Last fall, I visited Berlin, where I met up with an old friend of mine — let's call him Kai — at a punk bar. Back in the 1990s, Kai was a legendary antifa activist, tattoo artist and DJ whose punk, reggae, ska and garage rock collection was famous throughout the city.

Quick note: "Antifa" is short for anti-fascist. The 1990s were a strange time across Europe, when numerous far-right and neo-fascist movements began to emerge. In response, radical leftist movements also formed, the most militant of which was antifa.

We sat down, had a few beers, and he said, "Aimar, next time you come to Berlin, you're staying at my place!" Kai lives in what used to be a squat, located basically in the center of Berlin, in the Kreuzberg district.

Some clarifications: a squat is a so-called "occupied house" — an abandoned building that people simply moved into. It was a very trendy way to live in West Berlin during the 1980s, when there were around 150 such squats. Kreuzberg is a legendary Berlin neighborhood, known for its large Turkish population and rich alternative culture. When Germany officially moved its capital to Berlin in the late 1990s, the mayor at the time decided to clear out the city's squats — and largely succeeded. The residents of the squat where Kai now lives ended up buying the place.

In mid-August, I decided to show my younger son around Berlin, and so we ended up at Kai's. We both came straight from the airport with our backpacks; Kai tossed the key down from the window, and just like that, we were in. Pretty much the first thing my old friend said was: "What is your Kaja Kallas doing? Does she want to start World War III?"

To be honest, I wasn't expecting that kind of opener. I looked into what exactly Kaja Kallas had been doing. Turns out, she's provoking a war with Russia. Over the next few days, we had several conversations about Ukraine and Russia, and we really should've talked more — there's only so much you can explain in a couple of sittings.

The thing is, Kai still lives in that old-school antifa worldview, where everything is polarized along a left-right axis. And for him, one sign of being on the political right is supporting Ukraine. Because, as is "well known," Ukraine is run by Nazis — and then there's the Azov Brigade, who are outright neo-Nazis.

It became clear fairly quickly that Kai had lost all trust in the "always lying mainstream media" (now where have I heard that before...) and mainly consumes niche left-wing media, especially a paper called Junge Welt.

Quick note: Junge Welt describes itself as a leftist, Marxist publication. In reality, the paper was already in the hands of full-on crackpots in the 1990s — people who, at some point, had clearly been hit over the head with all 40 volumes of Stalin's collected works.

Let's just say that my friend's views weren't exactly a surprise. It's long been known that many Western leftists believe in both the official and unofficial narratives pushed by the Russian state. What surprised me more was just how far-reaching Russian propaganda really is. We didn't just talk about the war in Ukraine — we also covered Georgia and Moldova. Luckily, I've spent extended periods in both countries, so I was able to show my friend how flawed the information he'd picked up from sources like Junge Welt really is.

In a way, Kai is a textbook example of the German ultra-left. His worldview combines Germany's postwar denazified humanism with a leftist skepticism of anything official or mainstream.

Quick note: After World War II, the Americans led a denazification process in Germany, during which multiple generations were taught that human life is sacred and no sacrifice is too great to protect it. That's why more than half of Germans believe that Ukraine should end the current war by ceding territory — because it would spare lives.

I'd known for a long time that this crowd is hostile to NATO. What surprised me was that the European Union now seems to have become equally villainous in their eyes. And the face of this new EU "evil" is apparently Kaja Kallas.

Whoever is writing about Kaja is definitely doing their homework. Kai knew full well that Kaja's father is a super-rich millionaire — which, for any leftist, is basically like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I replied that, if anything, it's a good thing that Kaja is in her current position, because she's not some anomaly — she's a typical representative of Eastern Europe. This way, Western Europeans can at least get a glimpse of how we in the border states think.

Broadly speaking, there's one area where the extremes of today's political spectrum converge: both sides have swallowed Russian talking points and propaganda. But there's one key reason why I'd take a good old-school Berlin antifa activist over our homegrown Russia-apologists and -sympathizers any day.

The former still possess critical and analytical thinking. Kai has read a lot, and he gave me several new recommendations for "topical" reading — including a reference to a memoir by a German with Ukrainian roots who served in the Ukrainian military and had firsthand encounters with Azov fighters.

When you sit down with an old-school Western antifa activist and patiently walk them through the contradictions and absurdities in their views, they eventually begin to reconsider. And besides, you can have these debates while sitting in a legal or illegal punk bar in Berlin, and sprinkle in discussions about new or old music. Would I ever go to a punk bar in some Berlin backyard with one of our local Russkiy Mir apologists? Absolutely not. But with Kai? Anytime.

In conclusion, you could say that the divide between Eastern and Western Europe that became apparent in the early 1990s hasn't really gone anywhere. A friend of mine recently returned from Poland, where he'd been living in antifa squats. Polish anti-fascists are staunchly anti-Russian.

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