This transcript was created utilizing speech recognition software program. Whereas it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it might include errors. Please evaluation the episode audio earlier than quoting from this transcript and e-mail transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.
I’m Tom Friedman, and I’m the International Affairs columnist for The New York Occasions. I simply returned from Kyiv, Ukraine, and I’d begin each day by strolling across the grounds of Saint Michael’s Golden Monastery, which is a ravishing Orthodox Church, but in addition with unbelievable grounds. There was one thing very new within the piazza, and it was an exhibition of captured Russian destroyed tanks and armored personnel carriers. Some had been pretty intact. Others had been simply utterly gutted and rusted.
However as I’d stroll there, this distinction between this rusted army tools in the course of this lovely piazza, and I finally realized that it jogged my memory of a meteor, that it was like a meteor that got here from outer house and landed on this nation. In fact, it wasn’t a meteor. It was an invasion by Putin’s military. They usually’re nonetheless attempting to determine tips on how to get this meteor out of the center of their metropolis, out of the center of their nation. That’s actually the wrestle that’s happening there.
My current journey to Ukraine taught me the West’s focus needs to be engineering some type of finish to this battle. And it might probably solely come to an finish if Ukraine is in NATO and the European Union. Including Ukraine to NATO and the European Union could be the largest geopolitical shift in our lifetime. You set Ukraine within the EU, and that turns into our Russia coverage. I feel the very best factor that occurred in my life was the creation of the European Union.
Now, most People will do something for the EU, besides examine it. OK? So the EU is that this actually boring factor that the Europeans do. And there’s a parliament and a fee, and we are able to’t work out any of it. However in truth, the EU is without doubt one of the best miracles in international historical past, a continent, an enormous house that, from time immemorial, principally, was well-known for limitless tribal, ethnic, nationalist, household conflicts. It grew to become the largest middle, geographic middle of free markets, free folks, the rule of regulation and human rights. That may be a miracle. It’s an unbelievable, boring miracle.
If we deliver Ukraine into that European Union, that might be one of the consequential geopolitical tipping factors since East Germany was united with West Germany. Oh, oh, oh, East Germany’s Germany. Who was the Russian spy in East Germany who was launched to worldwide relations by operating the KGB there? It was Vladimir Putin. It was Vladimir Putin whose large introduction to geopolitics was watching the magnet of the West soften down East Germany and result in the unification of those two international locations. Nicely, that, for me, has all the time been my framework about Ukraine and Russia.
NATO growth was by no means the difficulty. The actual menace for Putin was that Ukraine would grow to be the brand new East Germany, that it will grow to be an unbelievable mannequin, magnet, and mentor for the remainder of Russia, an instance of a Slavic profitable financial system, start-up nation and democracy, subsequent to Putin’s Slavic kleptocracy and autocracy. That’s what this struggle has all the time been about for my part.
I feel we’ve carried out the precise factor, which is speeding to Ukraine’s help and supporting Ukraine militarily as greatest we are able to for so long as Ukrainians need to battle. The large determination level going ahead is, when do we are saying to the Ukrainians we could must accept a unclean deal? As a result of individuals are not going to enroll to help you indefinitely. They usually know that. Folks have requested me, so what’s a attainable soiled deal? The pure soiled deal is that Russia will get to maintain some or all of its sick gotten positive aspects, the place it’s proper now, roughly these strains, though that may imply sanctioning of 1 state, taking territory of one other by drive, and in return, Ukraine will get to be in NATO and the European Union.
In the meantime, Putin — I don’t need to give him something, however once more, we’re speaking a few soiled deal now — will be capable to go and say, I confirmed these Nazis in Ukraine. I punished them sufficient. I’ve come again with extra territory than I left with, and all hail the emperor. However Ukraine becoming a member of the EU could be an existential menace to him as a result of he’s the one who retains telling us Ukraine and us, we’re the identical. We’re brothers. As a result of the entire proposition was, marry me or I’ll kill you.
Vladimir Putin is a man who’s all the time searching for dignity in all of the unsuitable locations and in all of the unsuitable methods. And so quite than saying, I need to construct my nation as much as be an actual competitor for the EU, it was all about fulfilling some fantasy, Peter the Nice dream of forcing Ukrainians to unify with Russia so he might groove on the map, principally. And have a look at the value he’s paid. Folks neglect Russia put the primary satellite tv for pc into orbit in 1957. It’s known as Sputnik. It led the world. It led the world in that science and know-how.
And as we speak, Putin’s Russia, have you ever ever tried to purchase a Russian watch? Have you ever ever considered shopping for a Russian automobile? This can be a nation extra well-known now for poisoned underwear, poison tipped umbrellas, and locking folks up in penal colonies in Siberia, and pumping oil and gasoline. It’s a tragedy of what this man, the nation that gave us Dostoevsky and Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and Sakharov and all these nice writers, has given us rusted, burned out Russian tanks within the coronary heart of Kyiv.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
