Heidelbeere

Finding some Darbo blueberry marmalade from Austria, I am thrown back to that morning at Schwechat when I was boarding for Kyiv, thinking that Austria had indeed become a bridge between East and West with dozens of flights leaving for Russia, the Caucasus and beyond. As such, it is not surprising that Austrian banks such as Raiffeisen are among the ones hardest hit by the sanctions with tens of billions of euros in exposure. With missiles landing ever closer to NATO territory, many people now blame liberal idealism for supporting Putin’s regime in the years leading up to the war. In my view, I think the exact opposite is the case, that it was rather the lack of idealism and a transformative vision for Russia that led us here. As I have pointed out in the past, just imagine what a difference it would have made if the Swedish defence budget since 1990 had instead been spent on student exchanges and broader socio-economic integration with Russia.