Understanding the reasons behind a war is a necessary step in identifying possible solutions. From the Russian point of view, the motivations have been clearly stated: to prevent NATO’s expansion into Ukraine. This is the main structural cause of the conflict. The 2022 military intervention was also justified by the need to protect the Russian-speaking populations of the Donbass from the civil war that erupted after the 2014 coup, when one of the new government’s first acts was to abolish Russian as an official language.
However, conflicts always involve two sides. The Russia–Ukraine war is a proxy war, as acknowledged by Western figures such as Boris Johnson and Marco Rubio. If the Russian invasion was illegal, it cannot be said it was unprovoked: already in 2008, Putin had declared that Russia would never accept Ukraine’s entry into NATO. So what is the purpose of the provocation? According to a line of thinking now explicitly endorsed at the European institutional level, the strategic objective would be the disintegration of the Russian Federation. The idea—repeatedly emphasized by EU High Representative Kaja Kallas—is that Russia is an artificial conglomerate made up of state entities that could become independent, replicating the collapses of 1917 and 1991. Just as the war in Afghanistan accelerated the collapse of the USSR, the war in Ukraine could have a similar effect, facilitating a third collapse of Russia, which would serve European interests by leaving them with a smaller, politically weakened neighbor.
For the United States as well, weakening Russia represents a key step in the broader strategy to contain China, seen as the real long-term rival. If for Ukraine the war was the price to pay for joining NATO, the conflict was to be fought on two fronts: the military front—fought with intelligence and weapons supplied by the West but with Ukrainian soldiers, as has indeed happened—and the economic front, based on imposing the harshest sanctions ever applied to a country. According to leaders like Mario Draghi, Enrico Letta, and much of the European establishment, these sanctions were supposed to be the decisive tool to bring Russia to its knees.
This reconstruction appears more realistic than the dominant narrative, according to which Putin is driven by imperial ambitions and aims to conquer Eastern Europe, ultimately pushing all the way to Lisbon. But such a scenario contradicts a central point of that same narrative: how could such a goal be pursued by an army described as poor, disorganized, and lacking in resources, which has struggled for four years to advance in the Donbass?
There was also an unexpected development: the sanctions did not produce the desired effects. Russia is not “a gas station with nuclear weapons and Spain’s GDP,” as has often been repeated and imagined. Rather, it is a vast country, rich in resources and far from isolated on the international stage. European elites are unable to free themselves from the narrative they themselves have built: that of a Russia on the verge of collapse.
However, it is hard to imagine that there is a real intention to turn the proxy war into a direct conflict—also because there is a lack of weapons, money, and soldiers to support such a confrontation. Nevertheless, the rhetorical escalation of recent months reveals two complementary issues: on the one hand, the inability of European ruling classes to rethink their strategies; on the other, the illusion that they can control the effects of their own propaganda. Warmongering rhetoric can take on a momentum of its own, becoming uncontrollable and making the path to war irreversible.
The Italian budget law foresees a (limited) increase in military spending, while at the same time cutting resources allocated to welfare and still lacking a credible vision for economic development. The threat of war is used as a lever to justify new arms purchases—mostly of American manufacture—but a serious economic recovery plan is completely neglected. The only promoted initiatives seem to focus once again on tourism, a sector known for low productivity and widespread job insecurity, incapable of supporting structural growth. In an already stagnant economy marked by growing inequality, all of this can only deepen the crisis. And when a crisis worsens, there is always a need for an enemy to blame.
Will European elites succeed in shifting the blame for their failures onto Russia? Or—more likely—will the war in Ukraine, through the unintended consequences of its own logic, mark the definitive crisis of the European Union rather than that of Russia?
Francesco Sylos Labini 