As the European leaders push for the Ukraine war to continue, they increasingly warn of an all-out war with Russia by the end of the decade, if not sooner.
In 2018, historians Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano wrote a book titled The Russians Are Coming, Again. The title was a play on the popular 1966 anti-Cold War movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. If one listens to Europe’s leaders today, it quickly becomes clear the Russians are definitely coming again. Nearly four years into the Ukraine war and a year into the Trump Presidency, the conflict continues to take thousands of lives and decimate Ukraine. But unlike during the Biden era, it is the European leaders now that drive the push not only for this war to persist, but for a direct war with Russia by the end of the decade, if not sooner.
As it has become increasingly evident that Ukraine’s battlefield position is steadily if incrementally worsening at the same time that its corruption scandal is dragging down President Zelensky and those around him, including the once-powerful Andrey Yermak, European political, military, and intelligence leaders have been discussing openly the imminence of war with Russia in an increasingly desperate, voluble, and shrill manner. The more Zelensky’s position weakens and the worse Ukraine’s battlefield prospects become, the more Zelensky and his European backers seem to dig in their heels, resisting concessions that would end the war, including territorial changes that Putin demands after nearly four years of fighting, limits to the size of Ukraine’s army, and a formula for security guarantees that does not include NATO membership for Ukraine nor troops from NATO countries.
The Trump Administration’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) chastised the Europeans for being delusional regarding their “unrealistic expectations” when it comes to settling the nearly four-year-old war. But that hasn’t deterred them from seeking a peace plan that, unlike the original 28-point plan, promulgated by Stephen Witkoff and Jared Kushner after speaking with both Russians and Ukrainians, ignores Russia’s red lines in its Ukraine-friendly 20-point alternative. The NSS was so contemptuous of Europe, warning it faced “civilizational erasure” and political irrelevance, that European leaders attempted to prove their importance and resolve by rallying even more strongly around the Ukrainian cause. Recognizing that they could no longer count on the same level of U.S. military support that they had since the Cold War ended, the Europeans endeavored to find a way to rebuild their own defenses while assisting Ukraine. That promise amounts to keeping Ukraine in the fight at any financial or human cost, while frightening the European publics into ponying up whatever money is needed for rearmament. To justify cuts to the social programs that had enriched European life in recent decades, the leaders took a page from the old Cold War playbook, using the threat of Russian military aggression ⎯ a threat made credible by the Russian invasion of Ukraine ⎯ to convince peace-loving Europeans that the danger was palpable and the situation urgent.
The persistent justification for continued war is the logic-defying claim that a Russian “victory” in Ukraine will bring bloodthirsty Russian hordes to Europe’s capitals. As Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General said on December 11, Europe is Russia’s next target and the war could begin by 2029. “Conflict is at our door,” he warned and Europeans need to prepare for a war reminiscent of World Wars I and II, “for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured… a conflict reaching every home, every workplace, destruction, mass mobilization, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.”
From Blaise Metreweli, the new head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency who highlighted the “expansionist and revisionist Russia,” to France’s highest military official General Fabien Mandon who warned “of a major high-intensity war outside national territory in Europe, which would involve France and its allies, particularly European allies, by 2030,” to Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’s demands that Germany become “war-ready” instead of “defense-ready” as early as 2028, the echoes of Rutte’s warnings have been loud, clear, and far too dangerous. Mandon went so far as to warn French governors that they had to be ready “to accept losing [our] children” in the coming war. Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, NATO’s top military official as chair of NATO’s Military Committee, has even stated that “preemptive strikes could be considered defensive actions.”
These pervasive threats have led the Wall Street Journal to report on December 15, “European security officials now regularly broadcast a message nearly unimaginable a decade ago: Get ready for conflict with Russia. Rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia. It is a profound psychological shift for a continent that has rebuilt itself after two world wars by trumpeting a message of harmony and joint economic prosperity.”
Europe’s elected officials have not been left far behind in fueling the war fever sweeping the continent. German Chancellor Fredrich Merz has compared Putin’s war in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking Sudetenland in 1938, and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned that “Putin’s aggression does not stop in Ukraine.” France’s Macron has also maintained that Russia has no intention of stopping in Ukraine. Russian aggression “knows no borders,” he warned in March in a nationally televised speech. He asked, “Who can believe today that Russia would stop at Ukraine?”
It is striking that the three hawkish heads of state who form the backbone of the “coalition of the willing” and who are leading their citizens down the primrose path are deeply unpopular at home. While the numbers fluctuate, upon last reading, Macron’s approval rating was between 11 and 15 percent; Starmer’s at 19 percent; and Merz’s at 25 percent. Still, recent polling suggests that the scaremongering is having the intended effect. A poll released on December 4 showed that a slight majority of citizens in nine European countries believe that there is a “high” or “very high” risk of war with Russia, including 77 percent of Poles, 59 percent of Belgians and Dutch, and half of Germans, French, and Spanish. Only 34 percent of Italians agreed. Still, only a third of EU citizens told a Gallup poll in March 2024 that they would be willing to fight to defend their country, a number that bottomed out at 14 percent in Italy and stood at 23 percent in Germany.
European leaders’ resolve was never more apparent than at the recent meetings in Berlin where the “coalition of the willing” came up with a menu of ways the Europeans could provide security guarantees for Ukraine, ranging from boots on the ground to financial aid to intelligence support. There, the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared, “Now we have a simple choice — either money today or blood tomorrow. And I am not talking about Ukraine only, I am talking about Europe.” “All European leaders have to finally rise to this occasion.”
Well Donald Tusk need not worry. All European leaders, with a couple of glaring exceptions, have risen to the occasion and are broadcasting the idea that Putin’s Russia is a mortal threat to Europe. They, along with their allies in the military, intelligence community, “defense” sector, and media have convinced more than half of Europe that Russia was knocking at the door, ready to invade. While the thought that a Russia that had taken four years and hundreds of thousands of casualties to conquer 20 percent of Ukraine would want to take on NATO—with or without U.S. nuclear backing—is a dangerous form of scaremongering and preposterous to many, intelligent people keep repeating this idea.
Among those who think it absurd and has repeatedly said so is Vladimir Putin himself. President Putin dismissed such charges as “hysteria” by Europeans who had been “indoctrinated with fears about an inevitable clash with Russia.” “I have repeatedly stated: this is a lie, nonsense, pure nonsense about some imaginary Russian threat to European countries. But this is being done quite deliberately,” he said. Russian leaders have even offered to put this in writing.
And yet, the mainstream media keep sticking to the script. A December 19 Reuters article stated that, “U.S. intelligence reports continue to warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire, six sources familiar with U.S. intelligence said, even as negotiators seek an end to the war that would leave Russia with far less territory.”
US Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, responded angrily to a post by one of the Reuters authors, reaffirming this conclusion. She wrote, “No, this is a lie and propaganda @Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides. Dangerously, you are… fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia. The truth is the US intelligence community has briefed policymakers, including the Democrat HPSCI member quoted by Reuters, that US Intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO. It also assesses that, as the last few years have shown, Russia’s battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe.”
It seems that according to the US intelligence chief, the Russians are NOT coming. Whether or not this assessment will reach the European halls of power remains to be seen.
Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Chemistry at Columbia University.