IGOR YURGENS: IMPORTANT PEOPLE ARE WORKING ON THE IDEAL PICTURE

IGOR YURGENS: IMPORTANT PEOPLE ARE WORKING ON THE IDEAL PICTURE. (By Aleksei Polukhin. Novaya gazeta, Oct. 2, 2015, p. 5. Complete text:) Editors' Note. - Publicly, Russia's political leadership is maintaining its tough stance, which seemingly makes normalization with the West unlikely. Yet certain things have changed. While a year ago, we felt and acted as if we were surrounded by enemies and dug in our heels to put up dogged and determined resistance, today our policy has a global dimension. Not only are we defending our national interests, but we are also offering solutions to the most acute problems on the international agenda (even if most of our counterparts don't like them). This means that we are looking for ways to resume our cooperation. Novaya gazeta met with Igor Yurgens, president of the Institute of Contemporary Development, to get the scoop on this process and ask about its prospects. ... * * * ... Question. - Just recently, it seemed like the conservative, isolationist position had clearly triumphed both in the establishment and in society. How accurate is this statement today? ... Answer. - It's 85% accurate. But 15% of the people will tell you, in spite of all the propaganda, that they don't agree with this, that we are a European nation, so we should stop using slurs, stop describing Ukrainians as Nazis, and normalize our relations with the West. We should return to what was called the Partnership for Modernization when [Dmitry] Medvedev was president. We should resume our strategic partnership on defense, economic and institutional issues, and resume our trade partnership. These memories are still fresh. All of the necessary documents have been written. All of the people who used to work on those things are still in the government; they still have their jobs in the economic sector of the cabinet. ... In fact, I really hope that this is what is actually going to happen. The sophisticated combinations that are currently being played out, including in Syria, indicate that while many aspects of our relations with the West - and specifically with Europe - have been ruined and cannot be fixed anytime soon, there are many other aspects where we can make things right and have a new beginning. ... Moreover, under Medvedev, Russia proposed a new European security agreement. Americans took this as an attempt to divide the West, to squeeze the US out of Europe. This is totally unacceptable to them. In his famous book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Henry Kissinger writes that a strategic union between Germany and Russia would be the worst foreign policy nightmare. In fact, such a union has always existed - first, between the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires; then, between Germany and the Soviet Union before World War II. I could also mention how [Vladimir] Putin began to develop closer ties with Germany when [Gerhard] Schr~20oder was chancellor. ... Americans didn't like it at all, and I'm sure they saw it as a potential threat, because with our combined potential, we could challenge the US dominance. China won't be able to challenge it in the near future, but Russia and Germany could do it pretty soon. ... Q. - Tactically speaking, what would be a good first step toward a rapprochement with Europe? ... A. - Let me answer your question by painting an ideal picture. The Normandy Four [France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia] would endorse an agreement to pull back troops and weapons for another 100 kilometers from the disengagement line [in eastern Ukraine]. As regards the political process, we would postpone elections in [the self-declared] Lugansk and Donetsk [people's republics] until approximately February 2016, when they would take place in accordance with Ukrainian laws but taking into account the very special situation in Lugansk and Donetsk. ... The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had become almost irrelevant prior to the Ukraine conflict, did a very good job during the active phase of the conflict with only 300 monitors. Let's say they boost their mission to 1,000 or 1,200 monitors, secure the disengagement of militias and provide political support for this pacification process. ... Germany is assuming chairmanship of the OSCE. This would be a first, because up until now, OSCE chairpersons-in-office have always been picked from countries with little political weight. But now, realizing what is happening, Germany has agreed to chair the OSCE in 2016. After that, the chairmanship will go to Austria, which is friendly toward Russia. ... During Germany's chairmanship in the OSCE in 2016, with gradual progress being made, Ukraine would prepare to host an OSCE summit where all the European leaders, along with the US and Canada, would come together and end the acute phase of the conflict. By that time, the West would have sufficient grounds to lift financial sanctions [against Russia], and the two sides would jointly start the process of rebuilding Ukraine.

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