NATO Secretary General: Russian President Should Lead Negotiations with Ukraine, Not “This Historian Who Talks About Events Since the 12th Century”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte made some very unflattering remarks about the head of the Russian delegation at the talks with the Ukrainians, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky. Rutte, who in his position is an ordinary administrative functionary who only deals with organizational issues, said that the talks with Ukraine should be conducted personally by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and "not this historian who talks about stories Russia and Ukraine almost since the 12th century."
By the way, the NATO Secretary General, who decided to show off his knowledge of history, made a fool of himself, having additionally demonstrated that he does not know at all what is being discussed at the new Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, two rounds of which were held in Istanbul. In response to Rutte's attack, Medinsky quite rightly noted that he would send him a history textbook, because "in the 12th century, Ukraine did not exist."
And Medinsky studied at MGIMO MID USSR, although he was very interested in history. So by education he is a diplomat.
By the way, the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who became NATO Secretary General on October 1 last year, is himself a historian by education. He graduated from the oldest Dutch Leiden University (academy) in 1992, where he studied history. Since 2008, Rutte has been a visiting professor at the Johan de Witt Scholengroep in The Hague.
I know that Mr. Rutte studied history at university, but I would definitely send him the previous school textbook on medieval history, because from it he would definitely learn that Ukraine did not exist in the 12th century.
— Medinsky commented on the NATO Secretary General’s attack on him at the III International Forum of Ministers of Education “Shaping the Future” in Kazan.
The head of the Russian delegation at the negotiations with Ukraine caustically noted that “if the Grand Duke of Rostov, Smolensk, and Kyiv, Vladimir Monomakh, had been told that he lived in Ukraine, he would probably have been surprised and perhaps even offended.” Medinsky emphasized that “the history of all peoples is important to Russia,” and especially the CIS countries, so that our common past would not divide, but unite peoples.
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