On the occasion of the release of his latest book, Gorbachev’s true novel published by Flammarion, on February 10, Vladimir Fédorovski, Russian writer and diplomat, paints a picture of Europe-Russia relations. We can note that distancing is still required between Europeans and Russians, despite the rapprochement of Moscow with Beijing, especially through economic and military agreements.
The fact remains that the European side does not want to take into account that the emblem of Russia is an eagle with two heads, one head looking towards the East and the other towards the West, quite a symbol. for who wants to look and understand that in Russia, very often, today was thought of the day before yesterday, but it was for the day after tomorrow.
As much on the Russian side, a propaganda shows Europe as responsible for certain Russian evils, as much Europe is also going there for its anti-Russian and anti-Putin concert, like what the Russian president would be responsible for many worries that we live in the EU. This gives the impression of the reflection of a mirror which sends its own image back to the other. The result being a common incommunicability accompanied by warnings about an inevitable rupture.
Are we experiencing a bad open-air play or are we losing the knowledge essential to any good diplomatic process? This is somewhere what emerges from Vladimir Fedorovsky’s book and his remarks in the European microphone of this day.
It is true that Europe and Russia have written long pages of world history together. Those of the late 1980s, approaching the 1990s, were rich in events. From the fall of the Berlin Wall, Perestroika, Glasnost, end of the USSR, to the attempted coup d’état in Moscow, Russians and Europeans shared this common history through the action of their respective leaders, François Mitterrand, Margareth Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev, all spoke of “commune house”, or Europe by its roots and its continent.
We must at least give discharge to these leaders who, although opposed from time to time, knew how to agree on the essential, because, perhaps, but obviously, they had lived the dark hours of the cold war.
30 years later, even if Europe has new member states, often former eastern bloc states, the EU tends to move away from Russia when the latter draws closer to China. The partition of the world is taking new forms, and the arrival of Democrats in the White House will be a new deal in the balance of power on the planet.
If a conflict is not unthinkable in Asia, or in the Caucasus, the rise of dangers is no longer a fable but a reality. Europe very often finds itself alone, because nothing says that Washington will still look at our continent, it must also face Islamist terrorism, the rise of Erdogan’s Turkish inclinations, the great road led by China concerning its Silk Roads which we are beginning to perceive the increasingly voluntary action in Africa, to a global epidemic which is causing it to stagnate economically, finally this dialogue of the deaf which has been established for too long with Moscow which has not Nothing is working out as climate change demands an ongoing global dialogue.
Which European states are today ready to reach out to Moscow? They are rare. The arrival of new member states has not helped European diplomacy in its relations with Russia. The Baltic countries are constantly attacking Russia with demands that slow down any initiative in favor of dialogue, as with Poland, whose position is ambiguous, a member of the European Union but still very attached to Washington.
The opposition to Russia is even stronger, even disproportionate within the Council of Europe where the Baltic countries and Ukraine are continuously “upwind “ against Moscow. As for Paris and Berlin, should they not resolve to initiate a constructive dialogue with Moscow, especially since Brexit has passed, since London not long ago wanted to open up with Russia, and the road seems to be cut between Brussels and Moscow. Because there is no shortage of topical issues, especially concerning the energy policy of Europe which will, of course, need Russian gas more and more. The Russians know this and it would be foolish, even unconscious today, to scuttle the issue of the North Stream gas pipeline.
Because it is obvious that everyone will come out weakened by the epidemic test of Covid-19 that the inhabitants and the leaders of the States of the European continent are undergoing as much. Another reason not to desert the Russian political theater in order to give way entirely to China. The European continent from Dunkirk to Vladivostok does not deserve to be fragmented …
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