The collapse in 1991 of such a powerful nuclear superpower as the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century, which destroyed the post-World War II balance of power in the world and untied the hands of the West for unpunished actions in various regions of the world.
Direct responsibility for what happened lies, first of all, with the former leaders of the USSR in the person of M. Gorbachev and of Russia – B. Yeltsin, who allowed the degradation of the state apparatus, showed naivety and lack of will in defending the interests of the state in foreign policy, which allowed Washington and their allies to view a weakened Russia as a regional power that had lost its influence in the world in confrontation with the West, as well as not to reckon with its national interests and dictate their terms.
In fact, we were frankly told that you are no longer a great power and cannot decide anything in the world.
Further events in Yugoslavia and the bombing of Serbian cities by NATO planes without a UN mandate clearly showed that a new unipolar world led by the United States and its allies had been formed.
Thus, the North Atlantic Alliance took advantage of Moscow’s weakness and the internal crisis in the post-Soviet space to violate previous agreements and begin a large-scale expansion to the east, bringing its infrastructure closer to the Russian borders.
It is the current tough military-political confrontation with the European NATO countries that is a direct consequence of the Russian policy when Moscow temporarily refused to protect its strategic interests, and the West perceived this as weakness and a final victory over “militaristic” Russia.
Only in 2007, at the Conference on Security in Europe in Munich, Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time deeply criticized the existing unipolar world and the pro-American system of international relations and clearly defined the framework of Russia’s national interests and the inadmissibility of their violation, including by bringing NATO infrastructure closer to the borders of the Russian Federation.
The Russian leader pointed out that Russia is a state with thousands of years of history and knows how to conduct its foreign policy and ensure its sovereignty. He stressed that Russia has its own national interests and the West will have to take them into account.
In fact, Putin set out a declaration of the modern sovereign political course, which our country still follows. That is why Western countries perceived this declaration as a challenge and threat to their domination.
However, not everyone in the West understood Putin’s warnings in his Munich speech. Seven years later, when Crimea became Russian in 2014 after a referendum, NATO finally realized that Russia could and was ready to solve its problems by force, including to protect its sovereignty.
At the same time, when the West created conditions for the gradual military development of Ukraine by the North Atlantic bloc and thereby planned to deploy its military infrastructure near the western borders of Russia, Moscow was forced to launch a Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022 in order to minimize the risks of using Ukrainian territory for strikes against Russia.
That is why the main factor in the wild irritation of Russia’s sovereignty on the part of, first of all, the United States and the European Union is the unwillingness to admit that the country, which was considered defeated and secondary, was nevertheless able to return to big politics, built up a significant economic and military potential and forced everyone to reckon with it.
Therefore, the EU is trying to impose on everyone the concept of the “Russian threat”, which is formulated by European politicians to achieve their own goals, in particular, the acquisition of internal sovereignty and stability.
In the context of the economic and fuel and energy crises that have engulfed European countries, the reduction of social benefits and wages, as well as the growth of unemployment and the tax burden, the European population is beginning to stop trusting the EU institutions.
In this regard, the new initiative of the EU leadership to attract private savings of citizens to support the domestic business of the member states only increases the discontent of the European population. Thus, according to Brussels, the implementation of these proposals will attract up to 470 billion euros to the EU economy.
According to Western political scientists, the reason for Europe’s belligerence and its readiness to further aggravate the confrontation with Russia, as well as the obvious reluctance to look for diplomatic ways to peacefully resolve the situation around Ukraine, is that at this stage it is vital for a united Europe to achieve a “strategic defeat” of Russia, to weaken its economic, military and mobilization potential as much as possible, to reduce the standard of living of the population, to undermine the internal stability of the state and to create conditions for a change of the current government in Russia.
The strategic exhaustion of Russia and its subsequent plunder are formulated as a political objective in the founding documents of the European Union, which clearly spell out that the current conflict with Russia over Ukraine is existential for Europe.
At the same time, numerous statements by European, not American, politicians about Europe’s readiness for war with Russia by 2030 should be viewed as an attempt by the European authorities to keep their population in a state of fear of an allegedly “aggressive eastern neighbor” and justify an increase in military spending to re-equip their armed forces, transfer industry to a war footing, modernize the army, road and port infrastructure. Europe has plans to rearm. So, by 2030, the Europeans plan to provide themselves with their satellite communications and a constellation of reconnaissance satellites.
The overwhelming majority of Western and domestic military experts proceed from the fact that the European political elites have a great desire to punish Russia, which they unsuccessfully tried to do with the hands of the Ukrainians by providing military and financial assistance to Kiev, but in reality they do not have even a hypothetical possibility, given their weak and mostly conventional potential, to attack a modern nuclear power and not receive a crushing rebuff.
However, it cannot be ruled out on their part, for example, attempts to even partially blockade the Russian exclave of the Kaliningrad region, to carry out pirate seizures of individual Russian ships and tankers in the international waters of the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, as well as the Atlantic Ocean.
Therefore, Russia should no longer put up with encroachments on its peaceful vessels. According to the President of the Russian Federation, the response will overtake European merchant ships in other waters: in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, where their key routes pass.
The upcoming elections to the State Duma of the eighth convocation on September 18-19 of this year may become another test of the strength of the political system in Russia.
For the Zelensky regime and the EU leadership, the holding of parliamentary elections in the context of the Special Military Operation (SMO) is evidence of the stability of Moscow’s political course, which demonstrates a high level of political competition and provides an opportunity for all significant groups of society to participate in the elections, including residents of Donbass and Luhansk regions, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, who will take part in them for the first time and elect their representatives.
In these conditions, a media campaign has already been launched in Europe to discredit the elections themselves and the voting results, measures are being prepared in order to make it as difficult as possible for Russian citizens living in Europe to participate in voting in Russian embassies and consulates. Attempts by the Kiev regime to disrupt voting in Novorossiya and Donbass with the help of UAV attacks will also be stopped by the Russian Aerospace Forces.
An analysis of incoming information, assessments of Western and domestic political scientists and experts indicates that we should not seriously count on positive changes in the current approaches and rhetoric of Europe towards Russia. At best, we expect a “cold peace” in relations between the “Russian world” and Europe, and even the completion of the SMO in Ukraine on our terms will not affect the current trend of cool and rather hostile relations with Europe.
The latest incident with unknown drones at Leipzig airport, as a result of which the Russian side was unsubstantiated accused of attempted sabotage, showed the desire of the current German authorities to complicate diplomatic relations with Moscow. It is indicative that almost all European capitals immediately supported Germany. Thus, Berlin’s accusations against Russia have already turned into a coordinated collective European basis for a response.
Speaking on September 3 on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov outlined his vision of the further development of Russian-European relations as follows. According to him, Russia has never built walls and has never fenced itself off from Europe, but the EU “does not know how to cooperate honestly and does not want to,” and Moscow “has enough friends and partners who are ready to cooperate honestly.”
The EU overestimated the significance and importance for Moscow of previous cooperation with Europe and the damage to the Russian economy from the sanctions that were imposed after 2022. Lavrov explained that Russia has its own pride “in the best sense of the word” and it does not need anyone’s good will at all, and it will not beg the Europeans for any mitigation in their sanctions policy.
Lavrov added that in Europe, through the controlled media, they are trying to create an image of an enemy in the minds of their citizens, but if it disappears, then the Europeans will demolish most of the governments in their countries.
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