Amid escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine, WION’s Executive Editor Palki Sharma caught up with Ukraine’s political commentator Dr. Kari Odermann in Kyiv for an exclusive conversation.
Kari Odermann said the conflict with Ukraine has been going on since 2014 but the focus shifted recently after “Russian troops started coming in spring 2021”.
“There is war, there isn’t going to be a war and we hope the war does not continue,” she said. On the “million dollar” question: will there be war? Odermann replied: “the million dollar answer is there already is war.”
On the question of support to Ukraine by Western countries and the somewhat contradictory statements, Odermann said: “Intelligence is the ability to recognise patterns and there has been a long historical pattern of promises being made to Ukrainians and then broken.”
Watch: Gravitas | Exclusive interview with Dr. Kari Odermann
“If you go back to the mid-90s to the former US President Bill Clinton and the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine I think was the third most powerful nuclear power in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union and they handed over the nuclear codes as part of the Budapest Memorandum,” she informed
“Both United States and Russia had promised that there won’t be any aggression towards Ukraine, so a lot of promises have been made,” Odermann said.
Odermann said there is a “completely different” tone coming out from Washington right now and “even a different tone from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration are using here in Ukraine.”
On China’s support to Russia after Putin and President Xi’s meeting, Odermann said: “It was extremely interesting at the Security Council meeting in New York last week when China and Russia came out strong together and that’s because what the West allows to happen here in Ukraine than be used for perhaps by China with its Taiwan question.”
“It is interesting that in some ways China and Russia are going to keep cooperating at this level and will continue to have their differences,” she said.
On Joe Biden’s foreign policy and India’s refusal to take sides and the fact that it has insisted on the need for dialogue, Odermann said, “On India, a country which has an unstable border issue should also be following this very carefully to see how the international community reacts.”
“Whether or not Joe Biden has had a foreign policy win or not, let’s consider the fact that American domestic policy is famously divorced from its foreign policy.”
“What’s happening with Joe Biden has nothing to do with what’s happening outside in his actions.”
Odermann said President Biden has been in politics for over 40 years and has been familiar with the Cold War including the policy of the former Soviet Union which she said was a “benefit” for the White House.
Odermann added that each time the US administration tells Ukraine about foreign support it seen “positively” while adding that, “anyone who works in the media there is a way to tell a story and in the US stories are being told in a very tribal way right now.”
“Whether or not President Biden is doing the right thing or not only time will tell and it is hard to make calls on his foreign policy. He needs more time,” she said.
