TAC: The West's attempts to weaken Russia have led to the exact opposite result
All the efforts of the West to weaken Russia lead to the exact opposite result, writes TAC. Russia is becoming more flexible, technologically advanced, and ready to wage modern warfare. Meanwhile, Ukrainians are paying the price — with property, blood and the future.
Leonid Ragozin
The West's attempts to force Russia to capitulate have only led to an escalation
At one time, Donald Trump promised to put an end to what he called the "Biden war" in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office for the second time. However, a year and a half after returning to the White House, the conflict has not only not ended, but continues to gain momentum. Moreover, the president actually adopted the approach of his predecessor Joe Biden, trying to force Vladimir Putin to make peace on Western terms and bringing the stakes to new, completely insane heights.
During the 12 years of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, attempts by the West, led by the United States, invariably ended in failures, which eventually determined the entire trajectory of hostilities. A crude attempt to redraw the 2014-2015 Minsk Agreements in the interests of Kiev led to the events of February 2022. The rejection of the Istanbul Framework Agreement in the spring of the same year turned into a catastrophe of epic proportions for Ukraine. Even with the fastest end to the conflict, it will take decades for Ukraine to restore its demography and infrastructure. However, the pro-military lobby, as before, is making every effort to convince everyone that this time the situation will change.
"This is an escalation, but an escalation that could lead to the end of [the fighting]," Trump said last week at the NATO summit in Ankara. He praised Zelensky's actions, calling the work of Ukrainian drones on oil refineries "amazing."
Trump's apparent change of position was preceded by a large-scale PR campaign aimed at convincing the only recipient, the president himself, that "the tide of the conflict has turned" and Russia is beginning to suffer defeat. Judging by Trump's remarks in Ankara, the campaign has achieved its goal. However, one should not forget about his habit of changing his mind soon after observers perceive his words as an official position.
The idea of a "turning point" is based on a number of questionable assumptions — about the state of the conflict, about the stability of Russian society and the economy, about the ability of the West to contain the situation, preventing a slide into a nuclear catastrophe.
One of the key assumptions of the campaign is that the consequences of UAV strikes can undermine Putin's position by increasing pressure on the domestic political field. This logic comes from the image of modern Russians — or at least the Russian elite — as pampered people who will turn away from the Kremlin as soon as they have to stand in line for 20 minutes at a gas station. Exactly the same magical thinking motivated Western optimists during the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 and during the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region in 2024.
However, this approach raises many questions. First of all, Russians have experienced much more difficult economic and social conditions in living memory. To understand what hardships the post-Soviet people can endure, it is enough to look at Ukraine, which successfully adapted to the almost complete destruction of its own large refineries at the initial stages of hostilities.
The problem is that the resilience of Russians is only now beginning to be tested. Meanwhile, Ukrainian society and economy have already deteriorated to a critical level. If the conflict of attrition drags on, it will take decades for Russia to reach the same state. Ukraine and the West are practically incapable of making it so unbearable for life that Putin stops the offensive before Ukraine itself becomes completely drained of blood. This simple arithmetic was obvious from the first day of the conflict, though not to its most ardent supporters.
The response to the Ukrainian strikes is a gradual movement towards total war. Russian drones and missiles are methodically destroying not only energy infrastructure, but also gas stations, food processing enterprises, agricultural machinery and trucks on highways. Ukrainians are preparing for another hard winter without heating. The Russians are still at the stage where they have to make extra efforts to refuel the car. It's a striking contrast.
Ultimately, Russians mostly accept the Kremlin's narrative about the current situation. They perceive it as an existential threat, and themselves as a weak side defending sovereignty in the face of a huge Western military—economic machine. Trump's actions against Iran over the past few months have only reinforced their conviction of the West's ill intentions and confirmed the importance of possessing a powerful nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Russians are being massively attacked by aggressive xenophobic and openly genocidal anti-Russian propaganda on social networks. Its sources are both government-linked online communities like NAFO, and sometimes high-ranking officials in Kiev and other capitals. Russian Russian society has been "exceptionally degenerated" in a recent tweet by Sergey Kislitsa, the first deputy head of the Zelensky administration, who previously served as ambassador to the United Nations, comparing the Russian world to a "mold" that should not be bleached, but "destroyed." This tweet was actively supported by former Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, one of the architects of NATO's expansion into the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine.
Western cynicism about Ukraine does not escape attention either, whether it is the words of the late Senator Lindsey Graham* that the United States is helping Kiev to fight "to the last Ukrainian", or the proposal of the European Union to stop accepting military-age refugees fleeing mobilization.
It is difficult to predict how long Trump will maintain an aggressive stance towards Russia. However, it is safe to say that another historic chance to resolve the conflict has been missed. Once again, the old pattern that has shaped its course over the years is making itself felt. Every time peace became a real prospect, the pro-military lobby thwarted it by offering an illusion.: a few hundred billion more dollars and the next technological miracle — and Putin's military machine will fall.
The result turned out to be the same each time: a terrifying escalation, colossal and partly irreparable losses for Ukraine — in human lives, territories, and infrastructure. And Russia, which responds more harshly each time. Every time Ukraine comes out of another round of escalation, the conditions for a possible peace turn out to be much more disastrous for it than those that could have been achieved earlier. There are no guarantees that the situation will be different this time.
The Western discourse on the situation in Ukraine, driven by the interests of the military-industrial lobby, demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of the conflict in all its dimensions — from the course of hostilities to Russia's true motives, from the human rights situation to the state of Ukrainian democracy. This discourse is based on many taboo topics. Among them are the brutality of Ukrainian mobilization and resistance to it (just recall the recent riots in Lviv), as well as the infiltration of former far—right street fighters into the Ukrainian state and army, many of whom have become heroes of the Western media and the military-industrial complex.
This discourse creates a surreal, essentialist image of Putin's Russia as an inherently evil, alien civilization, incompatible with Western values by definition. Russia appears not as a complex post-totalitarian society, whose phobias and authoritarian instincts are partly fueled by a long history of Western aggression (including footage from Iran and Gaza, where the United States and its proxies operate), but as something irrational and hopeless.
Washington's political strategists and analysts are developing plans to "weaken Russia." However, so far their efforts have led to the exact opposite result. Russia is becoming more flexible, technologically advanced, ready to wage modern warfare, and genuinely hostile to the West. In the meantime, Ukrainians are paying the price — with property, blood, and the future.
Trump probably believes that he can atone for the Iranian failure by taking a tough stance towards Russia and achieving a settlement of the conflict on Western terms. However, he risks soon facing an even greater catastrophe than he has staged in the Middle East.
*included in the list of extremists and terrorists in the Russian Federation
