Early in the morning, the news was on all the Argentine portals: Sputnik, the official Russian news agency, had an article on its front page that described President Alberto Fernández as a “traitor and hypocrite”, even in headlines. Inside borders, the text was interpreted by the opposition media as a response to Fernández’s public statements on his European tour while the government minimized it. “It’s a journalistic opinion, the Foreign Ministry does not comment on that,” they said about Minister Santiago Cafiero. Outside borders, the Latin American headquarters of Sputnik was seeking information in Moscow about the publication of the note. “It is not an official note from the Agency, it is an opinion note, it was not signed by an editorialist, it is a text full of adjectives and it does not come from Latin America either,” they responded from within the agency to Page 12.
Why did the article come out? It became the most important question. The same source of the consulted agency is more inclined to believe that it was an involuntary error of someone who activated the note from the other side of the world without considering the political impact it would have. “It has happened on other occasions. It happened with Evo Morales, when internal conflicts were generated in preparation for the coup that would come with the elections and the Agency read them as ‘popular demands’ without understanding the position of the Bolivian government.”
In this case, the timing of publication was also surprising. The same source expresses it analytically: “It is rare that Russia wants to buy another fight, if something cannot be allowed at this time it is to kick possible allies, in that sense a statement of this nature would not be logical.”
What does the note say?
The note bears the signature of Javier Benítez, with a reading of the conflict in Ukraine quite widespread in the pro-Russian left in the region. “The level of betrayal by the Argentine president towards his Russian counterpart is beyond doubt and beyond contest. And it is that after Russia has been a great help to Argentina by supplying it with Sputnik V vaccines to combat the pandemic, something that Fernández himself, during his visit to Moscow last February, has recognized in the face of the president, Vladimir Putin. , and after the ‘feat’ of the Argentine president to promote the expulsion of Russia from the Human Rights Council, now he dispatched at ease on his visit to Germany”.
Below is a tweet by Fernández, and the use of the immoral word, which the President used in the press conference with Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz in Germany. ”It is so literal – says Benítez -, that it leaves no room for interpretation: ´It has been pleasant to meet Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor of Germany. We are concerned about the consequences of the aggression against Ukraine and we will cooperate in finding ways to put an end to it. After the suffering we are experiencing, it is immoral for something like this to happen.”
Benítez’s text wonders if it was all for a couple of coins and questions the decision to offer food and energy to Europe, commodities that previously came from Russia. He also resorts to irony and highlights that this offer is made by a president “with 37.3% of the population below the poverty line and where many millions do not have access to food.”
Why did the agency publish the article?
According to the sources consulted by this newspaper, the note would not express the editorial position of the agency. However, it was spread by her. Why? The most benevolent response from those who know the agency is that it was a misreading in terms of political impact. “The person who edits could not title a note in this way, with an adjective to a president, for example,” they explain. Another possible reading is that “they let it go, by mistake or not, but they published it and if they let it go it is because they have a splinter nailed,” they add.
Voluntary or involuntary, the sources consulted agree that the note does not seem to do Russia any great favors. “They did not perceive the impact of hitting Alberto with an article that has a reading that the pro-Russian left can do with an effect that could sharpen the enmity with Putin, which is ultimately what the right wants,” they conclude.
Alberto Fernandez’s place
The world is not easy. And neither did Alberto Fernández. During the tour, the media asked her at each stop about his relationship with Moscow and why she had been with Putin 20 days before the conflict. Fernández stated the obvious: that when he traveled to Moscow the conflict had not broken out. But Putin is “evil” in Europe. And war is part of the hot agenda every day.
“Alberto Fernández tries not to have automatic political alignments, a position that he took for a walk during the tour, although with a certain declarative clumsiness,” says an international relations specialist who regularly speaks with officials and prefers not to give his name. “The government also has positions in divergent directions inside: some pull one way and others the other, sometimes erratically. Fernández tries to agree on the different internal positions; and the geopolitical crisis is also in the middle. All of this means result that they hit him from the right and from the left”, continues the same analyst. An article like this is part of those results. The same are the editorials of the weekend that hit the other.
On May 11, the President was with Chancellor Scholz. They gave a press conference at the seat of the federal government. They “agreed” in condemning Russia’s military “aggression” against Ukraine and Fernández spoke of immorality. “This war is immoral, especially after a pandemic. We have to find a peaceful solution,” he said. They also talked about the rise in international prices of food and energy. Scholz defined Argentina as “a reliable partner” and thanked her for siding with the “victims.”
As Pedro Sánchez had done before in Spain and then Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Scholz also sought the moment to remember that Argentina voted in favor of suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
In Europe, Fernández dressed as President of CELAC, the body he offered as a possible way of dialogue between the parties. In Argentina, the offer was immediately ridiculed. “CELAC has Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua inside, countries aligned with Russia,” they recalled from the press over the weekend: “Sánchez, Scholz and Macron thanked the Argentine president for his diplomatic offer, but they will not take it into account ( …). They play alongside Putin and will not vote for a single resolution that makes Russia what it is: a state that systematically violates human rights in Ukraine.”
Beyond how far it seems that CELAC may have some mediating role in the European crisis, the argument chosen by the opposition media does not seem the best. In CELAC, countries that refuse to condemn Russia coexist with others that have actively done so. It is precisely this lack of definition that could allow the two parties in conflict to accept a good offices management.