The West is making a huge mistake in feeding Ukraine with weapons, Argentinian left-wing activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel has told the Die Welt newspaper in an interview.
“Now the Germans are supplying tanks again; obviously they haven’t learned anything,” the Argentine claimed, who added that he sees Berlin as being on the way to a new dependence on Washington.
“In reality, Europe has lost its independence, its autonomy. Europe is now colonized by the United States. It is losing its identity and control over its own decisions,” he warned.
Speaking from his studio in Buenos Aires, the Nobel Peace Prize winner called the ongoing conflict in Ukraine a proxy war between the United States, NATO, and the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. His comments echo the criticisms of many other critics of the West’s role in the war, such as French historian Emmanuel Todd.
“The Ukrainian people are only the victims,” Perez Esquivel told the German newspaper.
Seen as an icon of the Latin American left, Esquivel is often regarded as having his finger on the pulse of South America. He is personal friends with many of the left-wing rulers including those in Mexico and Chile and embodies Latin America’s distrust of the West and the United States, which is currently being felt through the U.S. government’s handling of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) would have been spared his surprise at Argentina, Brazil, and Chile’s refusal to supply arms to Ukraine during his recent trip to South America had he familiarized himself with Perez Esquivel’s thoughts.
Esquivel sees the Ukrainian president as the main culprit for the ongoing armed conflict: “Sending tanks to support a Nazi friend like Zelensky is dangerous. You are feeding a monster.” In the Argentine’s view, Zelensky is not defending his homeland, but rather sacrificing his own people to the interests of NATO and the United States.
“They are about to lose sight of their goals because this could trigger a nuclear war and the planet is in danger. The apocalypse will be caused by people, not a natural disaster.”
Perez Esquivel’s thinking stems from his past. While the West continued to do business with the brutal far-right Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983), and the CIA supported or engineered numerous military coups by right-wing generals on the continent, Perez Esquivel was imprisoned and tortured for months by military personnel.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his commitment to nonviolent resistance. Esquivel has retained this spirit of resistance to this day, defending left-wing governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua against criticism from the West, and speaking only about the “mistakes that they also make.” However, he also been criticized for not condemning the repressive measures used in a number of far-left governments.
