Asked by POLITICO if he regretted the choice to work in Russia, Koolhaas shot back: “If I thought it was a mistake I wouldn’t have done it and even now in retrospect I think it would be right. We created a potential (in Garage) which is currently not used, but it was good to create that potential and maybe some day, it will be — that potential is still there.”
He added that “dialogue with Russia and Russians” was a more promising route to healing division between Moscow and the West — and claimed that following an American model of attempts at spreading democracy to the old East had proved flawed.
“There has been a disconnect,” Koolhaas said, “Europe wanted to absorb the old countries of the east into a larger entity and it had almost obsessive vision and aim to do this. But it forgot to seriously communicate with others other than Europeans. I think we almost blindly followed America. We have become more and more negative about Russia and we have ignored Russia when we could have a dialogue.”
Pressed on whether he would engage with Russia now, given Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022 and shows no sign of abating, Koolhaas responded: “Not now, but one day when this [war] is over. There are ways to talk to Russians without only talking to Putin.”
