During the Cold War, under the impression of the building of the Berlin Wall, the concept of “change through rapprochement” arose in the 1960s, initiated by the social democrats Egon Bahr and Willy Brandt.

It launched a new Ostpolitik in dealing with the GDR, but was also intended to present a security concept for Europe in general and also offer suggestions for solving international conflicts.

In 1963, Egon Bahr made the concept the subject of a speech at the Protestant Academy in Tutzing.

“Approximation” has often been interpreted in a reduced way over the course of time: in the view and politics of the economy-driven West, “change through rapprochement” became “trade through change”.

To a certain extent, this reduced idea was not just an economically, but also a morally motivated idea – to enable change through trade in the Eastern Bloc countries and generally in autocratic, dictatorial and tyrannical regimes.

With the export and, in return, with the import of goods, it was hoped that one's own values ​​would also be exported en passant and, in the medium or long term, ensure a change towards democracy.

This idea proved partly successful and partly unsuccessful.

Putin has been silencing opposition figures for a long time

"Change through trade" - this idea can only be successful if there is a certain amount of good will among all those involved.

And if there is also an inhibition about wanting to “solve” conflicts of interest through violence and war.

And if the other person is open to developing into a democratic society based on the rule of law.

Anyone who shares this minimum consensus is still not a democrat and does not yet uphold Western values.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long since said goodbye to this minimal consensus, if he ever stuck to it – I guess we were all too naïve and ignored the clear signs that Putin was abandoning this minimal consensus.

Even before the massive attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he repeatedly violated international law, the United Nations Charter and human rights, not only in the Donbass region of Ukraine, not only in Crimea and with her Annexation 2014, but also with state terrorist files in England (2018 in Salisbury on Sergei Skripal with the nerve agent Novichok) and Germany (2019 in Berlin Selimkhan Changoshvili was shot dead by an agent of the Russian secret service FSB), for which he is very likely to be responsible .

There is also the well-known case of the Russian politician Alexej Navalnyj, who was the victim of an attack with nerve agents in 2020 and is now imprisoned.

Putin has been silencing members of the opposition for a long time – literally, too, he has them murdered.

Dictators fear being prosecuted for their actions

We could have seen and known long ago that he is a flawless autocrat, a flawless dictator.

Autocrats despise and fear democracy;

Autocrats disregard parliaments and turn them into puppets for their propaganda: autocrats do not tolerate criticism or opposition and put critics and oppositionists in camps or have them killed;

Fear of losing power and being held accountable for their actions after losing power, autocrats amend or set up constitutions to allow them to remain in power for life.

All of this is the case with Vladimir Putin.

Many of these criteria also apply to Chinese President Xi Jinping.