“A historical experience repeats itself in the third decade of the 21st century. Once again, anti-European, anti-democratic, and anti-humanitarian forces, gathered around Vladimir Putin, the war criminal in the Kremlin, are trying to restore a Moscow empire.”
Zurich
Europe is at a turning point according to Ursula von der Leyen’s message on the state of the EU, delivered in September 2023. Can it really be true? Let the choice of words be a matter of taste. Von der Leyen‘s speech in Strasbourg mainly dealt with climate problems, food problems, money problems, and other difficult-to-manage matters, mostly of a technical nature and therefore solvable. Dutifully and correctly, the EU president declared almost all of Europe to be doing well.
Critics of the Union can whine and complain as they please. The fact is that half a billion Europeans, living on the western promontory of the Asian landmass, live so well and so far, so safely that the majority of the globe’s remaining seven billion people can only dream of the same.
Precisely in this state of relative happiness lies perhaps Europe’s only existential problem, which we tend to forget, but which fascist Russia reminds us of with its war in Ukraine. Since Antiquity, people coming from outside have tried again and again to penetrate the European sea. An early example is the Cimbri, who crossed the Alps in the second century before our era, after which the Romans wiped them out on the Raudi Fields between Milan and Turin. Vandals, Moors, Mongols, and others were to follow. A Russian ambition was and is the Slavic-Orthodox empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
This historical experience repeats itself in the third decade of the 21st century. Once again, anti-European, anti-democratic, and anti-humanitarian forces, gathered around Vladimir Putin, the war criminal in the Kremlin, are trying to restore a Muscovite empire. The immediate remedy is the war against Ukraine, the bloodiest and most destructive conflict in Europe since World War II. In the background, an alliance of often extremely unpleasant dictatorships is forming, ranging from China and North Korea over Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to Latin America, so far a little crookedly organized under the name of the Global South and characterized by so many conflicting interests that the undertaking can seem curious. But that there is danger afoot, no one needs to be in doubt, not even the so-called philosophers, among them quite a few in Denmark, who with their demands for a so-called peace arrangement in Ukraine are Putin’s errands.
As such, there is nothing new in the Russian attack on Ukraine. The government in Copenhagen then acts when it strengthens our defenses and sends advanced weapons such as Harpoon missiles and F-16 fighters to Ukraine: Denmark’s security begins in Eastern Europe.
The faster and the more effectively the West supplies the Ukrainians with weapons, money and other means, the faster they can win the war that a barbaric thinking and acting Russia has inflicted on them, and thus secure both their own country and the rest of Europe. In his speech on the state of the union, Von der Leyen was sober, bordering on dry. Well, the same. Next year, the elections to the EU Parliament await, then for all of us the fateful presidential and congressional elections in the USA.
Europe is not at a turning point, but rather facing a re-examination of its history. The time is not for pathos or poetry and certainly not for naivety.
Author: Per Nyholm
Danish journalist since 1960, based in Austria, columnist and foreign correspondent at the liberal Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. This text was translated and adapted for The Ukrainian Review by Stanislav Kinka.
Per Nyholm´s latest book, “Journeys in the Land of Blood” (Barcelona and Copenhagen, 2023), is freely available to any serious Ukrainian publisher, who might want to publish it.
