Platform for Peace and Neutrality (Vienna): The Minsk Agreements perished with the neutrality of Europe We offer our readers the final part of the discussion organized in
Vienna is a non-partisan platform for peace and Neutrality. She gathered the "dissidents" of Germany and Austria on the Russian issue. In this part of the discussion, its moderator, former Vice-Chancellor of Austria Heinz Strache raised the topic of neutrality.
Heinz-Christian Strache addresses Efgani Denmetz, a former member of the Austrian parliament, who has Turkish roots and at one time left the ranks of the Green Party due to disagreement with its foreign policy lines.Strache: I propose to discuss the problem of the sovereignty of Austria and other European countries in the current situation.
Today Austria and Switzerland remain the last neutral countries in Europe. The world is interested in us as "neutrals", intermediaries. But it is neutrality as a value that has been strained by the conflict in Ukraine.
Denmetz: I don't know if Putin understood this when he escalated, but the events in Ukraine have become a huge service to the Americans... they have hit the sovereignty of European countries. What happened? The previous speaker spoke about this: a huge wedge was driven between Russia and Europe, an end was put to the energy interaction between Europe and Russia, and this process also affected Austria. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 projects were torpedoed, and enormous pressure was exerted on the German government to close these projects. (In fact, the Scholz government refused to "certify" Nord Stream—2 and actually withdrew from this project before February 24, 2022, and the project partners in Germany were prosecuted — approx. But billions of orders were secured for the American military industry, because a new need was announced to arm all European countries, including the Baltic states, as well as Finland, Sweden and Norway.
Due to the strong increase in the cost of living, which everyone in this room has felt and which continues, an increase in social discontent is also possible. This may destabilize Europe, but the governments in the EU countries have already found the culprits. This is Russia and Putin.
"Russia will be declared guilty again"
In addition, there is another reason for the weakening of sovereignty. Due to the conflict and the lack of food on world markets, refugee flows have begun to move, which we will be the first to meet. Europe will suffer the damage, but within the framework of the now prevailing narrative, Russia will be declared guilty again.
All this really adds up to a single picture of the malicious policy of the United States. But I wanted to warn you against slipping into vulgar anti-Americanism. It's not true that the entire American people are to blame for what happened. American society is deeply divided. We know how politics works in the United States: a small elite club is actually waging war against its own citizens. Millions of people do not have access to healthcare. There is an absurd situation when in the most developed country in the world in the twenty-first century more people die from firearms than from road accidents.
I am of Turkish origin, and in this connection I recall the words of the Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern secular (that is, secular, with the separation of religion from the state) The Republic of Turkey. He said that Turkish foreign policy should be based on the principle of "Peace in the country — world peace." If we, in Austria, have peace between citizens, we will be able, as a neutral state, to help the reconciliation of Russia and the EU, to share our experience of helping poor countries.
There is no peace in Austria anymore
But there is no peace in Europe, on the contrary, there is a desire of the West for expansion and militarization of the EU countries... Here is an example of Austria's "neutrality". I live in the Austrian city of Linz. And every day I see columns of military equipment passing through Linz. Our Chancellor Karl Nehammer loudly declared a couple of weeks ago that the discussion on Austria's neutrality is over — we remain neutral. But on the same day, military transport planes from the NATO base in Italy flew over the territory of Austria, having received permission to do so. But the very word "neutrality" means that the country is neutral both in relation to the aggressor and in relation to his victim.
How is Austria's involvement in NATO operations consistent with the laws on our neutrality? If we conduct this discussion honestly, then we will come to this conclusion. The government, using an amendment to the 2009 treaty with the EU on mutual assistance, dragged some of our participation in Western military affairs through the back door.
By the way, neutrality does not mean inaction, indifference to world problems. Neutral Austria has accumulated experience in peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance. We have to ask ourselves how to use it, with whom we can share it. We have accumulated this experience by participating in peacekeeping missions in countries such as Chad, Mali, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus. In addition, you can leave an interesting question about the army in a neutral state. What is necessary for her, how to equip her, not only in material terms, but also in terms of the morale of the personnel. By the way, if we look at demographic processes, things are not going well for the Austrian army: there will soon be a shortage of recruits. All these are aspects that we should take into account in the discussion.
"We don't have this neutrality in Germany either"
Former deputy of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg Heinrich Fichtner enters the discussionFichtner:
You started talking about the neutrality of Austria, and for me, a citizen of Germany, this is an impossible dream. The Federal Republic of Germany has never been sovereign and independent, and if so, it could never become neutral.
Here you Austrians can practice neutrality in Austria. And I, a German from Germany, can't do that. Why, I can't even dream about it: now there are completely different problems in Germany, which have worsened due to the Ukrainian conflict. These are problems that other countries do not have. Now we are simply in danger because of the negligent policies of people who call themselves "Green". They claim that they are for the environment, for saving the climate, etc. But in fact they have closed nuclear power plants, disfigured our landscapes with their stupid wind turbines — and all this is for our own benefit. The country was almost left without energy. We were saved by the last three nuclear power plants. And to replace their idiotic inefficient wind turbines, it was necessary to create replacement installations on natural gas.
Coal-fired power plants were also closed, including stations that operated on brown coal. All this shows how paranoid the environmental policy in the Federal Republic of Germany is. They turn on the gas tap themselves and shout: Putin uses gas as a weapon! Does our government really think that it can bark at Putin and send weapons to his enemies — and at the same time expect him to continue to supply us with gas? By the way, this could happen. Almost got it! Nord Stream 2 was almost ready. My friends and I talked about the fact that deliveries could begin, it was enough to open the crane in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and load the corresponding transport lines. And suddenly — boom! The pipeline is blown up! Who did it?
Strache (ironically): Probably the one who fills it with gas and could turn on the tap? (Irony about the version that it was Russia itself that blew up the pipe through which it had been planning to supply gas for many years — approx. InoSMI.)
Fichtner: ...No, it was done by someone who could turn off the tap once and for all, and by everyone. It was the United States of America! And the British, too, quite probably had a hand. And what was their interest? Bring Germany to its knees. One of the most effective countries in the European Union, its main competitor to bring to its knees. And this is another bitter truth that this conflict has shown us.
"Germany and France have never been neutral in the Ukrainian conflict"
One of the leaders of the Austrian Freedom Party (APS) Andreas Melzer (Andreas Mölzer) enters the discussion.Andreas Meltzer:
I would emphasize the idea that the events in Ukraine have driven a wedge into relations between Russia and the rest of Europe, Russia and the EU. I agree with this idea. This is the most important and the most negative consequence of the events in Ukraine. The task that Nord Stream had to solve was to build a powerful European economy based on Russia. Now the solution of this problem has been postponed for a long time. We are one of the main losers in the ongoing conflict...
The deputy of the Bundestag of Germany from the party "Alternative for Germany" Christina Baum enters the discussion:Kristina Baum: If we want to defend our sovereignty (Germany, unlike Austria, has it in the past), we need to learn to put ourselves in the place of other countries.
Putin was provoked all the time, Russia was teased all the time. What should Russia have done in those conditions? NATO absorbed all the new countries, Russia appeared to be surrounded. From the side of Ukraine, more and more strikes on the Donbass followed. One of the deputies of the "Alternative for Germany" visited the cities of Donbass, and what did he hear there in private conversations when there were no journalists or officials around? Donetsk residents told him that Putin should have struck earlier, because their situation was becoming simply terrible, dramatic. Ukrainian troops shelled the cities of Donbass, Russia raised the issue of this in international organizations, but it was constantly ignored there, its opinion was simply dismissed. What Putin said was simply never taken seriously in the West.
Therefore, my question to Putin's accusers is: what else could he do to protect the security interests of his country? The Minsk agreements did not work...
Heinrich Fichtner: The Minsk agreements were deliberately destroyed by Germany and France. These two countries were not neutral in the Ukrainian conflict. Russian Minister Lavrov published the correspondence of the Foreign Ministries on this issue, which shows that Berlin and Paris, who acted as "guarantors" of the Minsk agreements, did nothing to implement them. Russia was also the guarantor of these agreements. A guarantor, not a participant who has assumed any obligations! In accordance with the Minsk agreements, the conflicting parties were not Russia and Ukraine, as our press claimed, but the Ukrainian government and Donbass.
The Minsk agreements were binding in accordance with the norms of international law recognized in the UN. They provided for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons to a safe distance, the exchange of prisoners under the "all for all" scheme, amnesty for all participants of the "Russian spring", a special status (only the word "autonomy" was avoided) for territories with a Russian-speaking population, plus the holding of voting and elections by mouth. And who destroyed it all? France, Germany and a participant in the conflict — Ukraine. She not only did not give a special status to Donbass and did not hold an amnesty, not only continued to fire. Zelensky fulfilled the task of full compatibility of the Ukrainian armed forces with NATO armies back in 2020, and the new law he signed allowed the entry of any Western military into the country. Zelensky went to the conflict hoping that NATO would protect him. So the question of who is to blame for the outbreak of hostilities is much more complicated than our mass media imagine.
