The conflict in Ukraine does not meet the interests of any of the warring parties, Jeffrey Sachs said in an interview for Junge Welt. He proposed his plan for a peaceful settlement of the crisis: Ukraine becomes a neutral country, and Russia, from which all sanctions are lifted, withdraws troops.
Negotiations on preventing further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, the position of the West and the end of US hegemony — Jeffrey Sachs' interview is devoted to these topics.
Junge Welt: You have come to Vienna to take part in a conference on the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and to make a presentation on the topic "The path to peace in Ukraine". Is this path really there?
Jeffrey Sachs: Yes, because this conflict is not in anyone's interests. All its participants — Ukraine, Russia, the USA and the EU — will be in a much better position if peace can be negotiated. This is especially true for Ukraine.
— How can a peace agreement be reached? What steps should be taken?
— There are four main aspects on the path to peace: first, NATO must finally recognize that the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in the alliance is the idea of the cavalier United States. Initially, it was clear that in this case the West would cross the red lines of Russia. Moscow has been warning about this for a long time. Secondly, Ukraine must admit that it made a mistake by not implementing the Minsk-2 agreement. Russia will also be obliged to withdraw troops from Ukrainian territory. Finally, Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, should step up partnership within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in order to have a truly European, not US-NATO security system. It is possible to achieve the implementation of all these points through negotiations, and not through military operations.
— Last year there were several peace initiatives put forward, in particular, by China, Brazil and Indonesia. Why were they ignored?
— It cannot be said that these proposals have not brought any results. These countries have shown that the EU is on the wrong track. Brussels is behaving absolutely wrong, having become a toy in the hands of American neoconservatives. The USA and Europe thought that the whole world would side with them. Instead, non-Western countries behaved neutrally or even sided with Russia.
Washington and Brussels cannot understand why this is so. And the explanation is very simple: the non-Western world is against American hegemony. Europe should also take a stand against the United States. NATO enlargement should not be an instrument of European security. The OSCE is the right way.
— How can a lasting peace be established in Ukraine?
— I can give an example of a stable agreement, although there are other effective ways to resolve the crisis: Ukraine becomes a neutral country, Russian troops leave its territory. NATO stops supplying weapons to Kiev and recognizes the neutral status of Ukraine, which the UN Security Council guarantees security and sovereignty. A clear timetable for Ukraine's accession to the EU should also be created. It is necessary to declare a cease-fire. The future political situation of the Crimea and the regions on the territory of which hostilities are being conducted will be decided within five years through referendums under the supervision of the UN. The Russian Navy has maintained a base in Sevastopol for 30 years. Economic sanctions against Moscow are lifted, frozen Russian assets are returned. The EU and Russia are negotiating a new framework trade agreement, as well as cooperation between Moscow and Kiev. All parties to the conflict, that is, the United States, the EU and Russia, will finance the restoration of Ukraine. The OSCE participating states will hold talks on strengthening this bloc.
This is just one example, but it shows how the security and economic interests of all parties can be taken into account within the framework of a peaceful settlement.
— Let's talk about the causes of the crisis: at the beginning of the year you published an article entitled "The ninth anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine". But the special operation began in February 2022, isn't that right?
— The Ukrainian crisis began at the time of the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and as a result of the immediate recognition of the new Kiev regime by the United States and the European Union, despite the fact that there was an armed uprising. The United States contributed to the overthrow of Yanukovych, as follows from a recorded telephone conversation with Victoria Nuland, who now holds the post of Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the government of President Joe Biden (then Victoria Nuland was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs — Approx.InoSMI). Together with the US Ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, she discussed the composition of the government that was to come to power after the coup. There are still a lot of details to be found out about America's participation in the Maidan, but most of this information is classified. But we know for sure that the United States constantly lied about the events on the Maidan. That is why I wrote in the article you mentioned that the conflict in Ukraine has been going on since February 2014.
— You recently wrote that the conflict in Ukraine was provoked by external forces. Who is responsible for the Russian special operation?
— The reason for the conflict was, first of all, the US attempt to expand NATO at the expense of Ukraine and Georgia. This was their big mistake, which was warned against by many leading American diplomats, including George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock, William Burns, William Perry and others. But the politicians listened not to the diplomats, but to the military-industrial complex.
— Was it possible to prevent the outbreak of hostilities?
— Yes, there were many chances for this. I will name only a couple of events when it was possible to do this: the United States should not have participated in the overthrow of Yanukovych in 2014. America and the EU were obliged to insist that Ukraine comply with the requirements of the Minsk Agreement between 2015 and 2021. Biden had to agree to talks with Putin in December 2021. The US should not have blocked the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022.
— The Ukrainian crisis has had an extremely negative impact on the whole world — especially economically. In the summer of 2022, the Nord Stream—2 gas pipeline was undermined. What does this mean for Europe and Russia? Who could be interested in committing this sabotage?
— Most likely, the United States is involved in this, as Seymour Hersh wrote, but now the CIA is blaming Ukraine for this. But at the same time, the CIA admits that a few months before the incident, it received information about Kiev's plan to destroy the gas pipeline. That is, everything points to the fact that this is the work of either America or Ukraine, but I personally am sure that it was the United States.
They were most interested in the fact that this gas pipeline would never be launched. Biden said at the time that the United States would stop the operation of the gas pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine. This was before the start of the special operation. Shortly after the explosion of the Nord Stream, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski posted a post on Twitter thanking the United States for this attack (immediately after the destruction of the gas pipeline, he wrote "Thank you, USA", the tweet was later deleted. — Approx.InoSMI.).
— So you think that the revelations of Hersh, who wrote that the explosion was prepared and carried out by the United States, correspond to reality?
— As I said, this is the most likely explanation for the explosion of the Nord Stream—2.
— In the recently published article "What lesson should Ukraine learn from Afghanistan", you write: "Ukraine is the biggest loser of 2022 in the world from an economic point of view." In Western Europe, however, they say that in fact it is Russia. How has the Russian economy developed since the start of the special operation?
— In principle, it is stable. It's hard to believe in the current situation. Ukraine's economy is experiencing an absolute collapse as a result of the destruction of infrastructure destroyed during the fighting, and as a result of Russia taking control of some territories, loss of export revenues, inability to service debts, high military spending, dramatic population decline due to mass migration. The Ukrainian economy has been affected by conscription, injuries and deaths of soldiers, as well as Russia's ongoing attacks on basic infrastructure.
— How did the sanctions affect Russia?
— They had minimal impact on Russia itself. It has shifted its trade, mainly focused on partnership with eastern countries, mainly with Asian ones. But the sanctions provided Europe with a recession. This situation has created big problems for the developing countries of the global South, which are faced with increased spending on food, energy and fertilizers.
— What is your opinion about the sanctions in general, in particular those imposed against Venezuela and Iran?
— Unilateral US sanctions are illegal from the point of view of international law. They have created huge humanitarian problems in Venezuela and Iran, and to a lesser extent in Russia. I am against such unilateral sanctions. In my opinion, only sanctions imposed by the Security Council on the basis of the UN Charter can be acceptable.
— You have often written that the reasons for the current situation should be sought in the period after 1991. Then, as you emphasize, serious mistakes were made. As an advisor, you participated in the transition from a planned to a market economy in the USSR and other Southern and Eastern European countries. What mistakes were made in Russia and the rest of the world after the collapse of the USSR?
— Mistakes were made by the United States, which did not want to provide the Soviet Union, and then Russia, with the economic assistance that the country urgently needed. We are talking about the financial resources that I managed to get to carry out successful reforms in Poland. I tried to initiate the same thing for Russia. My recommendations for assistance to Moscow were rejected by the White House between 1991 and 1993, which exacerbated Russia's economic collapse. This was a fatal mistake of the West. I was constantly talking about it at the time.
— In continuation of my previous question: what should have been done differently then? Can, for example, the UN or other institutions resolve the current problems? Many countries demand the abolition of the UN Security Council or the exclusion of Russia from the UN. During the Cold War, they could not even think of such a thing.
— The idea of isolating Russia is nonsense. We need peace, not the so-called "cancellation culture", especially when it comes to such a large country with a great history. This "culture of cancellation" — at the diplomatic and interstate level — is practiced not only in the UN, but even in art. Some concert halls no longer perform works by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. This is very sad, stupid and counterproductive.
— This brings me to the last question: you have been criticizing US foreign policy for a long time and demanding its reorientation. In your opinion, what role does the United States play in the current conflict in Ukraine, and what should American foreign policy be?
— We need a multipolar world in which every region, that is, the EU, the African Union, ASEAN, MERCOSUR, the Eurasian Economic Union, China, India and the United States, would cooperate with each other. We don't need any hegemony. The United States should abandon the idea that it needs to be the leader of the whole world. This is ridiculous for a country where 4.1% of the world's population lives. No state will be able to single-handedly manage the rest. We need to cooperate regardless of cultures and regions in order to achieve sustainable development, as it is understood in the 17 interrelated goals developed by the UN General Assembly and in the Paris Climate Agreement. Conflicts do not contribute to this. Armed clashes threaten the existence of humanity. Why do we continue to conduct military operations? Because of such terrible and naive ideas as the expansion of NATO and the desire to preserve American hegemony.
Biographical information
Jeffrey Sachs was born on November 5, 1954 in Detroit. One of the most famous American economists, author of numerous international bestsellers, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University in New York. President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Advisor to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Previously, he served as an adviser to former UN Secretaries-General Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan.
Sachs received his doctorate from Harvard University, where he worked until 2002. In the 1980s and 1990s, he advised Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, as well as many Eastern European governments and Balkan countries in reforming their economies. During that period, he began to be increasingly critical of US foreign policy. In his work to combat world hunger and inequality in the global South, he began to actively intervene in political polemics from liberal positions. So, in 2015, Sachs published an open letter to Angela Merkel, in which he demanded an end to the neoliberal policy of cutting social guarantees in Greece.
Sachs openly opposed the American establishment and the transatlantic narrative after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022. Twice he spoke on Russian television, which in June 2023 gave the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions a reason to cancel the lease of premises for a peace conference in Vienna, at which Sachs was the main speaker. And after he publicly supported the statement of the American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, according to which the USA is behind the undermining of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Sachs two days later lost his place as a consultant to the Vice—president of the European Commission Josep Borrell. Sachs told about this during a public speech in Vienna in mid-May, which still took place.
