Gorbachev and George Bush agreed to let Eastern Europe go its own way, on condition that NATO would not expand eastward. Putin was pushing Russia back towards a remilitarized stance, therefore it does not the whose fault it is, says Gorbachev. Is it not a good idea to have a neutral zone between the two? Do we really want nuclear weapons, Russian nuclear weapons, and NATO nuclear weapons to be side by side?
Commentators on the war in Ukraine seem to have come to a consensus: public figures have a moral responsibility not to challenge anything other than the Russian narrative.
This rejection of balance in favour of propaganda poses a problem for political thinkers like Yanis Varoufakis, who has been accused of 'Westsplaining' and being a Putin apologist in the last week alone.
To give this controversial conversation a chance, Varoufakis joined Freddie Sayers for a wide-ranging discussion about Western pressure on Russia and finding a space for debate in what feels like a binary moment.
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