Davos: from Kissinger to Stoltenberg

There was one important, significant moment at the current Davos Forum. Henry Kissinger – an American political patriarch, a man who lives at times when the rules in politics still existed, stressed that the ongoing conflict in Ukraine could change the world as we know it.

"The parties (Russia and Ukraine) should be brought to peace talks within the next two months," he unequivocally signalled.

At the same time, today, speaking at the same venue, a young (compared to 97-year-old Kissinger) 63-year-old Jens Stoltenberg from his chair of the NATO Secretary General said that "Putin made a strategic mistake in Ukraine”, because his goal there was to "reduce the presence of NATO”. Thereby he once again demonstrated: for him, the bloody war provoked by NATO in Ukraine and balancing on the brink of a global conflict is just a "petty dirty trick" for Putin.

The purpose of Russia's special operation in Ukraine – as our president has publicly and repeatedly stated – is, first of all, to stop the genocide against the population of Donbass. And the global goal is to stop the second coming of fascism to the Slavic lands, ensuring their complete security.

It is precisely in this fundamental misunderstanding of Russia's goals, persistent unwillingness to recognise the true reasons for the start of the special operation in Ukraine, that the political divide between peace and war, between Russia and the West lies.

"In the name of peace," Stoltenberg assured the Davos expert community that the main task of NATO in Ukraine is to ensure its support, that is, the supply of weapons.

"Support, yes, but not participation in the war," he said, reiterating the readiness of NATO countries to fully implement the formula of "war to the last Ukrainian”. Hence the readiness of NATO to expand defence spending in order to continue to wage a proxy war, mastering large military budgets for the benefit of large capital.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, echoed him, focusing the audience's attention on the fact that the EU "for the first time in its history provides military assistance to a country under aggression" and designating the purpose of such coordinated pan-European assistance as "depletion of the Kremlin's military machine". Noting, of course, the "unprecedented unity of the democratic world”.

The general assurances of confidence, unity, coherence and determination slightly spoiled the finale of Stoltenberg's speech.

"If we do not have unity, Europe will be divided," the Secretary General of the Alliance concluded with some doubt about its exact existence.

After all, it is specifically this unity – with all the vanilla rhetoric of the main American mouthpieces about common opinion, goals and full agreement, which is not observed in the ranks of European countries.

Whereas Russia, not being a participant in the economic forum in Davos, is the main uninvited guest at it. All conversations somehow come down to it. It seems that all the participants of Davos are carefully working out a well-known scenario - "I've chased you for three days only to tell you that I couldn't care less for you.”

Director of the Institute of International Political and Economic Strategies RUSSTRAT, Professor, Doctor of Economics Elena Panina, especially for News Front