Copyright politico
POLITICO: When you agreed to appear on the show last Thursday, were you aware that Sachs would be there, and did you expect to have to debate him on these issues? Calenda: Yes, I expected it, in fact it was an opportunity to put him to the test. I didn’t even call him a liar outright. I said, “That’s not true,” and he asked, “Are you calling me a liar?” I said, “Yes,” because it simply isn’t true. You can’t claim millions of Euromaidan protesters were paid by the CIA. That’s outrageous. And I was struck that the journalist who had previously covered Euromaidan said, “All opinions are legitimate.” Opinions are legitimate, yes, but truth is not optional. POLITICO: After that moment on live television, did the debate continue off camera? Calenda: He was offended, so I let him be offended, I couldn’t care less. I never make it personal. POLITICO: During the debate with Sachs, you said that one of the great mistakes of your life was having taken part in business agreements after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. In your view, what should Italy and Europe have done at that time instead? Calenda: We should have understood that Putin’s move wasn’t isolated. Behind it was an imperial logic, a strategy of reclaiming a sphere of influence in line with the Brezhnev Doctrine, neighboring countries must have compliant governments. That was a mistake comparable to Munich with the Sudetenland. Yes, we imposed three rounds of sanctions, which were useless, but we kept doing business as usual. I was the first to make that mistake myself. But it should serve as a lesson: You can’t keep feeding the crocodile hoping it will eat you last; in the end, it eats you anyway.
