SophieCo
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Russia wouldn’t endanger spy swap system with West by attacking Skripal - ex-Soviet mole in CIA
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Israelis and Palestinians alone will find solution, not let others do it – 20th IDF head
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‘Putin is a long-distance runner in politics’ – German journalist Hubert Seipel
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‘Japan should leave US nuclear umbrella’ - Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki discusses the nuclear deterrence
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‘Football beyond politics - shame some politicians don’t get that’ - Russia 2018 World Cup Chief on attempts to undermine the tournament
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‘Cowards fighting cowards behind computer screens’ – ex-drone operator Brandon Bryant on US drone strikes.
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‘US taking other nations hostage over Iran sanctions' – Ex EU-Commissioner Guenter Verheugen
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Spanish ex-Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos talks on Catalonia's bid for independence & future of the EU
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Former Italian PM Matteo Renzi talks on populists rise in Europe, referendum defeat and migrant crisis
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‘George Soros would like to invite millions of migrants to Europe’ – Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto
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‘Breaking up with the US won’t hurt Pakistan’ – ex-Pakistan PM Shaukat Aziz
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‘The UK shouldn’t pretend it is a superpower’ – Lord Peter Truscott
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‘Dangerous for US experts to be too sympathetic to Russia’ – ex-US Defense Department analyst
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‘Secure and stable Africa is in very few people’s interests’ – Eeben Barlow, the mercenary leader
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‘American unilateralism challenges transatlantic relations’ – ex-French PM
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‘No gentlemen in football when the World Cup is at stake’ - Christian Karembeu
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‘Cybercrime is bigger than arms & drugs’ – cybercrime fighter
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Fmr. Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki on the impact of Arab Spring
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‘Basically, we didn’t lose anything’ - Billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, Putin’s closest friend, on Western sanctions.
‘Putin is a long-distance runner in politics’ – German journalist Hubert Seipel
German journalist and filmmaker Hubert Seipel joins SophieCo to give his opinion on filming and interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin for his ‘I, Putin’ documentary and book, and Russia’s rocky relations with Western governments.
“[Putin] never gave any kind of direction, we were just there,” Seipel recalls his work on the film. Putin is "an emotional guy” and “a tactician too, and he knows exactly what he wants to transform or what he wants to bring over.”
“How does he argue, how does he behave and what is his interest,” – that’s what Seipel attempted to show in the documentary on Vladimir Putin. Seipel says he didn’t want “to build up a sort of a picture of an enemy."
The West has long underestimated Putin, who is “a long-distance runner in politics,” as well as Russia. “We still forget that Russia is a grown-up, they are not underage anymore, but at the same time as we argued in the 90s: ”You have to do this, you have to do that, and if you do that it will work” – this attitude never changed. Because we consider us as having won the Cold War and that gives us a kind of moral superiority.” Yet, such an attitude meets Russia’s “quite direct” response and “national pride, which tells you ‘go to hell.’”
Find out more in a full episode of SophieCo.