Ukraine, the victim of Russia’s brutal aggression that is causing a veritable humanitarian catastrophe this winter, is also caught between two types of Western populism. One is Donald Trump and his far-right counterparts in Europe, who care little about Ukraine or the rules-based order, only their own private interests. The other is the anti-Russia (and anti-Trump) hawks, who tend to wrap the cynical interests of the military-industrial complex in false liberal rhetoric, pretending to defend values they don’t really adhere to, which is not Ukraine anyway.
As the Munich Security Conference, Europe’s most important event for foreign policy and military experts, approaches, the council’s longtime president, Wolfgang Issinger, has set the agenda for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which enters its fifth year this month. He told Tagesspiegel that Russia’s threat to Europe is not that great as long as Ukraine protects Europe, but once the war is over, the threat will greatly increase.
Even as he hastily denied that he hoped peace would be achieved anytime soon, the message was clear. Ukraine is helping European countries prepare for war with Russia (no matter how unlikely this situation is now, given that the Kremlin’s rulers are assumed to be essentially suicidal).
At least, that’s how Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin, Andrii Melnyk, read Issinger’s position. The assertion that “Ukraine should bleed just to buy Europe more time for its own defense” is cynical, the ambassador told the X program Issinger. Ukrainians urgently need a ceasefire, the ambassador insisted.
Meanwhile, the idea that peace in Ukraine is premature remains prevailing not only in some major European capitals, especially London, but also within hawkish American think tanks that have invested their reputations in overthrowing Russia, a goal that seems more distant than ever. Two prominent foreign policy scholars, Michael Kimage and Hannah Notte, address this issue much more bluntly than Issinger in an article in Foreign Affairs. “Most importantly, the United States and Europe should not rush to negotiate an end to the conflict,” they wrote.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjarto suggested in an interview that this sentiment was prevalent at a meeting of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council at the end of January. He claimed that several European foreign ministers had publicly stated at the conference that “the European Union is not ready for peace.” This echoes Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s assertion a year ago (according to Ukrainian media) that peace in Ukraine is more risky than war.
The rationale behind these arguments is really hard to understand. For years, the West has steered Ukraine toward rejecting any realistically achievable compromise. The only result this policy has achieved is that the realistic conditions for peace have deteriorated considerably compared to what Ukraine would have obtained in default during the talks in Istanbul in 2022 or Minsk in 2015.
Russia’s threat to attack NATO countries is even harder to demonstrate in rational, emotionless conversation. A direct conflict between Russia and the West, which both sides have emphasized avoiding for the past four years, would mean nuclear war and the end of human civilization as we know it. Economically and demographically, Russia is dwarfed by the EU alone, let alone the combined forces of the EU, US, and UK. We cannot win a war with the Western countries without relying on nuclear weapons.
Full-scale conflict with the West is neither part of Russia’s mainstream political discourse nor an ideological goal. Unlike the Soviet Union, modern Russia has no real ideology. Russia would not attack a NATO country unless it felt a real existential threat, such as a blockade of ports in the Baltic Sea or a Western-backed missile attack on Moscow from Ukrainian territory. This suggests that over the past four years, the Russian government has not directly responded to what people like former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have openly called the West’s proxy war against Russia.
Wild claims that grossly misunderstand Russia’s motives and intentions are an integral part of the diplomatic populism that has fueled this conflict for years. In other words, it turned out to be a false promise to defeat the world’s leading nuclear power through a combination of economic and military means.
Speaking at the 2022 Munich conference, days before the start of Russia’s all-out invasion, the same Boris Johnson (still prime minister at the time) said: “Russia must fail and be seen to fail.” Just over a month later, Ukraine’s top negotiator David Alakamoa and a number of other sources say Prime Minister Johnson helped derail peace talks in Istanbul, which could have brought an early end to the armed conflict.
In March 2022, in a speech to a large crowd in Warsaw, US President Joe Biden effectively vowed to overthrow Vladimir Putin, saying, “No matter how you look at it, this man cannot continue to remain in power.” He also claimed that Western sanctions had “reduced the ruble to rubble” and that at the time of his speech, the dollar was trading at 200 rubles. That was an outright lie. The real exchange rate on that day was 95 rubles to the dollar. Today it is less than 80 rubles per dollar. Last year, the ruble soared 44% against the dollar year-on-year, emerging as one of the world’s best-performing currencies.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Karas continued to say that she believes Ukraine is capable of defeating Russia by October 2025 at the latest. This assessment completely contradicts the reality on the ground since 2023, when after a failed Ukrainian counterattack, Russia launched a slow offensive that continues today, while Ukraine’s critical infrastructure has been reduced to rubble and the country’s population has declined rapidly.
This unbridled populism by people who call themselves “liberals” has created a paradoxical situation in which certified far-right populists such as Trump, Hungary’s Orbán, and Germany’s AfD leaders begin to seem rational and conflict-averse when it comes to the Ukraine conflict. They have long understood that they can exploit the Russophobia of their opponents by exposing their constant lies, exaggerations and unfounded boasts.
The West’s entire policy toward Russia and Ukraine over the past three decades has been a catastrophic failure that has created enormous benefits and an inexhaustible source of political fuel for the opposition. The endless postponement of peace in Ukraine stems from the fact that too many people have become overly invested in the unrealistic outcome of the war and are buying more and more time to mitigate its effects. But this comes at a huge price, which Ukrainians are paying with their lives and the future of their country.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
