from the Friedman’s analysis: “Since February, the EU has imposed five sanctions packages against Russia, sanctions that not only hurt Russia, but are also costly for EU countries in terms of lost business or increased raw material costs. A sixth package, agreed on Monday, will cut around 90% of EU oil imports from Russia by the end of this year, while expelling Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, from SWIFT, the vital global banking messaging”.
But it also focused on a humanitarian aspect of the crisis unleashed by Putin: the millions of victims who had to leave their homes and cross the border to leave everything behind without knowing what will happen to their future. “Perhaps most impressive is the number of Ukrainian refugees that EU nations have been willing to accommodate without much complaint. Ukrainian men are also known to fight to defend them, so EU nations can at least house their women, children and elderly”.
“Putin thought the EU would quickly split under his pressure, added Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, ‘but Putin was wrong. Europe is now much more united than before the war in Ukraine. Putin, watching all this, must be wondering: ´Is that a fist I see coming at me from the EU? Can not be. No, wait…it is! What’s going on here? I thought I had Germany in my pocket, bought and paid for with my cheap gasoline. I never dreamed that they would join Ukraine in this way and see my invasion of Ukraine as an attack on all of them,’” says Friedman.
Finally, the journalist and analyst for The New York Timesconcluded: “I haven’t heard anyone advocating regime change, but I haven’t heard anyone say that the West could go back to normal. with Russia without him. All of this amounts to saying that something very big has been broken here with Putin, and that this is going to be a problem when we go to the negotiating table, while Putin is in charge of Russia. But Putin is a problem that the Russian people must deal with, not us”.
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