When will Germans, Europeans, those who call themselves " We need to understand Putin's " The German edition of Die Welt writes about this in an editorial on March 15.. There are only two options here..

Where are the voices of those “real politicians” who, until February 24, said that Putin’s threats should not be taken at face value: “He just wants to negotiate”? Perhaps Putin should be given Crimea, eastern Ukraine, a strip of land in the southeast. He wants something more? Then Ukraine could become neutral Switzerland or Finland.

But one of them listened to Vladimir Putin? Read his essay about Ukraine from 2021? The key message was: three East Slavic populations - Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians - are " “We will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia”.

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Vladimir Putin maintains a cyclical view of history, which Timothy Snyder, an American historian of Eastern European politics, called " In this Putinist worldview, Russia is a victim that must always defend itself against the dangers that threaten it.. There is no linear development in this story, there is only a return to an imaginary ideal..

The opposite of this archaic historicism is Snyder's " In this understanding of history, time is a straight line connecting the past, present and future.. "

Putinism knows no linear progress.

An argument that has been used during two decades of Putinism: during the Cold War, there was peace between West and East for 45 years; even in the busiest days of that era, Germany did good business with Moscow - Soviet gas went west. Conclusion: If it was possible then, it will become even more possible after the end of the Cold War.. This conclusion could have been true for the early years of Putinism, but certainly not since 2014, let alone 2022..

The Soviet Union also built its relations with the West on an ideology that can be described as the " Marxism believed in progress and change - in technologies leading to social change, to revolution, to a communist utopia.. Putinism, in turn, rejects such linear progress in its theory, for it there is only eternal truth, such as the connection between Russia and Ukraine.. Therefore, Ukraine - or part of it, in his opinion - should never be outside the Russian sphere of government..

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Germany also overcame the painful process of transition from cyclic to linear thinking.. After a complete defeat, the country abandoned the cyclical views on history and large territories that belonged to Germany for centuries.. Previously, Germany also lived in the illusion of the " Today, it is the amateur historian (fortunately, this time biology does not play a major role) who, with his blind adherence to archaic historicism, brings new suffering to Europe..

Historically unchanged goal.

Putinism is not Soviet communism. The analogy of current events is not the Cold War, but the Second World War. Whoever talks about Putin should not talk about Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but about Hitler and Stalin. Those who are now talking again about an agreement with Putin should see what the compromises meant for aggressive radicals who were focused on a historically unchanged goal..

For these rulers, treaties are just milestones on the road to " The Munich agreement or the Hitler-Stalin pact were only stages for the Fuhrer, obsessed with his obsessive, confused ideas.. The end justifies all means - including cynical betrayal and violation of the contract. The Minsk agreements of 2015 became such an intermediate step for Putin.. When will the Germans, the Europeans, the " There are only two options: sacrifice Ukraine or fight for it. Everything else is an illusion.

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Those who do not believe this should heed Putin's declaration of war on the night of February 24 and consider its compelling implications.. “Russia cannot feel safe, cannot develop and cannot exist if it is constantly threatened by Ukraine. ) The goal of Russian special operations is the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” Putin repeated for three weeks..

Putin is measured not by square kilometers, but by historical dimensions.

Demilitarization and denazification means: Russia wants to overthrow the pro-European government in Ukraine (denazification) and create a defenseless country loyal to Russia (demilitarization). For Putin, there is no scenario in which he would be content with part of Ukraine, and would allow the rest of its territories to be pro-Western. He thinks not in square kilometers, but in historical dimensions.. All Ukraine belongs to Russia forever and has always belonged, he believes. The compromise was the Minsk agreement, which provided a shaky peace for eight years, until Putin brushed these agreements off the table, knocked over the table and started shooting. The Cold War had rational rules - what we see today is not the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but the Soviet Union and Germany during the Second World War. The brutal brutality of power returns.

Time is working against Putin - is there a way out?

Yale professor Timothy Snyder has been doing research in Europe and Russia for decades, and in addition to German and Russian, he speaks all Eastern European languages..

His acclaimed 2008 book The Bloodlands gave Germany, which has been intensively making amends to Western Europe, Russia and Israel for decades, a fresh look at its crimes in Eastern Europe..

The book describes how Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s starved, shot, gassed or otherwise killed 14 million people in the territory between their great empires.. In Poland, Belarus, the Baltic States - and in Ukraine. Germany's historical responsibility is to fight for these countries.. And don't sign deals with a man who will turn Eastern Europe into "