Nicolas Cinquini

EU responsibility and hypocrisy. The angry, betrayed Ukrainians. Update on the forever war

At the start of the year, I had some hope that the war might really come to an end. Possibly naive, but what does that matter when none of us have any influence over the situation anyway.

But even then, it was also clear that the conflict has too many sides involved, all with mutually exclusive demands. Now, the fact that the war will continue much longer seems certain. Ukrainian military commander Officer wrote this on September 15:

Lately, I feel like a total traitor-fuck, because I’ve been writing very little good news on the channel, really very little—so much so that some commanders have started whispering that Officer is actually a Russian psyop. Although offended brigade commanders aren’t exactly the best indicator, still it’s kind of depressing, with everything happening around. In the air there’s a sense of a prolonged war and the potential for brutal beatings in the near future

European hypocrisy

So why is the war so intractable?

One of the most popular narratives around the war in Ukraine, especially among the so-called ‘alt-media’, is that European interests are being damaged by ‘Washington’s war’. There is no arguing with the fact that the war has been good for American energy exports and bad for European price levels and industry

However, it isn’t just about American energy. 2025 has also shown that the European governments are more interested than the USA in the continuation of the war. It is European leaders that have tried desperately to maintain the frayed relations between Zelensky and Trump, it is European leaders that have agreed to all forms of humiliation by the White House on condition that it continues military shipments to Kyiv

Clearly, Europe is not merely a puppet of the US. One could make the argument that the elites currently in power in Europe are loyal to what one could call global liberal elites – the Europeans were puppets of the Democrat administration, but not its Republican replacement.

However, personally, I don’t particularly like this concept. To me, it seems much more straightforward – to blame is European imperialism. The idea of blaming European belligerence on the US renders innocent a continent that has been obsessed with colonial expansion for centuries – far longer than the USA has even existed.

Today, Europe is stagnating. Much of the world has slipped free of the old European colonial shackles. What was for centuries a ‘jungle’ of prosperity is now being forced to compete on the free market with countries that produce the same or better products for lower prices

Terrified by such global transformations, no wonder the Europeans have latched onto their oldest tradition – conquering the east. Back in the medieval times, the Teutonic Order ravaged the Slavic east. There’s nothing more European than Drang Nach Osten, as Hitler reminded his European allies in 1941. Tens of thousands of Europeans volunteered in various fascist units to aid in Operation Barbarossa – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and many other countries had their own SS divisions

Hitler was convinced that Germany, kept out of Asia and Africa by the stronger colonial powers, had no option other than to focus on the Soviet Union. Today, all of Europe faces the same dilemma. Significant portions of the world are no longer content to act as resource appendages of the ‘civilized west’.

Sure, China’s growth also offers a number of opportunities to Europe. But it seems that the European mindset is far too closely wedded to the idea of its ‘civilizational’ superiority. Equality is out of the question.

The economic origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war should not be forgotten. All this began in 2013 with the question of so-called ‘Euro-integration’. Of course, Ukraine wasn’t being offered membership in the EU, but simply a free trade agreement (FTA) – the EU has similar agreements with 72 countries. Most of the operative agreements are are with poor countries, like Ukraine

The agreement Ukraine eventually signed in 2016, like the EU’s other FTAs, is highly exploitative. I covered its deleterious effects in detail in this series of articles. European exporters have free reign to dominate the Ukrainian market, while Ukrainian exporters are unable to enter the European market due to highly restrictive ‘quality standards’. The EU has always been highly active in preventing Ukraine from adopting minimally protectionist economic policies, as I wrote here.

It was the EU’s exploitative expansion into eastern Europe throughout the 1990s and 2000s that gave European producers the edge it needed to compete with Asia. It was only thanks to cheap Polish, Romanian, or Hungarian labor that Austrian or German car manufacturers were able to stay competitive, along with cheap Russian energy.

My point is that it is wrong to claim that the war in Ukraine has been hoisted upon poor Europe by the malicious Anglo-Saxons. Certainly, I won’t dispute the nefarious intentions of the latter. But the Europeans have their own reasons.

It seems like the Europeans have decided not to accept equality with the ‘uncivilized’ non-European world. Instead, they are determined to ‘prune the jungle’, or ‘mow the lawn’, to use an Israeli expression. Hence their furious support for both Ukraine and Israel.

Instead of trade, Europe has chosen to stake its economic future on war. 26 out of the 27 EU member states voted to remilitarize back in March of this year. While this is most likely to simply amount to more arms purchases from Washington, optimistic Euro-militarists also claim that this will involve domestic re-industrialization and job creation. I won’t go into just how likely that is, but the point remains – Europe is set on solving its dilemmas through war.

It’s worth taking a step back in time to appreciate European culpability.

Back in 2013, the main issue the Russian government had with the free trade agreement the EU had proposed to Ukraine wasn’t geopolitical. It was quite mercantile. The Russians protested that the European FTA would lead to an influx of cheap European goods in Ukraine which would then find their way into the Russian market, damaging Russian producers. Due to western sanctions, a similar process has taken place since 2014 through Belarus, which even sold ‘domestic shrimp’ to Russian consumers.

In late 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych proposed trilateral negotiations involving Ukraine, Russia, and the EU. But the Europeans rejected the idea. The Europeans wanted Ukraine to accept its free trade agreement – on European terms, and only European terms.

Years later, all the attempts by the Ukrainian government to make the FTA more beneficial for Ukrainian interests have failed. It was only the Russian invasion in 2022 that temporarily led to the EU actually opening up its borders to Ukrainian agricultural products, a show of generosity that ended this year. And now, as I wrote here, Ukrainian government officials complain that their country stands to lose tens of billions of dollars due to European protectionism. Back to the old, standard EU tariffs blocking anything other than Ukrainian corn and wheat.

So much for Ukraine being the dearest ally of Europe. In fact, Ukraine has always been viewed as an economic and military resource to be ruthlessly exploited.

Stilted lovers

Ukrainian nationalists have always seen their war with Russia as a ‘war for Europe’. Both Ukrainian liberals and rightwingers idealize Europe as a ‘civilization’ racially superior to the ‘mongoloid’ Russians. Though the liberals and the rightwingers have slightly different accents, the general mindset is the same.

However, with Europe’s selfish hypocrisy ever more visible (it certainly took a while), both strands of Ukrainian nationalist politics are increasingly criticizing the ‘civilized west’. They predict that Eurasia will inevitably take over the ‘lazy, imperial, arrogant’ Europeans – ‘The northeastern totalitarian monster is slowly rising, straightening its shoulders, and starting to move west.’

Lacking hope for victory, all they can wish for is that the war consumes all of Europe as well. Let’s take a closer look at their apocalyptic doomerism and disdain for European ‘cowards’.

Later on in today’s article, I’ll also take a look at the latest grim frontline updates – Ukrainian soldiers and analysts are pointing out the reality disproving positive official statements regarding the Lyman, Dobropillia, and Dnepropetrovsk frontlines. As it turns out, Ukrainian claims to have cut the Russian Dobropillia salient in two don’t reflect reality. Particularly interesting is the rapidly developing situation around the village of Yampil, where Russian forces have leaped through porous Ukrainian defensive lines and continue to stay, despite official Ukrainian claims otherwise […]

The complete article

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