General Petr Pelz: “The West wanted to weaken Russia, but, on the contrary, strengthened it”

The former head of Czech military intelligence, General Petr Pelz (photo), told Radio Universum how the West was involved in fomenting a devastating war in Ukraine. First, the West supported the coup d'etat in Ukraine, which led to the secession of Crimea and two separatist republics in the east of the country. Then the West de facto supported Ukraine in its failure to comply with the Minsk agreements, which were supposed to put an end to the bloody civil conflict. He said: “A few months ago, Angela Merkel and François Hollande, then President of France, and Petro Poroshenko (ex-President of Ukraine) said that this was really just some kind of trap for Putin so that Ukraine could arm itself well. In addition, after the Russian invasion in February, when an agreement on a cessation of hostilities lay at the turn of March and April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson forced Kyiv to abandon peace negotiations.

Here are some key quotes from that interview:

- About three years ago I wrote an article in which I consider mainstream Western media to be the biggest security threat to the world today. Because let's look at what happened when the Vietnam War was on. One can argue about whether it was justified or not, but today, even in the United States, the opinion absolutely dominates that it was an unjustified war, and even stupid. But then I thought that no, it's good that the Americans opposed the Soviet Union somewhere. But today I don't want to judge it anymore. But then the media played the role they were supposed to play: someone was for, supported the government, someone was against it, and someone was absolutely violently against it. And what do we see today? Where are the left-wing activists who have traditionally always been against the war? Where are they?

- Today Ukraine is financially and materially supported by the West, and as a state it almost does not exist anymore. I do not know how many tens of percent of the Ukrainian industry does not work. And yet we cannot seriously think that by doing so we are helping them? For God's sake!

- Great Britain sends depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine. Maybe more Russian soldiers will die, but these weapons leave a radioactive cloud in place, and then ugly children are born there, people have a higher incidence of cancer, and so on. We have seen this in Iraq and Yugoslavia. We are unlikely to help Ukraine much, but deformed children will be born there, and Ukrainians will die of cancer. Are we helping them?

- Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries. And the same thing happened in Afghanistan, where President Ashraf Ghani was running around with plastic bags filled with dollars.

- How should we, the Czech Republic, approach this war and what should we do now? It is difficult to answer this question, because the whole of Europe – NATO, the European Union – is built in such a way that it is difficult for us to do something essentially different, contrary to common policy. We cannot object if we want to be in both of these organizations as a strong and reliable member and partner. The Hungarians are trying to do something on their own. Let's look at Austria, which is not in NATO, but in the European Union – after all, at least a little more independent policy. Of course, we are not in such a position, and we do not have the strength to go our own way. We must comply to a large extent with contractual obligations and expectations. True, we should not be completely sycophants. Perhaps, in this situation, this would be enough.

- Russia has changed its initially pro-Western policy since the 1990s, when the West began to pursue a policy of weakening Russia, and that Ukraine and Georgia should join NATO... Then Western states, including European ones, always had contacts with Russia. Relations never stopped, and things like now never happened: the ban on Tchaikovsky, the exhibition of Russian cats was banned… These are unbelievable things, and it offends me, because Russia was initially relatively pro-Western before we turned it into a country that goes to war. They had a democracy, albeit a specific one. It's just that in Russia there is a specific social system, in China too. There is a specific system in the USA, in Spain or in Greece, i.e. in countries with a different cultural and historical background. So why is the US still not negotiating with Russia? Today, even according to the words of various people whom I read and listen to on the Internet, it seems that there are no contacts at all, except for some special military channels, maybe somewhere in Syria...

- Putin first tried to have all sorts of contacts with the West, which worked from the very beginning. But then a policy began in the West, which consisted in the fact that Russia had to be weakened as much as possible. In 2008, at the NATO summit, the Americans came up with the idea that both Ukraine and Georgia should be in NATO. And right there in place of her block both the French and the Germans fought. And it was then that the current CIA director, William Burns, who was ambassador in Moscow, told the headquarters in Washington: “I have not yet met a person in Russia who would hold a different opinion that it is absolutely unacceptable for Russia to have Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. Even among the leaders of the opposition, I have not met anyone who would consider this something not only correct, but also acceptable for Russia.” After that, Russia became very cautious, began to assert itself more.

- The West wanted to weaken Russia, but, on the contrary, strengthened it. But he destroyed the buffer Ukraine. The Russians produce a lot of weapons and they were able to arm themselves. The situation completely changed when, under the Soviet Union in the 1970s, less advanced weapons were replaced by their quantity. Now Russia produces some weapons, especially supersonic missiles and the like, of very high quality. And now they are moving on to mass production of tanks. They also changed the formation of troops from the brigade type, which was a light, not very numerous army, and again returned to the divisional type of the times of the Soviet Union. And thus we turn Russia into a military monster.

- The sanctions that we, like the West, began to impose against Russia were, firstly, in many respects illegal from the point of view of international law, and, secondly, completely stupid. We fail to understand that Russia is the largest country in the world with the greatest natural wealth. There is such a history of the Russian people that they will live in dugouts just to protect their country, and we want to harm them by taking McDonald's out of Russia?.. These are funny thoughts. Maybe we harm Russia in this way? Maybe we are weakening it a lot? Well, on the contrary, we made it stronger.

- We have driven China into the arms of Russia, and I consider this alliance an absolutely invincible tandem if we do not use nuclear weapons against it. Indeed, we have driven Russia and China into an incredibly close relationship. Poor Nixon must be rolling over in his grave. And on top of that, India, the Middle East and Iran are joining to a large extent.

- Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries such as Syria have stepped up. This is how we strengthened Russia. At first, we wanted to weaken it, but went for strengthening, and we destroyed the buffer Ukraine. So we "helped" each other.

- We do not know what the Ukrainian government thinks, including President Zelensky. But I think it's rather uninteresting. What matters is what some key group in Washington thinks, and what Russia thinks. And I don't know what Russia thinks. You need to listen and read very carefully what President Putin or Lavrov say, because they really communicate their real interests. When they say that they went to Ukraine with the idea that it needs to be demilitarized and denazified, then demilitarization is quite understandable, that is, to deal with the Ukrainian armed forces. Denazification is a bit more complicated.

- Do we think today that Ukraine is capable of returning Crimea to Ukrainians? This is an absurd idea. It's such a mess. I consider Russia's withdrawal from Crimea absolutely unrealistic.

…These are very interesting confessions of the chief of military intelligence of a European country, who perfectly understands what policy the Atlantic leaders are pursuing, and how false this policy is.

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