by Ludwig Hippolytus
The last governor of Hong Kong: «You are walking a tightrope. Putin is one of the most unpleasant people I have ever met, he was responsible for the KGB funding of the Baader-Meinhof gang.”
FROM OUR REPORTER
OXFORD – The image that has gone down in history is that of Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last governor, holding the Union Jack with the British flag lowered and furled on the day the colony was transferred to China. Today, after a very long career that has also taken him to the European Commission, Lord Patten is Pro-Rector of Oxford University and remains one of the most keen observers of global scenarios.
Xi Jinping just announced his visit to Moscow: what game is Beijing playing in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict?
“Their goals are confused, but as always they are anxious to ensure the continuity of the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. On the one hand they say that Putin is their best friend, on the other hand they are incredibly nervous about being seen as his accomplices: so they have to walk a tightrope. But complicity can take many forms: while they don’t want to be seen as open supporters of Russia, they have a vested interest in embarrassing America, separating it from Europe and undermining America’s standing in the world. They are in a difficult situation, which they have tried to cover up with their so-called peace initiative: but they do not admit that this war was started by Russia and that the Ukrainians will not cede any territory to Russia.”
Does Beijing also have internal concerns?
“You must be very concerned about your intelligence interpretation of what was going to happen in Ukraine: you must have had good intelligence, but the fact that you could not interpret it the way the CIA did and hint that what could have happened with the Russian invasion is a real weakness in itself. Maybe they don’t understand that humans would fight against any expectation of freedom and democracy: maybe it’s beyond their understanding. There was a huge intelligence failure on their part.”
You had to deal directly with Vladimir Putin: What was your impression of it?
“Putin is one of the most unpleasant people I have ever met. The first time was at an EU-Russia summit in 1999, where Prodi and I represented the Commission. That morning while we were waiting there was news of bombings in Grozny, the Chechen capital: so we asked Putin, he said he didn’t know and would ask. At lunch he told us that it was an own goal for the Chechen guerrilla that he carried exploded weapons along the way. But at that moment the authorities announced that Russian helicopters had attacked Grozny: the point is not that Putin lied to us, but that he lied to us even though he knew we knew. I met him several times and confirmed my first impression: that he was a terrible liar.’
An attitude that comes from far away.
“The more one learns about him, the more one realizes that Putin was no mere KGB officer: he is someone who started his craft in the 1970s as a KGB liaison in Dresden to the Baader-Meinhof gang (extreme left-wing terrorists) learned. : he was responsible for the financing of the Baader-Meinhof gang by the KGB».
A master of covert operations from the start.
“Even here in Britain he was compliant, although he didn’t kill people outright. There is not just the Litvinenko case, there have been many unexplained deaths among his critics: they die suddenly of heart attacks or commit unlikely suicides. Putin is a bad man.”
March 13, 2023 (Change March 13, 2023 | 10:39 p.m.)
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