{"id":5338,"date":"2022-07-06T08:26:57","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T08:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/norway-toasted-with-putin-in-2019-now-everything-has-unraveled-news-norway-overview-of-news-from-different-parts-of-the-country\/"},"modified":"2022-07-06T08:26:58","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T08:26:58","slug":"norway-toasted-with-putin-in-2019-now-everything-has-unraveled-news-norway-overview-of-news-from-different-parts-of-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/norway-toasted-with-putin-in-2019-now-everything-has-unraveled-news-norway-overview-of-news-from-different-parts-of-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Norway toasted with Putin in 2019 – now everything has unraveled – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

– We will live together with the common challenges we have in the High North and try to keep the tension as low as possible and cooperate on civilian tasks, says Erna Solberg. – But it will be difficult to imagine any political initiatives together, it will be difficult to imagine major economic cooperation solutions with Putin in power. This is about the current regime, with Putin in the lead. After handling Putin for eight years as prime minister, she is now the leader of the opposition in the Storting. In this interview with news, Erna Solberg talks about how the Ukraine war has changed Norway’s relations with Russia, about her own meetings with Vladimir Putin – and what she believes has been the West’s biggest mistake against Putin’s Russia. – You mean a closer Norwegian political relationship with Russia again requires a regime change? – It requires that others with different thoughts come in – someone who can also acknowledge that this is not the way one conducts foreign policy, to invade neighboring countries. We must have a neighboring country that plays by the international rules of the game for how to resolve conflicts, she says and adds: – It is an authoritarian regime we are facing that is beginning to become increasingly totalitarian than it has ever been. VETERAN: Former Prime Minister Erna Solberg (H) receives news at her office in the Storting for an interview about how the war has changed Norway’s relations with Russia. Photo: Kristian Sk\u00e5rdalsmo \/ news Norway’s relationship with Russia has been through crises and scandals, but also some ups and downs since the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago. With Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, relations have reached a historic low. But there was a time when it was almost unthinkable that we would end up here. What happened on the road? Curious – and skeptical After a decade of misrule and chaos under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin took over as president in 2000. His major project was to restore order to Russia. In St. Petersburg, Putin worked for one of Russia’s most famous liberal politicians, namely Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak was removed from power in 1996, Putin began to climb the ranks in Moscow. It went fast: Putin first became prime minister, then president. In the West, Putin was for many an undescribed magazine. But the war in Chechnya left no doubt that this was a politician who was willing to use raw military force to achieve his goals, Erna Solberg explains today. – There were many who warned against Putin’s background. The conduct in Chechnya in particular should have been a warning to us – he showed the brutality at that time. At the same time, it became clear that the terrorism out of Chechnya was also very brutal, she says. Solberg recalls the terrorist attacks on the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in 2002 and a primary school in Beslan in southern Russia in 2004. – The brutality and his background from the FSB, or the intelligence, made one a little skeptical. But perhaps not as skeptical as one should be, says Solberg about Putin. RUINS: Chechnya’s capital Grozny was laid in ruins by the Russian war, here a picture from 2004. Photo: SHAKH AIVAZOV \/ AP with more parties and increased freedom of the press, especially in the big cities. – We met human rights organizations that are today banned or branded as agents of foreign powers. They talked about how they worked with documentation and how they got some reforms within, for example, the prison system. Although they faced opposition, they experienced support at the time. But in parallel with this, other developmental features also appeared in Putin’s Russia: – We saw some signs that people were moving from a democratic and more open society to a more closed society, with less opportunities to pursue human rights and civil society. – The West’s biggest mistake Barents co – operation on co – operation across the border between Norway and Russia in the north was long established when Erna Solberg took the step into national politics in earnest in the 2000s. But the very highlight of the bilateral relationship between Norway and Russia came in 2010, with Jens Stoltenberg (Labor Party) as Prime Minister and Erna Solberg in opposition. Norway and Russia then signed a border agreement on huge sea areas in the Barents Sea, the dividing line agreement. But this week, the president of the Russian National Assembly asked the elected representatives to reconsider the agreement – another sign that relations with Russia are increasingly freezing. – The agreement was a culmination of Norway’s relations with Russia, but we had already seen some of the challenges that lay ahead of us, says Solberg. She highlights two specific incidents: Putin’s speech at a security conference in Munich in 2007 and the war in Georgia the following year. – In the speech Putin gave in 2007, he talked about that Russian interests were not only within Russia’s borders, but where Russians lived, she says. – He thus defined security in a completely different way than his own national borders. INVASION: Russian soldiers on a mission in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia in 2008. Photo: STRINGER \/ RUSSIA \/ REUTERS And the following year, Russia invaded two Georgian breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. – Maybe we misinterpreted Georgia – I think so. The biggest mistake on the part of the West was to press this restart button after the Georgia conflict so quickly, Solberg says today. But why did it happen? – Obama needed to start again. New initiatives were to be taken. But it probably made Putin feel he could get away with things quite easily. I think one simply did not understand what this meant for lowering the threshold for Putin. It was very different in 2014, says Erna Solberg. For in 2014, Russia annexed the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula. Then there was a sharp change of course in the West. Hurt for worse But even before 2014, the situation for democracy had deteriorated drastically in Russia. In the autumn of 2011, Dmitry Medvedev announced that Putin would return as president after four years as prime minister. With that, all hope in the West that Putin would be willing to relinquish power disappeared. FRAUD: Tens of thousands of Muscovites demonstrated on May 6, 2012 for free and fair elections. Photo: DENIS SINYAKOV \/ Reuters Putin’s takeover led to large demonstrations in Russian cities in 2012. At the same time, politics took a conservative turn, towards traditional values, close ties to the church, persecution of punk rockers in Pussy Riot and aggressive laws against “gay propaganda”. The latter Solberg himself took up with Medvedev before the Olympics in Sochi in February 2014. – It was probably supposed to be a very jovial and pleasant meeting, but it was not, because I took up gay rights quite clearly in that conversation. I think there were some in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who felt that the bottom line was reached then, because he did not want a press conference afterwards. – It was very clear that what we have as our own values, was returning in Russia. Then the annexation of Crimea and Russian support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine brought Russia’s relations with the West – and Norway – to a new low. ROLE CHANGE: Vladimir Putin (left) and Dmitry Medvedev swapped places in 2011 – to furious protests from tens of thousands of Russians. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko \/ Labor The Putin Crimea mystery ended with extensive sanctions from the West against Russia – and the opposite way. But no Russian political change of course was traceable. – In retrospect, should one have reacted even stronger in 2014? – It may be, but it will be hindsight. There were clear sanctions, and many Norwegian companies noticed this by losing their markets. We did not have political meetings with the Russians for more than two years, except that I barely spoke to Putin during the celebration of the invasion of Normandy. Necessary cooperation in the north continued at a low ebb. At the same time, the war continued in eastern Ukraine, although it gradually disappeared from the Western news picture. And Putin’s build-up of forces on Ukraine’s borders in 2014 did not lead to a full-scale invasion. On top of this, Putin’s heavy military involvement in Syria – on President Bashar al – Assad’s side – also worsened relations between Russia and the West. Eventually, Erna Solberg as prime minister also had to deal with one of the most embarrassing scandals in relations between the two countries, namely the espionage case surrounding the Norwegian Frode Berg. The case was an important part of the backdrop when Solberg met Putin in St. Petersburg in April 2019. There were talks, dinner – and toast. – I experienced that he was calculated. I thought I was on trial, for consideration. It was not the man to sit down to “small talk” with, says Solberg about the meeting three years ago. – I felt that he was trying to challenge me. It is perhaps not so strange in a situation where we had strong sanctions against each other and the whole West. It was in the middle of the Berg case, which was before the court. THE LEADER: Vladimir Putin portrayed by NTB photographer Berit Roald in St. Petersburg in the spring of 2019. Photo: Berit Roald \/ NTB But in 2019, Solberg also talked about getting more cooperation with Russia. And in the St\u00f8re government’s platform from Hurdal, penned last autumn, there is talk of “further developing bilateral cooperation with Russia in the north”. – What do we not understand about Putin? – I do not think we have taken everything he has said seriously, says Solberg. – I simply believe that from time to time we have interpreted his speeches as meaning that they have been intended for a domestic audience, but that they have actually been more representative of his views – all the way back to this speech at the security conference in Munich. – Why did the West not realize earlier that Putin could be threatening to use force in this way to achieve his strategic goals? – Because in our worldview and head it does not make sense. It does not make sense to go into a war situation of the kind they have been in now, with the number of killed and the brutality they have shown to achieve what are really quite small things. – Becoming a pariah in the rest of the world, as Putin and the Kremlin leadership have become, does not make sense to us. MEETING: Erna Solberg met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg in April 2019. Photo: Berit Roald \/ NTB Ice Front After the invasion on 24 February, Norway has supported Ukraine with weapons in several rounds. Recently, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re (Labor Party) announced during a visit to Kyiv NOK \u200b\u200b10 billion in help to rebuild the country. And bilateral cooperation with Russia has largely been put on hold. The government already froze research and education cooperation with Russia on 4 March. On 17 June, environmental co-operation was “suspended until further notice”. – What has the war done to Norway’s relations with Russia? – It has destroyed many aspects of Norway’s relations with Russia, says Solberg. – It was a budding optimism, with business, exchange and presence. But it is not due to the war in Ukraine primarily, but it is also the arbitrariness of Russian politics. Many of the problems started before 2014 as well. – What does it take, specifically, for an approach to take place now? – I perceive that it is difficult to imagine that there can be an approach with a country led by Putin or his closest – if there is no form of international reconciliation where you manage to solve this, and where you actually see that what you has done is wrong, says Erna Solberg.
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