The West Has Placed Itself In A Trap Against Russia
The war must go on, not for Ukrainian victory, but to bleed Russia
There is nolonger any need to confirm what has long been obvious to anyone not embedded in the Western policy bubble. The disastrous war in Ukraine is no longer a war between two neighboring states, it never was from the beginning. This war is the continuation of a larger, long-standing conflict between NATO and Russia, with Ukraine serving as the battlefield, as the useful idiot. Despite over a decade of direct and indirect confrontation, Western political leadership has shown no strategic coherence beyond escalation and denial. The extent to which this war is being used to advance western hegemonic broader objectives has nothing to do with Ukraine’s sovereignty or democracy.
What has unfolded is beyond an extension of the 2014’s civil unrest, the subsequent war in Donbas, or just the fallout from NATO’s eastern expansion. This is execution and active implementation of a plan long in motion. The RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper “Extending Russia” laid out a strategy for provoking Russia into overextension. It proposed using Ukraine as a tool to bog down Russian resources and test its military limits. Looking back, this was a framework, and wasn’t speculation as considered at the time.
This is not a defensive war for the West. NATO’s role is the key driver. Intelligence and targeting data are being supplied by the U.S. and the U.K. from outside Ukraine’s borders. Western media continue to frame this conflict as a contained war in Ukraine, but the operations, attacks on Russian strategic assets, and terrorism against Russian infrastructure point to NATO involvement at a deeper level. Ukrainian officials have admitted they do not launch precision weapons like HIMARS without direct U.S. guidance. Ukraine is therefore not independently defending itself. NATO is fighting by proxy.
Even the attack on Russian nuclear bomber bases, which have no direct relevance to the Ukrainian battlefield, cannot be credibly described as a Ukrainian operation alone. These are strategic provocations which will not secure Ukrainian victory. The tactic is to bait Russia into escalation. That escalation, should it come, would be cited as justification for even deeper NATO involvement. So it’s clear a pattern.
The Russian side, however, has not followed the script. Despite constant provocations, Russia has restrained itself from full-spectrum retaliation. Its leadership clearly understands that any uncontrolled escalation would move quickly toward direct war with NATO and, likely, nuclear exchange. While the Western public is kept comfortable by the illusion that NATO is merely “assisting” Ukraine, the risk of miscalculation increases with every drone strike on strategic Russian territory.
Inside Ukraine, the situation is increasingly desperate. The Kiev regime is losing ground, unable to match Russia’s military-industrial depth. Terror attacks, sabotage, and infrastructure strikes are the tools of a government running out of options. Despite clear signs, Western support continues, not because the West believes Ukraine can win, but because ending the war would be seen as a defeat for NATO’s strategic position. Peace would also expose the reality that Ukraine’s sacrifices were leveraged in a geopolitical stunt.
The West has placed itself in a trap. Negotiating peace, which once was possible, is now politically impossible. Any compromise would be portrayed as appeasement. The Istanbul talks in 2022, produced a document that both Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were ready to move forward with, neutrality, withdrawal, and regional autonomy. But that agreement was killed by Western intervention. Boris Johnson personally visited Kiev to scupper it, backed by the U.S. administration. This is now well known without speculation. Ukrainian officials admitted it openly.
Since then, every diplomatic off-ramp has been systematically shut down. The Minsk agreements are dead. The Istanbul process is dead. Even talk of ceasefire is politically taboo in Washington and Brussels. The war must go on, not for Ukrainian victory, but to bleed Russia, and to justify expanded military budgets across Europe.
The idea that NATO is defending freedom in Ukraine is a cover story. What it is defending is its own credibility and relevance. The war has become an excuse for a remilitarisation of Europe and an arms transfer from the U.S. military industrial sector to European allies. Defense budgets are rising. New contracts are being signed. The longer the war drags on, the more embedded these arrangements become.
None of this ends well. Russia will not lose. It views the war as existential. NATO cannot back down without exposing the futility of its strategy. What remains is the very real risk of uncontrollable escalation. And while the political class debates narratives and posture, the people of Ukraine continue to pay the price in lives and infrastructure. Ukraine has for the past week refused to accept more than 6000 dead Ukrainian soldiers delivered by Russia to an agreed meeting point.
The real decision-making is happening beyond elected leadership, being driven by permanent bureaucracies, intelligence agencies, and defense contractors. Presidents come and go. The policy remains the same. Whether Trump or Biden sits in the White House changes little. The war machine runs on auto.
Ending this conflict requires more than a ceasefire. It requires a full dismantling of the assumptions that created it. That includes NATO’s post-Cold War mission, the ideological belief in regime change as policy, and the use of proxy states as strategic pawns. Without this, Ukraine will not be the last battlefield, but is simply the current one.
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