“The EU has gone mad – it must be stopped,” says Sergey Karaganov

Alexander Kareevsky: Western Europe is becoming increasingly drawn into the war in Ukraine. Statements are already being made by our officials. Meanwhile, the news reports regarding EU’s preparations for war are raising more and more questions. How should we respond to this? To give an example, I’ll mention the news that the Germans have already produced 5,000 drones based on Ukrainian designs. It’s laughable to hear that, what Ukrainian designs? It is clear that the German defense industry is directly working on drones that are striking our territory. And do you remember the ‘Taurus’ affair? The Germans have made a clever move: they do not formally supply such weapons, and now they have apparently decided to harass us with drones, of which they are producing more and more. In time, defending against drones will become increasingly difficult. Of course, sooner or later a countermeasure will be found, but for now we can see that drones are far more dangerous than missiles, for instance. Although, of course, it depends on how they’re used. Nevertheless, the issue remains very complex, and the brazenness with which EU leaders behave, clearly feeling completely immune from punishment, suggests that a response is needed.

We have already responded. Sergey Shoigu, in particular, stated that there are legitimate targets on EU territory, and that the Ministry of Defense has published a list of the locations where these drones are being manufactured. And indeed, in response, European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper has already stated, and I quote: “The European Commission has no evidence of the Russian Federation’s claims.” In other words, in their view, we are apparently fabricating attacks on our cities, on our infrastructure, including civilian infrastructure, including strategic civilian infrastructure, and so on. And the countries that reported this, Finland and the Baltic states, are pretending they know nothing. Before that, let me remind you once more: they themselves said that “we saw something flying past here. We didn’t… It wasn’t heading our way, it was flying off somewhere else.” In other words, they’re playing dumb. And what are we to do about this? How can we make these Western Europeans see reason? Is there such a way, and at what level of confrontation are we actually at right now?

There’s still a great deal of news coming out of the Persian Gulf. It seems as though there is, and I emphasize this word, a certain easing of tensions, as they used to say in Soviet times. Moreover, there are a great many recent statements being made by Trump himself. It seems the Iranian side is also making a statement about opening the Strait of Hormuz. Incidentally, share prices are rising on this news and so on. But, in short, this is the situation at the moment; this is the picture that is currently emerging. Let’s return to Europe and, of course, discuss Iran.