Anyone who has studied history understands that Russia has often been at odds with Western Europe.
Most of the canonical literature of 19th century Russia is concerned with the question of how Russian sovereignty, identity, and culture could come to terms with the powerful cultural and intellectual forces released in Western Europe during the so-called Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.
Tolstoy’s War and Peace is set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and the trauma that ensued. Another trauma for the Russian psyche happened in 1837, when the country’s most beloved poet, Alexander Pushkin, was mortally wounded in a duel with the French officer Georges-Charles d’Anthès, who persisted in flirting with Pushkin’s wife. Pushkin felt he had no choice but to seek a duel after a letter was published that lampooned him as the “Deputy Grand Master and Historiographer of the Order of Cuckolds.”
Dostoevsky’s novel Demons, published in series in 1871-72, is a horror story about young, idealistic Russian men being possessed by secular, socialist ideas emanating from Western Europe.
Dostoevsky’s dark vision seemed to come true in 1917, when young men possessed by the philosophy of Karl Marx took over the country and plunged it into civil war and ultimately into totalitarianism.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, invading Russia with the most destructive military force ever assembled. By some estimates, 25 million Russians were killed in the war against Germany that finally ended on May 9, 1945.
Churchill once famously described Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Westerners have always struggled to understand the Russian mind and how the Russians view the West.
One thing that should be obvious to anyone who has studied history is that the Russians are perfectly justified in not trusting the West. Why should the Russians trust any Western government, including that of the United States?
I am a patriotic, taxpaying American citizen and my family has been in this country since the 17th century, and I don’t trust the U.S. government.
When the U.S. government announced at the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit that it aspired to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, Putin was correct in perceiving this aspiration to be highly threatening to Russia.
This pronouncement raised a pressing question that I still haven’t heard anyone even try to answer—namely, why wasn’t an Austrian-style neutrality deal proposed for Ukraine?
The fact that an Austrian-style neutrality deal was not proposed for Ukraine tells you all you need to know about the U.S. government’s bad intentions.
Currently the governments of Western Europe are beating the drums of war against Russia. We in the West are being told that we should trust the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, and the EU when they assure us that Russia poses a threat to Western Europe, and not the other way around.
I don’t know Vladimir Putin, but I’ve been closely observing EU President Ursula von der Leyen’s conduct for some time.
In 2021, she exchanged dozens of secret text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in which they discussed the details of the EU Commission eventually purchasing 1.8 billion doses of Pfizer-BioNtech’s ineffective and dangerous gene therapy shot in order to inflict it on the people of Europe.
In October 2024, she gave a speech in which she proclaimed that the EU citizenry needs to be “vaccinated against disinformation” with rigorous censorship.
For the last few months, she has been proclaiming that Western Europe “needs to prepare for war” with Russia.
Despite Vladimir Putin’s past work in the KGB, he strikes me as a far more intelligent and reasonable man than any of the current leaders in Western Europe. There is, I sense, a pretty good chance that he experienced something of a Damascene moment at some point after the end of the Cold War.
Putin starkly contrasts with the current “leaders” of Europe who have, in recent years, said and done things indicating that are delusional at best, and more likely malevolent.
When trying to assess any complex situation, we must examine the totality of circumstances. During the 2020-24 period, the West (both the United States and Western Europe) suffered a malignant, metastatic cancer in their governments. The symptoms of this cancer included a range of creepy obsessions such as vaccine mandates, climate change, censorship, welcoming uncontrolled mass migration, and transgender medicine. In many respects, Germany and the UK have been committing suicide with their bizarre policies, especially in the realm of so-called “climate change.”
An old friend in Vienna recently sent me a witty remark about the Germans.
Deutsch sein heisst jede Sackgasse bis zum Ende abschreiten.
This translates roughly as, “To be German means to walk to the end of every dead end street.”
The German government marched to the end of the dead end street of “alternative energy,” and it now it seems determined to march to the end of the dead end street of war with Russia. It makes me wonder if the Germans have a suicidal streak.
Yet another creepy obsession that developed into turbo cancer has been the West’s obsession with Ukraine—a nation that has long been the personal plaything of a few oligarchs who have fostered relations with the Clinton and Biden crime families.
The Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk made huge donations to the Clinton Foundation, while Mykola Zlochevsky gave the baleful Hunter Biden various perks such as board membership of Burisma Holdings.
Currently President Trump is apparently trying to cure the U.S. body politic of the cancer that verged on terminal during the bizarre puppet presidency of Joe Biden.
By far the best thing President Trump could now do is make peace with Russia, and forge a cooperative relationship with President Putin.
Though it may seem paradoxical, good U.S. and Russian relations also offer the best hope for providing security for Western Europe, which will continue to suffer from metastatic cancer and terminal stupidity until Starmer, Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen are gone.
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Author: John Leake
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