Book. Yes, the awakening was slow. It took the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops in February 2022 for a turning point to finally occur in the relationship between the democracies and the regime of Vladimir Putin. Twenty years of procrastination and compromise, since the Kremlin chief came to power in 2000, preceded this turning point, recalls Raphaël Glucksmann in his recent book The Great Showdown (Allary Editions, 185 pages, 19.90 euros). European elites, he writes, have “failed in their mission through greed or naivety, through the cult of profit or through the religion of comfort”the leaders remained “deaf to warnings, blind to facts, they have led us to the edge of the abyss. »
The MEP (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats) occupies a place of choice to draw up this implacable indictment: a year after being elected in 2019, he is at the origin of the creation of the Special Commission on foreign interference in the All Democratic Processes of the European Union, including Disinformation (INGE), of which he is Chairman. Planned for a year, then renewed, the mission of this commission was extended, in February, to issues of corruption and transparency after the “Qatargate” scandal – a vast operation of embezzlement within the European Parliament for the benefit of Qatar.
“Romantic Illusion”
Neither this last affair nor “Caviar diplomacy”, the name given to large-scale maneuvers to buy the good graces of European officials for the benefit, this time, of Azerbaijan, however equal “the penetration and corruption of European elites” launched by Vladimir Putin. Former Stasi agent converted into an economic predator, close to the Russian leader, whom he knew very early on, the German Matthias Warnig played a key role in this area, by introducing Gerhard Schröder into the circle of “golden pensions “, organized by Russia with a lot of seats distributed in the boards of directors of its powerful hydrocarbon groups.
The door thus opened by the former German Chancellor, dozens of leaders of the Old Continent will rush in after him. Almost no country is spared. But what shocks Raphaël Glucksmann even more is not so much the corruption as the blindness of Western leaders. Most “have not touched a euro (…), they are neither openly pro-Russian nor actually pro-Putin”, they blinded themselves. In France, in particular, “the romantic illusion of a ‘privileged relationship’ with Putin has passed from president to president, with the notable exception of François Hollande”.
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