This is John Batcher, conversation with my colleague Judy Dempsey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

She's in Berlin.

About an event that took place in 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went to Moscow to meet with then President Medvedev and

then Prime Minister of Vladimir Putin.

The meeting did not go well, but that is not the heart of the story with regard to Germany.

Immediately afterwards, Medvedev, then president, traveled to Berlin to confer with Angela

Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany. And Judy recalls the announced positions following that meeting, during

that press conference, and what actually happened afterwards.

Russia and Berlin, Russia and Germany, Berlin and Russia, Berlin and the Kremlin.

These are complicated stories over many centuries, but what

informs us now is Germany's struggle to break with Russia, and having broken with Russia, Germany

struggle to maintain its economy without cheap energy.

It is duty Dempsey to remember that press conference following Medvedev's meeting with Angela Merkel, and also at the same time what

Putin's ambition was now revealed many years later.

Judy Damse, Carnegie endowment, more of this tonight. Thank you. I was there at that press conference

when Medevi announced this idea of a security architecture which Putin loved to

actually mention a security architecture that would link Russia to

European security, mention the United States of course, but this was the long-term aim was

to decouple Europe from the United States and from NATO, but

medevo, I mean he wasn't setting the agenda, it was actually Putin, but the Germans, because of the mindset and the free Democrats who were always

in all the support in detons or a Prushman and reaching out to Russia it had some

resonance but even though there was the Chechen

...