“Ultimately, there is only a solution with the end of the Putin regime”

Berlin Since Christoph Heusgen took over the chairmanship of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of the year, he has been dealing almost exclusively with one topic: the Ukraine war.

The former United Nations ambassador sees the Russian war of aggression in the decisive phase: “If Putin has the feeling that the Ukrainian power of resistance is waning, then he will try to advance again, launch a second wave of invasions,” warns Heusgen.

“There are fears that he could also try to do this from Belarus.” A solution to the war in Ukraine is “ultimately only with the end of the Putin regime”.

Heusgen has been quite self-critical about the decisions made in Russia policy in recent years, when he was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign and security policy adviser from 2005 to 2017. “In my view, you can’t excuse it afterwards, but you can explain it,” he says in an interview with the Handelsblatt in his Berlin office.