Fyodor Lukyanov on Glenn Diesen's podcast talking about "Russia's Strategy as the World Order Collapses", yesterday

Fyodor Lukyanov is Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a leading Russian NGO think tank and editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, which is linked to the US journal Foreign Affairs. He reveals in the podcast that he has been banned from entering the EU.

“Ukrainian conflict and confrontation with Russia... it's not anything which actually interests much the big majority of people in the world. They see it as another... strange conflict between those white... former colonial powers.”

“Europeans believe that through this [conflict with Russia] they might... come back to this... central position in international affairs. They will not do it, it's... impossible.”

“Usually we do need a big war before countries are ready to sit down and... reorganise the world... I don't see it happening, at least... when we can't even pick up the phone and talk to each other then it looks very grim.”

"So it's not the frontal collision of big powers as in 20th century but something else but also this is a world war as well and that means that if we look at this from this perspective then a decision to launch the special military operation four and a half years ago can be seen differently than it looked at the beginning because at the beginning many people including myself did doubt whether it was necessary ... But having said that now, as we see, this is a part of the global reshuffle with very much violent means, without any rules of the game. And from this point of view, the Russian task is so to say to strengthen its position by all possible means available and it is not about defeating Ukraine or even defeating Europe. It's about the future positioning of Russia on the international stage."

The podcast is here.