Dispatches

1) “Guerre en Ukraine : le chef de la diplomatie russe « convaincu » que la Russie atteindra ses objectifs à force de « patience,'” Le Monde, le 28 décembre 2022 (20:22);

Analysis

Le Monde reports:

Revised Google translation of Le Monde’s translation from the Russian

“I am convinced that, thanks to our stubbornness, our patience and our determination, we will defend our noble goals, those vital for our people and our country,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview. broadcast Wednesday on the Russian television channel Pervy Kanal. “This, while always remaining open to fair dialogue and agreements to ensure equal and indivisible security in Europe,” he continued.

“An inalienable part of these conditions [for finding a diplomatic solution] is that the four regions [Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson] belong to the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said, noting that Moscow would “of course” conquer all of each of these four territories which are currently not fully controlled by the Russian military. These regions “must be freed from the threat of Nazification which they have endured for many years”, added Sergei Lavrov, taking up the justification of the Kremlin that the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine must be protected against supposed “Nazis” in power in Kyiv.

The Lavrov interview reminded me of a long-forgotten interview with Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels on German national radio in 1944 or 1945, in which Goebbels asserted:

“I am convinced that, thanks to the courage of the German people and the German soldier, Der Führer’s brilliant leadership, and the patience and determination of the Third Reich, we will defend our noble goals–including Lebensraum–and fulfill the destiny of the German people. Of course, in pursuing these goals, we will always remain open to fair dialogue and agreements to ensure equal and indivisible security in Europe,” Goebbels said.

“An inalienable part of these conditions [for finding a diplomatic solution] is that the territories we currently occupy (virtually all of continental Europe except for neutral Sweden and neutral Switzerland) belong to the German Third Reich,” Goebbels said. These regions “had been freed from the menace of Soviet Bolshevism which has threatened them for many years”, added Josef Goebbels, repeating the regime’s justification for seizing these lands, in addition “to securing the Lebensraum needed by Germany’s people and that is part of the German people’s destiny. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!

Was it in a dream or a movie, or an actual newsreel that I had heard Goebbels’s words?

In any event, the Russian position is quite clear. Putin is open to negotiations aimed at ensuring “equal and indivisible security in Europe,” provided that the four provinces he has seized and is seizing are recognized by Ukraine as part of the Russian Federation.