Putinism

you know, dealing with problems that these other societies have that we can't solve.

And this retrenchment around that and then led to, as you mentioned, like this bizarre, you know, dismissal of Russia's, you know, this evil sort of Putinism that began to emerge and, you know, this rejection of Ukraine's fight to defend itself.

Um, and so, you know, I don't attribute all of that to, um, the war on terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There's a much broader sort of expiration of, um, the viability of the global order, the U S led order, the, the institutions of the U S led order that, um, that were, had kind of run their course and we're starting to, um, starting to fail and the kind of hyper-globalization had frayed people's, you know, support for that kind of, that level of forward lean into abroad.

None of that happened in East Germany.

They were Soviet, they were occupied by the Russians, they learned Russian in school, and they are now... part of their appeal is Putinism, that the AFD reject America and think that Germany's natural alliance should be with Russia, which is, again, a very, very deep deep alliance but you just said that they were anti-slav i don't understand that they are anti-slav and pro-putin which is bizarre which is really really bizarre because i mean you need to be a very strange german to be pro-russian given the history of russia and germany but what they are is they are anti-american in their outlook And that has pushed them towards Putin.

They are anti-Ukraine.

They're very, very against

I mean, this isn't unique to Germany, I would say.

Across Europe, you see anyone arguing for diplomacy instead of war can be labeled a traitor, a Putinist.

And so it's kind of a patriotic duty to hate Russia these days and oppose any peace settlement.

But how do you think this message of AFD is

Don't worry about it.

Every country is just experiencing his own iteration of Putinism.

Whether it be enriching his close associates and friends and maybe hand-selected oligarchs that are ideologically in line with the movement or loyal to the movement, or whether it be claiming that there will be a short special military operation that ends up taking up all the resources of the state and goes for far longer than suspected.

What are we, a bunch

But I think that the process of, I don't say reconciliation because it's too early to speak about, but even to come back to speak to Russia on Some peaceful terms, I think we will need decades to reach this point.

Of course, it depends also a lot of how Russia will end the war, which Russia will come out of this war, if there will be another Russia, or if it will be always Putin-Russia, even if it will be not Putin anymore, but Putinist Russia.

But even if tomorrow will come out of now where I didn't know as far as for a miracle, a new Gorbachev, a new leader who will stop the war and move the troops out from Ukraine, from the invaded Ukrainian territories, I think that it will be very hard, not only for Ukrainians, also for Europeans, but for Ukrainians, first place to trust this leader, which, by the way, for now, we don't know if it's possible and who he will be and when will he come.

Anna, let me ask you what you heard people say about Zelensky while you were there.

Of course, Vladimir Seliviov, the top propagandist, he's also from that period.

And this is huge for Putinism.

Putin ideology is Sirkov and Pavlovsky, others.

They had to figure out a way to fight the so-called orange danger, the popular revolutions that were going on outside of Russia and were threatening Russia within, at least in Putin's eyes.

But Farage is still repeating Peter's talking points.

I mean, the culture of kind of anti-Ukraine soft pro-Putinism goes down to the level of, you know, your local reform council taking Ukraine flags down from the flagpoles.

How close is the pro-Putin association psychologically in that anti-European relationship? what used to be UKIP is now reform world?

It's a good question.

No work was done on the mistakes.

Nobody said, "Guys, you were deceived." And immediately another cage grew, right now this Putinist one, and it's like reinforced concrete.

And we will have to, we'll have to have conversations with these people who are currently being brainwashed, especially with schoolchildren and adults.

Yes, that is a very unfortunately terrifying observation.