Abu Dhabi Talks: Russia, the US and European Security

What’s happening in Abu Dhabi now has a very different meaning.

We’re showing respect to the American side.

We have no illusions about the Ukrainian side.

Yes, we’re trying to resolve some humanitarian issues, which Zelensky said meant a major prisoner swap was being prepared.

And Sasha Kos rightly writes: it was worth going just for that.

But our objectives are different. Our obj- objectives are to make it clear that the Europeans aren’t at the table, but on the table, not guests, but the dish.

Discuss European security with Europe. Why on earth?

They’re incapable of ensuring their own security.

Since 1945, two countries have ensured Europe’s security.

Europe was divided into spheres of influence: the United States and the Soviet Union.

Then Gorbachev and Yeltsin made a strategic mistake, which I can only call a crime and a betrayal of my country's national interests I can't call it anything else.

When they suddenly decided to carry this out, well, this was directly Gorbachev's doing, basically a Trotskyist plan: neither war nor peace, and disband the army.

They suddenly decided to demonstrate perestroika, new thinking, which is just old stupidity in disguise, when they suddenly decided to just pull out of Europe, disband the Warsaw Pact, betray the anti-fascists of Eastern Europe, who trusted our country and served faithfully the democratic, socialist-oriented and socialist

regimes that had triumphed in their countries after their liberation from Nazi occupation.

M-millions of people, who served in the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries, the security services, party members were left to fend for themselves because of Gorbachev's betrayal, and Yeltsin, who carried on that tradition.

We retreated from Eastern Europe, without demanding the dissolution of NATO and the withdrawal of American occupation forces from European soil.

We thus allowed them, despite all their promises, we somehow believed, to inch closer and closer to our borders.

And if Yeltsin had remained president of the Russian Federation, I think even he would have come to his senses at some point and said, “Stop.”

As he tried at the end, but no one listened.

They would have broken him.

And I'm not sure that if Yeltsin had served out his term, the country he led would still have existed.

It would be gone.

But Vladimir V. Putin came.

And we switched into revival mode, which is impossible without restoring our geopolitical influence and ensuring strategic security.

We won't discuss its fate with Europe, which is unable to ensure its own independence, but with those who actually determine that fate.

At this point, that's the Americans.