[ad_1]
mein man sitting in Russia on a plane. After landing in Omsk, Siberia, he fell into a coma and was transferred to a hospital with severe toxicological symptoms and shortly thereafter was flown to Berlin for further treatment. While fighting for his life there, a Bundeswehr laboratory determines the cause: It is a neurotoxin called Novitschok, a substance of dubious notoriety since the attack on double agent Sergej Skripal in England two years ago. The perpetrators left behind a kind of business card, but it is still unknown to this day.
This attempted assassination of Russian opposition activist Aleksej Navalnyj is undoubtedly a conspiracy, if it should not have been a lone perpetrator. In this regard, it was quite strange that last night at Anne Will’s panel discussion, former German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger and foreign policy expert Sevim Dağdelen (left) accused each other of spreading conspiracy theories. No second-rate spy thriller could have invented this better. It’s all there: sponsors and masterminds, cover-ups and misinformation.
There are conspiracies
Conspiracy theories imagine the world as in a James Bond movie. A cartel of villains threatens the world who is ultimately saved by a hero who always looks like Sean Connery. Such conspiracy theories replace analytical thinking. However, there are still conspiracies, such as the one against Navalnyj.
Here two opposing views met with Anne Will, and Ms. Dağdelen defended hers against that of all the other guests. Her position was based on a vision of conscious ignorance. She refused to link this assassination attempt on Russian territory against a Russian citizen with the actions of the Moscow government. That only explained why he didn’t want to exclude other people responsible for the murder. Furthermore, she called for cooperation between the German and Russian police authorities based on the rule of law. As you know, that always sounds good.
Talk to Putin, in what language?
The opposite position was formulated by the two foreign politicians Norbert Röttgen (CDU) and Jürgen Trittin (Greens). They both interpreted this assassination attempt as evidence “of a political system where the killing of opposition members has a system,” Trittin said. Those who, on the other hand, have always been skeptical of the usual nuances in diplomatic dealings, have found in Röttgen what they are looking for. His condemnation of the Russian president and the regime he represented left little room for future negotiations with Moscow. After all, Röttgen is running for the presidency of the CDU party and after his election he would probably be a candidate for chancellor of the Union parties, despite rumors about a Bavarian alternative. Röttgen asked to speak to Putin “in a language that he understands.” One should await the talks between Chancellor Röttgen and the autocrat in Moscow. The trained Chekist Putin speaks German as is well known.
Left-wing foreign politicians like Dağdelen transform into real politicians in German-Russian relations, while ex-conservatives become idealists dreaming of a “virus of freedom in Red Square” in Moscow, as Röttgen put it. This reminded the historically savvy viewer of the rhetoric of former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in the 1950s, who advocated for the liberation of Eastern Europeans living under the Soviet fist. At the same time, however, the fact that such words were largely inconsequential in political practice, as became apparent at the latest when the Hungarian uprising was suppressed in 1956. The West did nothing to help the Hungarians. In fact, he had accepted the spheres of influence drawn in Europe after the war, but at the same time rejected any attempt to change them at his own expense.
These spheres of influence became obsolete after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but were back on the agenda when Putin took office 20 years ago. It is about the future of Soviet successor states, such as Ukraine or Belarus, and the question of whether they belong to the West. Compared to the crisis in Ukraine, the West is also holding back on the current internal political squabbles in Belarus: the prospect of joining the EU or NATO is no longer talked about.
