[Music]
so
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[Applause]
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ladies and gentlemen please welcome the
moderator of the last session
of the day to elena lazaro
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good afternoon everyone and welcome to
this final session of today
uh i'm elena lazaro i'm the acting head
of the external policies unit at the
european parliament's research service
the european parliament's in-house think
tank and it's really my pleasure to open
and moderate this session because this
session
is the first uh vassal of havel
transatlantic dialogues
session so it's the first time this
dialogue is being held by globesec
in cooperation with the vasa library and
the idea is to
have many of these sessions in the
future not only here in bratislava
but also in washington dc in new york uh
and and
we're very much looking forward to
seeing this initiative take off
now today um we are discussing the issue
that is on everyone's mind we are
actually meeting as
presidents uh biden and putin are also
also meet in geneva uh i can say that
the panelists and i have been looking
uh for some signs of a press conference
during these past 10-15 minutes
so uh it is really a topic that is on
everyone's mind everyone's mind the
russia challenge
the eu and the u.s and it's my great
pleasure to have
four very knowledgeable speakers with us
here today
uh to discuss this topic and the various
aspects of
the us and the eu's relations with
russia two of them join us virtually
from moscow
and washington dc and two of them are
here with us today
in bratislava so i'd like to first
welcome andre cortonov director general
of the russian international affairs
council in moscow it's a pleasure to
have you with us
uh if if if only by by video
andrew weiss who is the james family
chair and vice president for studies at
the carnegie
carnegie endowment for international
peace in washington dc
uh welcome andrew and we have with us as
well alina kudzko director of globe sec
policy institute here in bratislava
thank you alina thank you also for
hosting us
all of us here today and ambassador
miguel zantovsky executive director of
the vasa havel library in prague
also our host in many ways since this
dialogue is also
co-hosted by the rest of haveli have a
library now before we get into substance
i would like to
give you a few rules of procedure since
this is a what we nowadays in the covet
environment call
a hybrid event which means we have our
audience in the room
but we also have a lot of people
watching from social media and from
their homes
uh in a hybrid manner so during the
session there will be
three different ways to ask questions uh
one
is in the room so that's the traditional
way we've always done things you raise
your hand
and we call on you uh you can also ask
questions online via the globesick app
slido you'll find that in your
application on your phone or your
computers
and if you're connected via zoom to the
virtual studio
you can ask your questions in that way
so please keep that in mind and feel
free to write your questions at any time
we'll take them up
at a later stage but now to the topic of
the day
the russia challenge where to now
it's it's no secret that recent and not
so recent developments have strained
um eu-russia relations and u.s russia
relations
um navalny's poisoning the unveiling of
russian involvement in
the 2014 attack on a czech munition
depot the black ballistic of eu
diplomats by russia in retaliation for
eu sanctions
the deployment of russian troops towards
ukraine
um incidents in belarus and in the
post-soviet space
but also russia's involvement in cyber
attacks and disinformation in the united
states so
there is a range of issues that our
speakers will talk to us about today
and look at um how russia policy by the
eu but also by the new u.s
administration uh will be dealing with
russia looking forward we're also
um coming into the third day of cemetery
we've had the g7 nato summits but also
the eu us summits
all make reference to russia i noted the
nato communique
mentioned russia around 62 times
if i'm not mistaken but there's also
been a reference in most of the
of the communique of all the communiques
we've seen
but just to hone in until today um andre
and andrew from washington and and
moscow
the two leaders are meeting so what's on
the agenda
what do you expect what is formally
supposed to be discussed and what do you
think will be coming out of it
and maybe um maybe i'll start with andre
first uh
so give us your thoughts
well first of all let me say that i'm
very honored to be a part of this
conversation and
i am particularly pleased to participate
in an event which is co-hosted by the
russell
uh hubble library in prague i was
privileged to meet vasslev howell a
couple of times in the early 19th
in early 1990s and of course this man
laid a great impression on me uh a very
a very wise uh and very far-looking
politicians uh
uh of uh of the very important period uh
in the transition
in central and eastern europe getting
down to the summit that is
going on right now let me say that of
course
nobody expects this summit to mark
a new uh a new reset
in the relations between russia and the
united states
uh not only because uh there are
disagreements on specific
issues like uh ukraine or syria
but uh primarily because there are
fundamental
differences on in opinions
on the international system on the world
uh on the future global world order uh
on the role of the united states and
russia respectively
in this system so this relationship
is doomed to remain primarily
adversarial
for years to come i and i don't think
that
a meeting can change this
fundamental however uh both sides are
interested
in managing this confrontation both
sides are interested
in reducing the costs of this
competition
and the risks associated uh with this uh
uh competition
and that uh relates primarily to arms
control
and of course uh we all appreciate the
decision of uh
the byte administration uh to uh extend
uh the new stat agreement for another
five years
but we all also understand that uh
the u.s russian arms control model
has to be reviewed and to be modernized
so the first decision which everybody is
waiting for
is a decision by the two leaders to
authorize their respective experts and
diplomats
and military uh to start working on the
new arms control model that
would hopefully embrace not only
traditional systems
but space and uh cyber and autonomous
lethal weapons
and prom strike and artificial
intelligence
no one really knows how to do that but
we at least
have about four years and a half uh to
uh redesign or rather to reinvent this
new
model a second uh uh i think on certain
regional issues uh u.s and russian
positions
overlap and sometimes even coincide uh
for example on syria they can probably
agree
on the uh extension of the last year
united nations
security council resolution on
humanitarian corridors going through
idlib
i think that they might find some points
of convergence on issues like
afghanistan
uh north korea uh yemen
uh and a couple of others uh and finally
i think
everyone expects that uh one of the uh
outcomes of this meeting will be a
resurrection of russian and u.s
embassies and diplomatic services
because
uh definitely the situation today is
clearly abnormal
but we don't have a ambassadors in our
respective capitals
uh we have uh our diplomatic staff
reduced to the sheer minimum
uh and uh the united states doesn't even
have the luxury
of keeping its consulate service in
moscow which of course creates problems
for all of them
haven't said that let me also emphasize
that both sides will have to make
statements on issues
on which they cannot agree but they
simply must
make a point biden will have to mention
ukraine
he will have to mention human rights and
uh alexi navalny
although he should have no expectations
that
putin can yield and can agree with the
u.s position on that
so i think that we should distinguish
between uh
issues on which they might have a
conversation of substance
and issues which are likely to be
uh mentioned uh just in order to make
sure
that they're not forgotten thank you
thank you very much and andrew i turn to
you not only your current position but
you have a long-standing experience of
working on russia issues on the national
security
council the state department what is
your reading do you share
any of that uh what what andre has
exposed and what do you think
president biden is really there for
thank you thanks so much to the
organizers for putting together
uh all of globe sac i'm really sorry i
can't be there with you in person today
um in general i'd say i've i very
strongly agree with
with what andre has just put out there
as an overview of the summit
both in terms of the you know modest
expectations
as well as the substantive agenda the
one place where i think i'd
say i disagree with andre just to keep
this interesting i think it's probably
better for me to
suggest you know where i i might not 100
agree with him
um so i'd say i probably 95 agree with
him the 5
is the fundamental nature of this
adversarial relationship
between the united states and the
russian federation and why
the adversarial nature is inherently in
putin's interest
so just to make this point really
simplistic
the russian government engages in a lot
of behavior
that is gratuitous and destabilizing
and so as my colleague at the carnegie
endowment aaron david miller likes to
say
it's sort of like in the old days when
radio stations had to announce at the
beginning of the hour what in the united
states was called station identification
you're listening to this frequency it's
coming from this location
and that's a formal requirement in this
case
a lot of what the russian government
does around the world is a form of
station identification
the crisis we had over the russian troop
deployments
in and around ukraine earlier this year
was a similar
gesture of how we matter we can make
things really unpleasant
we can do it in a place where we have
escalation dominance
and you and the west are going to squirm
we're going to make you really unhappy
when we do things like this
i don't believe the russian government
at this point has been shown to be in
control
of the ransomware attacks but that's
another good example of how
activities that are being conducted may
be at one step removed from the control
of the russian government
are making life in the united states
really unpleasant we had the
uh one of the i think most important
cyber events of my lifetime just a few
weeks ago
in the united states with the shutdown
of a major pipeline that carries
gasoline to consumers on the eastern
coast of the united states and i'm sure
everyone in the room
um who's old enough to remember this
remembers the long gas lines in the
united states
during the iran crisis at the end of the
1970s
so that was the first time since the
late 1970s that my own personal life was
affected
um by that kind of supply interruption
and it
stems from a ransomware attack coming
from
groups operating inside russia so
anyways i'm trying to say is that
a lot of the destabilizing factors in
this relationship
have been put there deliberately
some of them have been put there as a
result of very deeply held
core national security beliefs on both
sides
and that's why i don't expect things to
change overnight
and as andre says and here's where i'll
wrap up this is a long-term
problem and that the problem of you know
adverse adversarial relations between
the united states and russia
is either going to be managed well or
it's going to be managed poorly
and my hope is that the two leaders do a
better job of managing those tensions
but i'm not i'm not super optimistic
that the russian side
actually buys into that idea
thank you very much i'm going to turn to
alina in a minute but i'd like to ask
for the first slido poll to be
pulled up now uh so so uh
uh as you'll see in a minute on your
screens you're invited to vote on
whether you agree on the statement
russia poses a serious security threat
to europe today
and to what extent you strongly agree or
strongly disagree
uh on that and and while you're doing
that i will i will turn to alina
alina the summit has been mentioned um
the eu is not present in the room but it
comes on the back of a number of
meetings between
eu leaders and president biden in which
russia has
featured so how does this meeting look
from the eu perspective
uh what is the eu's view on russia at
the moment
um give us your views on that please
thank you so much helena and
thank you everybody for being here right
before we start and i started getting
notifications on the phone that the
summit is over
and the remarks are beginning to start
so i was afraid that everybody will just
get up and leave
but so we're very pleased that you are
here with us today thank you very much
for the question
indeed among europeans there is this
sometimes nervous anxiety that why we're
not invited and preferably
why not all 27 of us are not invited for
the firm but as elena rightly pointed
out
this summit is rather special from the
point of view that
probably unlike in the past it was
preceded by a serious round of
consultations with the european partners
so there is a strong support for the
biden's position and at least shared
understanding in which direction we're
going and that there will not be
unpredictabilities for european partners
during the summit
so i think everybody shares this
perspective or at least most of people
do
but of course this summit also has
unintended potentially
but uh very useful even though painful
reminders for european for europeans
the first reminder it's the same old
problem that we've had before is who
exactly is europe and who exactly should
be invited to any summit that is going
on
be it between the united states or
directly with russia or any other
countries
this also reflects the fact that
europeans
do not have okay coherent position on
russia so i would be very curious about
the outcomes of the poll that we have
today
but the second reminder is that putin
himself probably
does not see europe as a partner that is
worthy to talk to
for putin europe is increasingly
irrelevant and simply
is not worth attention say nothing of
the possibility of direct communication
at the eu level
yes there is still preference for
bilateral relations with the bigger
countries
but this is very different than having a
dialogue at the european level
and uh when we are talking about the
european strategy there is a lot of
criticism towards europe that there is
no long-term coherent strategy towards
russia
i am not that worried about the
longer-term strategy towards russia
in the end the eu is not that bad in
putting out big visions
and plans for the future what i'm more
worried about is europe's ability to
quickly
react to what's going on and the
situation in russia is changing very
rapidly
and i absolutely agree with andrew here
who was explaining why for
putin this destabilization is actually
the uh not just the light motif but it's
just the modus operandi for him and how
he manages to be successful at home and
abroad
before the summit a lot of people were
saying that we're trying to do
three things basically the first thing
is that we're trying to minimize putin's
unexpected moves and the second
we're trying to make his cost efficient
means of doing foreign policy a bit more
expensive
but for putting these two things a
fundamental for his foreign policy so it
would be
very naive to expect that he will
wholeheartedly abandon them and sign up
to his commitment that he will not do it
and the third point that i want to just
wrap
up with is again goes back to this
uh adversarial approach and instability
that russia creates
and connects to what andrew was
explaining the system is gonna be
international system is going to be
changing a lot as well
and andre mentioned that the uh there
will be a redefinition of rules russia
will actively be trying to
change the rules of the game and what
role russia plays in the world
any disruption in the system creates
opportunity for players who might not
have been as important in the past
and as we will be seeing more and more
attention towards china and the united
states the importance of this
unhappy middle-sized powers will be uh
growing in the future
thank you very much uh it's very
interesting reading
and um and i'll move to the ambassador
ambassador zantovsky because
uh my impression is from our
conversations you've been slightly more
uh wary of this summit and critical of
the eu's approach to russia so i'd like
to
to allow you to expand on this a bit
what are your fears and you come from
a history of of looking at russia from
this region here
so well well i'm not as uh thank you i'm
not as weary
about the summit as i was two hours ago
i mean the fast signs are
relatively good there was apparently no
eye contact
and no you know
embracing etc etc and i
totally concur with both andrews or
andres
that the expectations
from the summit are unil
and that the both sides will probably
deliver nicely on the expectations
but it's at the same time it's very good
that the two
two sides meet and that they can
gauge their postures and they
positions because especially with the
biden administration it's a
it's a new administration and after the
unpredictability
of the trump years uh we all expect
to enjoy a little more uh predictability
now
but what we should keep in mind is that
this is not a a topical situation this
is not a current event that
is kind of a wrinkle
on the relationship between the west and
russia
it has been going on now for at least
for seven years
since 2014 and
it's been deteriorating for most of the
time
and in many respects it
is beginning to resemble uh the
uh period of the cold war i mean all the
basic elements of the cold war
are there the human rights
differences the arms race
aspect the territorial integrity
uh aspect with ukraine and
other places and increasingly
also the ideological aspect as
putin is trying to reinvent some kind
of a
an ideology based on on
tradition and nationalism
and and everything that is not
western i mean it's not still communism
but
there is an ideological element to it
and
vaslav havel was a bit of a prophet
on on this because unlike
most other people when putin came in
in the year 2000 he was not as impressed
with
his nice suits and his possible german
as
many western politicians where he said
you know i've
i've known these people for half of my
life you know i've spent half of my life
trying to run away from these people
and and as the regime developed he
was quoted as saying that
putin's regime combines in itself the
west
of communism with the west of capitalism
you know the
the kleptocratic uh nature of the system
is is is really the west that capitalism
can
can offer and the authoritarian and
totalitarian tendencies
are clearly inherited from communism
the question is do we handle
russia how do we handle russia and
harval always
suggested that we should treat russia as
an adult that
we should not try to treat russia as a
deprived social individual where
of assistance or or help or sympathy but
as an adult and should
treat him should treat her accordingly
and
after all that has transpired
lately after my country and the united
states
and dubious uh privilege from russia to
be called the
uh ned rusjesvania unfriendly
uh countries uh uh
you know we we shouldn't bend over
backwards to
offer concessions to russia we should
demand things from russia we should
demand that it
frees its political prisoners and it's
no
not just andre navalny there are uh
hundreds of political prisoners in in
russia if we believe
uh vladimir kara musa in his uh in his
uh in his latest uh paper
uh they are the territorial
incursions direct or indirect by russia
to crimea
and to to eastern
ukraine and the important thing to
keep in mind is that we and now i'm in
the europeans
you know we have some tools to
er to put in play i mean uh
russia's trade with the european union
accounts for almost 78
of all russian trade
the eu trade with russia accounts for
not even 5
of the eu trade so you know this is
obvious this is leverage this is
leverage to be used
and if we instead of using the leverage
uh with the i'm
sorry to say that but with the help of
the biden administration are
going along with the nordstrom 2 project
in a situation where we do not need the
natural gas
we are walking away from natural gas
there are plenty of natural gas all
around
we're making a blunder that the icing is
hard to explain so
uh i'm i'm a little concerned for how we
handle the relationship
in the nearest future thank you very
much for that and it's a it's a good way
to lead into my next question which is
to to andrew uh and i i
two points essentially about the biden
administration's approach to
to putin and to russia um the first
being
uh as the ambassador said um russia is
demonstrating all these elements of
authoritarianism their suppression of
democracy human rights and
and president biden has made it the the
sort of
key point of his administration to fight
authoritarianism to work with democracy
so
so how will that affect president
biden's policy towards russia
in what ways will it be different not
necessarily from the immediate
predecessor but from predecessors and
perhaps their right second point
on energy and and nordstrom um
is that also a move to to reassure
european allies that the u.s and eu
are on the same wavelength towards
russia how do you read that
so i guess i i would question the frame
ring
of mr biden's foreign policy as somehow
all being about
the battle between autocracy and liberal
democracy
he clearly has four big priorities as
president
defeating the pandemic promoting
economic recovery
addressing racial justice issues the
united states and climate change
and then he obviously is seeking to
rejuvenate america's alliances
deal with the rise of china um and then
you know and then only then
you know do you get to these other
questions of you know this big
ideological
framing that you just used i i
personally find that
not terribly helpful in terms of
thinking about what
we're dealing with with russia i don't
see russia as an ideologically motivated
actor
i see it as very opportunistic and if it
were
if it were useful for putin as we saw in
early 2012
to become the champion of uh family
values
and cultural conservatism he'll do it
but that wasn't who he was
in the preceding period of his
presidency it just became a kind of
moment when
he put that shirt on and said i'm now
you know the champion
due to some broader trends globally
in the wake of the financial crisis and
the sort of attacks on elites
that made him you know attractive to
populist groups uh
around the world so to me i just see a
lot of serendipity
and opportunism as far as energy goes
clearly the trump administration didn't
do very much
to address russia's role in global
energy markets
i may have missed it but you know if i
had to think of the single most
important thing that donald trump did
as president it was a sort of
coordinated action
with the leader of opec saudi arabia
vladimir and vladimir putin to try to
stabilize global energy markets after
the pandemic in april of 2020.
and so to hear people say that you know
the republicans were you know
steadfastly
trying to you know hit russia on the
nose and undo
nordstrom all these things it's just to
me this is all very much in the united
states now
it's become a political football issue
um which is unfortunate
like europe has done a lot to promote uh
better interconnectedness to promote a
more competitive
energy market to promote a vision of a
carbon neutral future by 2050 those are
huge
changes and um you know on
sort of all it all being equal i think
russia will be a net loser
from those changes and you know the
russian government
has to figure out a better economic
model
than simply being a supplier of
hydrocarbons to world markets
um i don't believe that the north stream
two pipeline is a good project it's a
terrible project
it connects back to a long legacy of
german and
then soviet and ultimately russian
parastatals building all sorts of cozy
relationships um that you know deal with
sort of broader
elements of rush of sort of german
foreign policy thinking about how it's
better to be
interconnected and friendly with russia
than uh to
replay the movie from the 1930s and 40s
um unfortunately the biden policy
was made at the end of a very long and
contentious period of fighting with
europe
with the german government about
nordstrom 2
and a pipeline that was 95 complete was
handed to him on the first day of his
presidency
i i think he sees a bigger agenda with
germany
and a bigger set of global challenges
than simply
throwing his body on top of the the
train as it
as it passes over him so it to me i mean
it's a terrible analogy
i don't think the administration had
great options on nordstrom um and did
the best they could
thank you andrew and it seems one
speaker is leading me to my question for
the next speaker
which i already had for andre which is
about russia's economic model and and to
what
degree especially in the post-covet era
uh the economic
situation in russia's economy affects
its foreign policy choices so i'd want
to hear a bit about that but also given
the economy
are the plans of russia for modernizing
its military feasible and doable
well let me start with saying that of
course if you look at
public opinion polls in russia
the moods in the society are shifting
you can no longer use
foreign policy success stories or
alleviate foreign policy success stories
as a substitute
for approaching burning
social and economic problems
and this is one of the reasons why i
think
the russian foreign policy is likely to
be more conservative
in future than it used to be in the
immediate past
and it's likely to be more risk aversive
rather than risk taken
but people are looking for
changes in the economic system i
and the question for the leadership is
how to
balance change in continuity because of
course uh
vladimir putin has a ghost
in front of him the ghost of mikhail
gorbachev who tried to reform the soviet
economy
and uh as a result of his attempts we
saw
uh the collapse of the soviet union so
uh the question for putin
uh is how to avoid uh the path
of his predecessor and at the same time
to re-energize the russian economy
so far i think uh the methods that
the kermit is using are primarily
technocratic
for instance they are very focused on
digitalization
and it's an open question whether
digitalization
is a kind of magic solution for the
structural problems that the russian
economy has
if you look at the projections of the
russian economic growth
uh basically they demonstrate that the
russian economy especially at the
macroeconomic level is resilient
uh they are definitely able to contain
inflation
to keep their balance sheets but
economic
growth is slow uh it is not likely to
exceed
1.5 maybe at best two percent within
next couple of years
and russia needs much more uh
in order to turn things around it needs
at least three
four maybe even five percent of annual
growth
now finally uh the the question that you
raised about
the uh defense sector i think that uh it
is fair to say
that right now russia is getting
uh too uh close to the end of its
current modernization cycle
so if you look at the military
expenses of the russian federation uh
they reached their peak somewhere
in 2016 2017
and since that time we see
a decline of the
defense budget not a very steep decline
but nevertheless
uh there is no major increase in the
defense spending
i think that definitely for politicians
in the kremlin
uh arms control is essential because it
allows them to save money
and to avoid lagging behind in the
technological competition with the
united states
thank you very much and i noted you
started with public opinion polls and we
have just
uh gotten the results to our first slido
question so if we could have them up on
the screen
you will be able to see that 71 of
the audience in the room and virtually
agree that russia poses a
security threat to europe today 21
somewhat agree
eight percent strongly disagree not
surprisingly however
alina as i recall uh globesec did
a a polling of central and eastern
european countries where the results
were a bit different so if i
not mistaken about 30 percent of those
polled uh saw russia as a strategic
partner so this brings me to the
question how
how um similar is the view of russia
across
the 27 eu member states and to what
extent does that
allow the eu to have one cohesive
position strategy towards russia and if
you
uh expand a bit on the results of your
polls that would be
very interesting opinion polls always
have this
an opportunity to interpret them in a
way you find useful of course with
certain limitations but one thing we can
deduct for sure
is that there are significant
disagreements and when we are talking
about central europe
uh you can notice that depending on the
questions you ask and who you ask them
the answers seem to be incoherent and
you might think that there is a
computing error
when you're analyzing the outcomes of
the poll but personally
my interpretation for the fact that
russia is still
seen as a partner but also to the fact
that
for example if we take slovakia and sir
i'm picking up on the united states but
this is relevant for the discussion
in slovakia more people see the united
states as a threat
than in uh then they see russia as a
threat so this is also a very talent
statistic and a factor
that influences the way and the space
for maneuver for the policy makers
my interpretation of this phenomenon is
based on three factors the first one is
of course history countries in the
region and in europe they had different
experiences with russia
for some of them it's just some remote
country god knows where
which doesn't touch us that much so we
shouldn't worry that much for others
it's an occupier and a rather recent
occupier so it is only natural that we
will have very divergent
divergent perspectives of russia but
also when we are asking people
why exactly do you think that russia is
a partner or
why do you want to work more with russia
this strongly correlates with the
answers
that people give that they want to be in
between
the east and west so this in-betweenness
is very integral
of course not in all the countries in
the region but in some countries in the
region
this is a very integral integral way to
self-identify ourselves
uh regarding the relations between east
and west and when we ask people why
do you think so why do you want to work
with russia and at the same time with
the west people outline to reason the
first reason is the pragmatic one we
have strong economic relations we have
trade and that's important for us so we
just want to be pragmatic and forget
this ideology
the second reason that people say is
that we
underst we actually want to be in the u
and nato because support
to the eu and nato in the region is
still overwhelming over
70 percent of people say that we want to
stay in both organizations so
if you ask them why uh why what's the
point with russia they would say that
yes we want to be members but we
understand that western liberal
democracy isn't perfect
and we would like to improve it by
taking the best of both worlds
of course we can discuss whether it's
possible to take the best of both worlds
and maybe we'll end up with the worst of
both worlds
but this is what's going on in people's
head and of course the third important
issue and that's going back to the
discussion of the tools of russian
foreign policy and the cost efficient
tools
is the disinformation russia is simply
much better in
selling the narrative and russia is a
much better storytelling
even if the story that being told is a
fiction
thank you alina and actually this
coincides with one question we've gotten
through slido
from tom which is how much should the
west fear the russian disinformation
machination at play in the western
balkans an ambassador i'll turn to you
and
make it a bit broader than the western
balkans disinformation
and other hybrid
warfare strategies of russia in the
western balkans and i would say in
europe as well how much do they affect
public perceptions
of russia and and to what extent is this
something that the eu should be
uh have more robust approach towards
well it's uh i'll i'll
i'll come to it but before i do i would
like to make a small clarification
uh on something that andrew weiss
was was was mentioning i actually agree
with him that
the putin's attempts
at proposing a new ideology are
clearly opportunistic and that
he and the the russian leadership
does not believe for one minute in such
an ideology actually
if they did they wouldn't be sending
their kids to
cambridge and oxford and colombia and
and other places but in
real life it does not really matter
i mean the communist leadership in the
last 20 years of the communist
system did not believe in communism
anymore
then then the russian leadership
believes in the they
they are proclaiming today but if they
can
instrumentalize it and if they can
persuade enough people
to believe in it it's it's it's the same
thing it's
you know this is not psychoanalyzing the
the russians it's not about the motifs
it's about the policy
obviously on on this information
they are this is a very powerful
uh uh weapon in the uh
uh in in in the in their possession
because they can
uh there's a high degree of deniability
in using the instruments of this
information
and they are always denying the direct
responsibility and sometimes even
the indirect responsibility but
[Music]
let's face it the disinformation the
directorate
has been a part of the kgb since 1930s
no other intelligence service in the
world
has whacked at this for as long as the
russians have
so if they're good at it
we shouldn't be surprised but we should
also be
combating it uh with the means at our
disposal and that brings me back to the
uh eu policy and uh
unfortunately it's not like the eu is is
unified in
in its uh in its policy towards russia
certainly it's not being unified with
zavi's the
north stream uh project i mean
uh some people in our part of the europe
the polls
the balls
the ukrainians are livid
about this decision being
made not so much above their heads
as under their bottoms over the
over the north stream and and uh
it's it's it's it's a serious sign of
disunity
then you look at joseph borel in moscow
uh being played quite nicely by sergey
lavrov and
and and even saying that on some issues
we are in complete agreement
uh with russia like on cuba well maybe
jose borel is
in a complete agreement on cuba with
sergey lavrov but
here in this room we have a former
uh czech foreign minister uh sitting
here carlos schwarzenberg who's been
expelled from cuba
on uh trying to take up
uh uh uh supporting the cuban
human rights fighters and so on and so
on so
you know we are in for a serious talk
about coordinating our policy and
without it
i don't think we will be able to
push russia back thank you ambassador on
this note i wanted to bring up the
second slido poll
uh which is uh on the question of what
is the most important challenge in
europe's relations with russia
and to invite everyone to ask your
questions
via slido or those of you who are in the
room to raise your hand and while you
think about your question
i will turn to andrew for one anonymous
question that has been posed
via slido which is how concerned should
we be for a return of russian influence
in afghanistan
after u.s withdrawal
so the us administration has been doing
a lot
of talking with russian counterparts
since they came into office
about russia's potential role both
to avoid having russia be a spoiler for
the peace talks that have been underway
in the trump era
as well as possibly to seek some form of
russia and
either acquiescence or cooperation as
the united states thinks about
repositioning forces elsewhere in the
region after we complete the withdrawal
of u.s and allied forces from
afghanistan
this is obviously a very sore subject we
know
right after 9 11 that putin was quite
enthusiastic when
when then u.s president george w bush
asked him for help
in uh defeating the taliban and
rooting out al-qaeda from from inside
afghanistan
but after just a few years the the
russian government pushed very
aggressively to have u.s forces kicked
out of
their bases in uzbekistan and then
ultimately from kyrgyzstan
so this is an old issue where i can't
imagine the russian government is going
to be very enthusiastic about allowing
the united states
to station forces in countries like
tajikistan but but it's something
clearly the united states is exploring
um and i think you know it really comes
back to this bigger question of
does the russian government at this
point see
threats coming out of afghanistan as
sufficiently destabilizing and dangerous
for russia
or other countries in the region so much
you know is it destabilizing enough
that russia can park some of its
traditional
suspicion and uncertainty about us
motives
um that that i think is just still very
much a live issue
thank you uh i'm looking for questions
in the room i don't see any would anyone
else want to come in on this question of
afghanistan
of the speakers if not maybe i'll i'll
ask
my own question uh at the moment which
is i
the eu and the us in their summit
yesterday agreed to set up
a high-level dialogue on on russia
um so thinking about transatlantic
coordination on russia what should we
expect out of this
uh perhaps alina you would want to
comment on that i wish and you have to
answer
but definitely uh this is a worthy
indication that they both sides are
interested and
realize that it's important to have the
dialogue on russia and at least try to
align as much as policy
the whole set of policies towards russia
and here we're talking yes indeed about
sanctions or if we're talking about the
corruption that's also high on the
president biden's agenda
both at home and abroad and that would
be maybe indirectly but er
very influential in terms of the uh
trying to
change the russian behavior or at least
the cut of the russian sources of money
so this conversation is very much
welcome how exactly it would look like
uh i have no idea i
the guest investor yeah i i i certainly
think it's a good thing that we're going
to have a high level
dialogue and but we should the dialogue
should lead to
a clear set of
goals and demands of russia i mean the
problem with russia at the moment
is that it's almost in a position of a
rock state
it threw out the rule book the
international rule book out of the
window
and the least we should be asking of it
is
take the rule book back and and and then
we can talk then we can discuss and
that applies to ukraine that explains to
diplomatic relations to uh
uh to russian secret operations
in other european countries and to human
rights
i mean the thing that changed the cold
war
was the 1975 osc conference
in in helsinki in exchange
for recognizing uh
russia and it's the post-war
arrangement that russia was insistent on
in
exchange for giving respect to russia
that was it was also
insisting on we got the commitment on
uh on the human rights and
this commitment helped finally bring the
whole edifice down
and it's a good lesson to keep in mind
thank you um we have one more question
from an anonymous
attendant how might the deterioration of
russia's own security block the csto
affect russia's relationship with europe
and perhaps to broaden this out how
might
russia's own alliances and the change in
those affect russia's relationship with
europe maybe i'll turn this to andre
well you know that depends on how you
define deterioration
because i'm not sure that this is
something
which is recognized in the kremlin
uh if you look at the current
developments in
the uh eurasian zone
we see a growing cooperation between
russia and china in the security domain
we can see new arrangements
in the security field between russia and
belarus
i don't think that people in the kemen
should be particularly concerned
about where they stand in eurasia
of course i agree with with andrew
that afghanistan might
might become a serious challenge to
russia
and to its neighbors if taliban
accommodates some other terrorist groups
like al-qaeda or isis and they will use
afghanistan as a place from which
they can launch their operations uh in
the north
uh namely in the central asian states or
uh in the east namely incincian
and this issue will be definitely
discussed if not at
csto but at least at the shanghai
cooperation organization
uh my take is that it will be a
formidable challenge
for russia and its partners they have to
demonstrate that they can do better
in afghanistan than nato did but
if even nato lost the war
in a rather dismal way then it's hard to
imagine how another coalition can win
such a war with taliban so i'm not very
optimistic about what might happen there
uh but uh definitely uh right now
uh there is an attempt to demonstrate uh
that uh
together with china and other partners
with pakistan
in particular the russia can demonstrate
a different
approach and arguably a more efficient
approach
to accommodating taliban and working
with taliban
than the united states did thank you
andre and i'm afraid i've just been
signaled that our time is up uh
so uh and and as that happens more and
more issues are opening uh that we
haven't managed to discuss
but i wanted to thank our speakers for
their insights
uh for broadening up this field of eu
us russia relations which is an immense
one with a number of challenges
and perhaps to finish up by thanking you
and showing the results of the poll so
that we see on the screen
uh what the audience has been thinking
while you've been talking
ukraine and cohesion the most important
challenge in europe's relations with
russia
thank you very much to the audience to
the participants and i'd like to invite
you to actually stay in the room because
we will be
joining through the screens the maria
teresia stage to wrap up this
day andrew andrei thank you for joining
us virtually
from your respective capitals and alina
and ambassador zantowski many thanks for
being here with us today thank you so
much
ellen
[Applause]
you