Putin asked a Swiss journalist to evaluate German politician Egon Bahr in Valdai

Russian President Vladimir Putin asked a Valdai panelist, Swiss journalist Roger Keppel, to talk about the German politician Egon Bahr.

“I would be interested to hear your assessments - you said that you invited Egon Bahr... If you could literally say two words, share, please tell me. I didn’t know him,” Putin addressed the editor-in-chief of the Swiss publication Weltwoche Keppel at the plenary session of the 23rd annual meeting of the Valdai international discussion club.

Keppel said that he met with Bahr at the center of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Berlin.

“He was a very impressive person. He had an amazing vision: after two terrible world wars, Germany should turn its arms to the East. He was a true realist... He believed that Europe was a cemetery of former empires, which could become a continent of peace and unite the USA and Russia,” the journalist said.

He added that he was ready to support all attempts to return “Egonbarism” to Germany, where, in his opinion, education is needed to remember Bahr.

“Thank you very much for this characterization... To my opinion about him, which is based only on archival documents that I read... You spoke about moral imperialism and about Europe as a cemetery of empires. Maybe that’s why many in Europe want to destroy the Russian Empire, which has long ceased to exist, but they apparently don’t know about it,” Putin said.

Bahr was a member of the board of directors of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Putin earlier at the same plenary session cited his statements from 1990, calling the politician’s assessments providence.

The Valdai International Discussion Club is an association of leading foreign and Russian experts in the field of political science, economics, history and international relations. The club was created in September 2004 on the initiative of the RIA Novosti agency, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and the magazines "Russia in Global Affairs" and Russia Profile. The club owes its name to the location of the first conference, which took place in Veliky Novgorod near Lake Valdai.