On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent and author of ‘The Culture of the Second Cold War’. He discusses Friedrich Merz becoming chancellor and Germany’s pursuit of a ‘suicidal’ foreign policy, the negotiations to end the Ukraine proxy war in Istanbul and Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Russia. He also talks about the growing backlash in Europe against the increased militarism and conformational foreign policy, the campaign to blacklist him by the British secret service, the political West’s militant campaign to spread neoliberalism and the portrayal of any other system as ‘evil’, his classification of current geopolitical conflicts as a Second Cold War, why the political West’s dominance is under challenge like never before, and much more.
