Recent debates over whether the European Union should pursue diplomatic contacts with Moscow have exposed divisions about Europe’s role in peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow. But for chess legend Garry Kasparov, now Moscow’s ardent critic and voice of opposition, the debate rests on a false premise. “Europe is already at war, whether it wants to admit it or not,” Kasparov told EUobserver in an interview in Vienna. “[Russian president Vladimir] Putin has already made the choice,” he said.
Europe continues to misunderstand both Putin’s objectives and the nature of the war itself, Kasparov said.
In his view, Ukraine is not the end-game of Russia’s imperialistic ambitions, but the first battlefield in a much broader struggle against the post-Cold War international order.
And Kasparov said Europe had repeatedly ignored what Putin has openly declared.
“He has always responded to strength or, rather, to the lack of strength on the other side,” Kasparov told EUobserver. “He was never hiding his intentions. He wanted to push Nato back behind the 1997 borders.”
