Asked by POLITICO if he regretted the choice to work in Russia, Koolhaas shot back: \u201cIf I thought it was a mistake I wouldn\u2019t have done it and even now in retrospect I think it would be right.\u00a0We created a potential (in Garage) which is currently not used, but it was good to create that potential and maybe some day, it will be \u2014 that potential is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that \u201cdialogue with Russia and Russians\u201d was a more promising route to healing division between Moscow and the West \u2014 and claimed that following an American model of attempts at spreading democracy to the old East had proved flawed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been a disconnect,\u201d Koolhaas said, \u201cEurope wanted to absorb the old countries of the east into a larger entity\u00a0and it had\u00a0almost obsessive vision and aim to do this.\u00a0 But it forgot to seriously communicate with others other than\u00a0Europeans. I think we almost blindly followed America. We have become more and more negative about Russia and we have ignored Russia when we could have a dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed on whether he would engage with Russia now, given Putin\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022 and shows no sign of abating, Koolhaas responded: \u201cNot now, but one day when this [war] is over. There are ways to talk to Russians without only talking to Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked by POLITICO if he regretted the choice to work in Russia, Koolhaas shot back: \u201cIf I thought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,332,9322,18111,3053,16,15,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-103946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-russian-politics","14":"tag-society-and-culture","15":"tag-the-netherlands","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114512773119232704","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}