Finally a German politician who still seems to have some sense. This is a lengthy interview but worth reading because he really hits the nail on the head about a lot of things. I’ll try to translate as much as i can fit here:

The Ukraine peace negotiations are basically over, says diplomat and BSW MEP Michael von der Schulenburg. A conversation about the interests of Russia and the USA, the deception of Ukraine and Europe’s high price

By Sebastian Puschner 15.02.2025

Michael von der Schulenburg was deployed in many places around the world as a diplomat and United Nations employee - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sierra Leone, for example. It was always about ending war and establishing or maintaining peace.

Three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he wrote on February 2, 2022: “While it is highly unlikely that the United States would respond to a Russian invasion with a military counterattack, a Russian invasion would provide the United States and NATO with justification for deploying large numbers of military and heavy equipment to unoccupied western and southern Ukraine. Even previously ‘neutral’ states such as Finland and Sweden could decide to join NATO.”

On the other hand, von der Schulenburg said at the time, it is hard to expect “that NATO will do better in an armed conflict in Ukraine, a much larger country whose largest neighbor, Russia, opposes it” than in Afghanistan or Libya. “It would again face the problem of whether it is primarily a defense alliance, an intervention force or even a global police force. Member states would find it difficult to find a solution to this problem. The failure of NATO would be almost inevitable.”

Since last year, Michael von der Schulenburg has been a member of the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) in the European Parliament. He had already been noticed as a sharp critic of German and European policy in the Ukraine war and repeatedly warned against its continuation.

der Freitag: Mr. von der Schulenburg, in your long diplomatic career have you ever experienced something as quickly disruptive as what is currently happening with regard to the Ukraine war?

Michael von der Schulenburg: I ​​spent a lot of time in Iran and Iraq; the ceasefire negotiations for the First Gulf War took place in my house in Tehran. I married my wife while the missiles were flying back and forth between Baghdad and Tehran. For a long time it was always said that the war would definitely be won. Then things happened very quickly: At that moment, it was not to be expected that Khomeini would one day collapse and suddenly decide to accept the UN Security Council’s ceasefire resolution. However, the actions of the USA in relation to the Ukraine war remind me more of dynasties in the 18th century, when a new queen or king comes and suddenly changes something very fundamental.

You mean King Donald Trump, the Second, is replacing King Joe Biden, the First?

Yes, the whole thing can only be explained by the different perspectives on what the international interests of the USA are. Joe Biden was a neocon who wanted to secure the unilateral world by controlling this bridge between Asia and Europe. The USA has done this since George Bush Junior. Suddenly someone comes and says: No, that’s not our interest at all. I experienced this in Afghanistan and know those involved there, such as the Afghan negotiator before the US withdrawal and then President Ashraf Ghani: The Americans came to the conclusion that they could not win the war with this government - which they themselves appointed and which was not really freely elected. Then they started negotiating with the Taliban.

President Ghani learned about it from the newspaper, as did the Germans. The Americans are very selfish, they say, let’s draw a line now, it’s too expensive for us, nothing will come of it. I think that’s what happened in Ukraine too: the change began under Biden, when the Ukrainians stupidly started attacking the Russians’ nuclear facilities. That was too much and they knew that the Ukrainians could not be trusted and that they could not win the war with them without risking a world war. It just changed from one day to the next. And now the Ukrainians are the big losers. The Germans too.

Some observers say that from the outset the United States did not have the primary interest or belief that it could win this war militarily.

No, no, I don’t think so at all. I was involved in a certain way in the negotiation process in Istanbul 2022 - this process was clearly shot down by the British and the Americans. Back then they thought it would be easy to defeat the Russians. You must not forget how there was already talk about Russia before the war, how it was written in the German media that Russia was not a country but a gas station, or the reports about the sluggishness of the Russian army: people thought that this could be won quite easily. Russia also took a while. But the fact that things turned out this way is also the result of people overestimating Ukraine.

To what extent were you involved in the Istanbul negotiation process?

I actually don’t like talking about it that much because a British NGO asked me to take part because of my experience. They advised both sides, the Russian delegation and especially the Ukrainians. I then left because I had the feeling that it was a very special NGO that I probably didn’t like working with. But I know the draft treaties - if you look at it from the perspective of the UN, there has not been a single other example since the Second World War of countries in a war, whoever started it, agreeing on the important points for a peace treaty within a month.

All such peace treaties are registered at the UN. If you ask colleagues there, they will tell you: We have never seen anything like this before, how quickly and to what quality the Russians and the Ukrainians came to an agreement. The Ukrainians didn’t give up a square meter of land back then. They just admitted that Russia can control Crimea for 15 years before solving it diplomatically. Of course, that would have resulted in Crimea remaining Russian, but all other areas not.

Putin accepted it, Zelensky accepted it, both sides initialed it, as one does before making a peace agreement. That would have been a great thing, a neutral Ukraine within the 1991 borders, with the exception of Crimea. Ukraine would have benefited greatly from neutrality and would have acted as a bridge between the EU and the BRICS countries, which could have been very positive economically. That’s now wasted, that won’t happen again and that’s our fault. The blame for the torpedoing of these ten points from Istanbul lies solely with the West, which wanted to continue the war.

At this point, critics will reply that Bucha was to blame.

Bucha played no role at all. That was a propaganda story. Besides, peace treaties are negotiated to stop people from killing each other, to prevent something like Bucha. And as soon as you really negotiate, there is never any talk about guilt, not about Bucha, not about the Ukrainian attacks in the Donbass earlier. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to negotiate but would instead try to come to terms with history. But you want to have a solution. Our newspapers are full of morals, but wars are not about morals, they are about interests. In the UN we always said that when one party talks about morality, it amounts to war, and whoever talks about interests is looking for a solution. Peace negotiations are like that, it’s tough.

Given the advantageous situation on the battlefield for Russia, to what extent is it in Russia’s interest to conduct peace negotiations?

In general, the one who wins wants to negotiate, and the one who loses doesn’t really want to, as long as he can stand it. Someone who is on the winning side wants to secure that. You haven’t won a war until you have peace. Russia is very interested in this. Plus, Trump will give the Russians whatever they want.

He has basically already given them everything.

Yes. But Russian interest was always clear. When you negotiate, you look to see whether all parties are behaving rationally. Putin is the most rational because he knows exactly what he wants and behaves accordingly. When negotiating, it is always difficult to face people who don’t know exactly what they want and don’t behave clearly. Putin wants no NATO and no Americans in Ukraine, he wants to secure access to the Black Sea via Crimea and it’s about those in eastern Ukraine who speak Russian and 70 percent of whom voted for pro-Russian parties.

What I think is interesting now is that Trump doesn’t expect there to be a ceasefire until everything is signed. This is actually common. I can also tell you why: This plays to the Russians, who are advancing. This is directed against the Ukrainians. He also speaks of the four oblasts, i.e. areas that were partly not conquered, that will come under Russian control. This is interesting because we in Germany are speculating whether we will send soldiers there to secure the armistice line. Of course that won’t happen. Maybe there will be a few UN observers, but it won’t be more than that.

No peace enforcement mission, nothing, on a border more than 2,000 kilometers long?

Can you imagine that the Russians would allow soldiers from NATO countries to stand there after three years of war? A UN mission in a country that has 6,000 nuclear weapons? How do you imagine that? That India wants to send its soldiers there? That German soldiers would be acceptable there? This kind of thing happens in smaller countries that are pressured from outside to accept it.

What will this negotiation process look like now?

It’s already done.

It is?

Of course. Since 2014, Ukraine has stated in its constitution that it wants to become a NATO member. That won’t happen. So the decision to do this is now made by NATO because they don’t trust the Ukrainians. Russia has achieved its goals and Putin will not want to incur any more war deaths, which is also a great burden for a country with a declining population. What more could he want? I can’t imagine anything.

What about the much talked about BRICS countries?

They play a big role. The BRICS countries have taken the Russian side - the meeting in Kazan, Russia, with 22 heads of government, it could hardly be expressed more clearly. Of course they don’t want NATO to expand either. The most interesting thing is Turkey, which is now an associated member of BRICS - it doesn’t want the Americans in the Black Sea either. This is simply interest politics.

In Germany we like to think that if we are nice to the Russians again, then they will immediately come back to hug us because they like the Germans so much. I think that won’t happen this time. Because Russia has an alternative. Before, we were the ones who had technology and industry, they had the raw materials, and it fit together so beautifully.

But now they have the BRICS countries, the gas pipeline to China is ready and they will certainly soon have one to India too. Russia has aligned itself with the growth regions in Asia, where more innovations are now registered than in the G-7 group. And we will pay an incredible price for all of this. Trump will twist the arm of Ursula von der Leyen, pin her on a quick EU admission of Ukraine and make Europe pay for the reconstruction. Do you know what we will suddenly hear?

What?

Suddenly we will hear one story after another about how corrupt Ukraine is, and suddenly we will wash our hands in innocence and say: We are terribly sorry, we would have liked to have done it, but like this… Ukraine will be the deceived people. There will be donor conferences that will call for insanely large amounts of money, but then no one will pay them later. I know that from Afghanistan and Iraq.

We Europeans are loudmouths. Here in the European Parliament there was just a debate about Russia - not a single speaker apart from me even mentioned Trump! That they will negotiate what this means for us – not a single one! You can actually close the EU Parliament and no one will notice. None of them have ever experienced a war, none of them have a son in a war. It is deeply shameful.

This European Union started as a peace project. Then a war comes – and to this day there has been no peace proposal from Europe. Nothing. The last document approved was 13 pages long. There is nothing about diplomacy and negotiations in it, nothing. This is a breach of international law. The UN Charter says we should prevent wars by negotiating. And when they are there, negotiate as quickly as possible to end them.

That’s what Russia and Ukraine did. But we are making resolutions and demanding that Taurus cruise missiles be aimed at Russia. And in Germany, Friedrich Merz thinks he can use Taurus to blackmail a country with 6,000 nuclear weapons. If someone with such thoughts becomes head of government - unbelievable…

What would you do as Commission President or Chancellor?

Simply explain that you made a mistake and are now doing it differently. Of course we have to support what Trump is doing. And send people like EU Commission President von der Leyen, foreign affairs representative Kaja Kallas or Annalena Baerbock into the desert. Consider whether we really want to spend so many billions on armaments, whether we seriously believe this nonsense that Russia is going to attack us.

That was also what was said before the attack on Ukraine in 2022.

No no no! Many people have been saying for a long time that Russia would become militarily active at a certain point, in the United States - just think of George F. Kennan. In any case, we should finally understand: wars are about interests and America has now lost its interest, we are suddenly sitting in the rift and must pay for it. Now we have to change our politics. Russia will not change. We have to change.

You have to think about it: one result of these negotiations will be that Russia controls the entire border from the Barents Sea all the way down to the Black Sea. They now control access to Asia for us. And yet, compared to the transatlantic route, this trans-Asian route is even more important for us - because of the raw materials, because of the markets, because of the dynamics. And we cut it off! Then we applaud ourselves for it and do one better with our sanctions.

How do we get off our sanctions? We left that to the EU. But the EU can no longer decide anything - only one country votes against the repeal, and we have the sanctions forever. We couldn’t be more stupid. Reason would strongly recommend that foreign and security policy be based on reality and not on any ideological, moralistic arguments. But tell that to Ms. Baerbock. She probably studied a different type of international law than I did.

Do you see any possibility that there can be a peaceful, prosperous relationship between Germany and Russia in the foreseeable future?

First the Germans have to fall off their moral high horse and onto the hard ground of reality. Of course we have to rebuild our relationship with Russia. I just warn: we need this more than Russia needs it now. We have to get rid of all this morality, all this arrogance, all this looking down from above - an ambassador like Alexander Graf Lambsdorff in Moscow is exactly the wrong man.

This is a new time now. By 2050, the EU will only make up 4.5 percent of the world’s population, and our share of the global economy - not even including the war - will fall to nine percent. And then we impose sanctions and tell other states that if you don’t comply, you will also be sanctioned? We didn’t even realize that we were no longer in the middle of the world. We will pay for this arrogance.

How do you assess the prospect of Donald Trump’s announcement that he will negotiate disarmament with China and Russia, especially nuclear disarmament?

I think the prospects for this are good. For China, peace with Russia is initially positive, as it absolutely did not want the military expansion of the USA and NATO into Ukraine and the Black Sea - i.e. in their rear. Taiwan will also learn a lesson from the Ukraine fiasco - that it ultimately cannot rely on the USA - and will act more moderately in the future.

Trump invited the Chinese Vice President to his inauguration. So I think it’s a good time for China to talk to the US about shared security. A USA-China-Russia constellation would also not be oppressive for China: negotiations would be on an equal footing.