Requested by POLITICO if he regretted the selection to work in Russia, Koolhaas shot again: “If I assumed it was a mistake I wouldn’t have executed it and even now on reflection I believe it could be proper. We created a possible (in Storage) which is at present not used, nevertheless it was good to create that potential and possibly some day, it will likely be — that potential remains to be there.”
He added that “dialogue with Russia and Russians” was a extra promising path to therapeutic division between Moscow and the West — and claimed that following an American mannequin of makes an attempt at spreading democracy to the outdated East had proved flawed.
“There was a disconnect,” Koolhaas mentioned, “Europe needed to soak up the outdated international locations of the east into a bigger entity and it had nearly obsessive imaginative and prescient and intention to do that. Nevertheless it forgot to noticeably talk with others aside from Europeans. I believe we nearly blindly adopted America. Now we have turn into an increasing number of damaging about Russia and we’ve got ignored Russia once we may have a dialogue.”
Pressed on whether or not he would interact with Russia now, given Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that started in February 2022 and exhibits no signal of abating, Koolhaas responded: “Not now, however at some point when this [war] is over. There are methods to speak to Russians with out solely speaking to Putin.”
