Georg Spöttle arrived in Szeged on Thursday at the invitation of the Civil Unity Forum The security policy expert gave a lecture at the Dóm Visitor Center, before which he was interviewed by a member of the Délmagyar news portal. The main topic was, of course, the war raging next door.
Georg Spöttle said that the Russian-Ukrainian war affects everyone, it is somewhere far away, but still close.
"For example, if we go to the store, we can feel the effects of wartime inflation," he said.
The security policy expert also spoke about the fact that everything, down to something as small as mason jars, was affected by the armed conflict, since a lot of things came from Ukraine. The war affected everything from major car manufacturers to agricultural products.
– Then came the sanctions, the arms shipments, military vehicles, and the situation is not improving. We just have a bad feeling, especially when we receive increasingly worrying news about the US, China, Brussels triangle drifting towards war. Is there still hope to avoid the next world war? Should we buy a can or a big sigh of relief? asked the expert, which he answered.
According to him, the armed conflict has dragged on until now only because of Western arms shipments, and it will continue to drag on. He noted that at first it was not clear how much weapons the United States and other countries were willing to give to the Ukrainians, so it was impossible to guess how long the armed conflict would last.
– The Ukrainian army has received howitzers and heavy artillery weapons, with which it can sustain itself for the time being, but its losses are increasing. 135,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died so far, not to mention the millions of people who fled the country, he reminded.
According to Georg Spöttle, however, there may still be some hope that the war will end, even if there are sad reasons for this.
He said that the Ukrainian people may be overcome by war fatigue due to the huge losses and that so many soldiers will die that there will slowly be no one left to fight on the Ukrainian side. In addition, it is also conceivable that the Western powers will also reduce their support for Ukraine and try to get Ukrainian President Zelensky to sit down at the negotiating table with Vladimir Putin.
He assessed the European Union's sanctions policy as not harming the Russians at all, compared to the EU member states. Russia - if not to the European market - was able to sell the extracted natural gas and crude oil. Energy carriers were purchased by India, China and Pakistan. And the gas arriving in the Union by ships costs five times more than that of Russia.
Source: delmagyar.hu
Photos: Sándor Gémes
