Stop falling for the domino effect fairy tale. While defence contractors count their billions and energy giants price-gouge working families, you're being sold a lie older than the Cold War itself—that Russia poses some unstoppable threat marching across Europe like it's 1939.

Here's the reality they don't want you to see: NATO has expanded from 16 members in 1992 to 32 today, pushing right to Russia's borders while Russia stands increasingly isolated. If Putin had dreams of rebuilding a European empire, he would have acted during NATO's 20-year distraction in Afghanistan and Iraq, not when the entire Western military alliance was looking for its next profitable war.

The Numbers Don't Lie

NATO membership has doubled since the Soviet collapse, growing from 16 countries in 1992 to 32 members today. Meanwhile, the Warsaw Pact dissolved completely in 1991, leaving Russia surrounded by an expanding military alliance that promised not to move "one inch eastward."

Yet we're supposed to believe Russia, struggling to defeat Ukraine with "little to no air force, no navy, and a military running on foreign aid"—somehow threatens all of Europe? The same Russia whose military spending stands at just $65.8 billion compared to America's $801 billion?

The math makes a mockery of the threat. If Russia can't quickly overwhelm its much smaller neighbour after three years of fighting, what exactly are we supposed to fear from this military "juggernaut"?

If Putin had dreams of rebuilding a European empire, he would have acted during NATO's 20-year distraction in Afghanistan and Iraq, not when the entire Western military alliance was looking for its next profitable war.

And before we go on, let’s get one thing straight: I carry no water for Russia or Ukraine. When I was in the military, they were both the opposing force, the enemy. I’m not here to cheer for either side. My position is simple: I oppose war profiteering, propaganda, and the endless funnelling of public money into private arms contracts while working people are told to tighten their belts. I just get sick of the lies, and how much public money is used to prop up the bottom line of the arms industry, while brave soldiers die in yet another “Forever War” concocted by US Neo Cons.

It’s also quite funny to believe that Russia waited until now, during NATO's so called peacetime, to launch some grand revival of Soviet-era glory. If that really was the plan, surely the ideal moment would’ve been when NATO was tied down in the Middle East, with hundreds of thousands of troops scattered across Iraq and Afghanistan.

But perhaps the timing says more about NATO’s own need for a new enemy, a fresh threat, and another excuse to pour public money into the military-industrial complex. Look out, China...

A moment’s critical thinking reveals the absurdity: if Russia is struggling to contain a patchwork Ukrainian army propped up by borrowed money and lacking an air force, how exactly are they meant to steamroll NATO countries next? But facts don’t sell, fear does. And “full-scale invasion” makes for a much better headline than “regional conflict over the Donbass.

In fact, pretending Ukraine is holding back this full-scale invasion makes you wonder why we need NATO and the billions we pay for membership at all...

Let’s not kid ourselves: this was never about marching to Paris. It was always about the Donbass. But then again, honesty rarely fuels a good war economy.

This was never a full-scale invasion in the traditional military sense. What began as a civil conflict in Ukraine following the US-backed coup in 2014 escalated into direct Russian involvement, but not with the aim of total conquest. Russia framed its actions as the protection of ethnic Russians and civilians in Donbas, a claim not unlike NATO’s justification for intervention in Kosovo.

If Russia truly intended to "take" Ukraine in the way Western media often claims, we’d have seen a very different strategy. Supply routes from the West would’ve been severed immediately. Grain exports would’ve been blockaded. Key energy infrastructure would have been neutralised. And Russia would have fully leveraged its superior air power and long-range missile capabilities, striking deep into Ukraine’s logistics hubs and command centres.

You wouldn't be getting celebrities popping over to Kiev for a photo op and a walk around the city...

Instead, the conflict has remained geographically concentrated, largely in the east and south, with Russia making calculated moves from strongholds like Kherson and Crimea.

This isn’t a carpet-bombing campaign of conquest. It’s a war fought with strategic restraint, whether by design or limitation, and that reality is often drowned out by sensationalist headlines.

The question no one in the mainstream seems willing to ask is: if Russia wanted total occupation, what’s stopping it? The answer might tell you more about geopolitics and the myths we’re sold than all the official briefings combined.

As Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries, pointed out...

Another thing the West has perfected in this conflict, besides stoking flames and selling weapons, is vagueness. The deliberate ambiguity surrounding the true condition of Ukraine’s armed forces isn’t just poor reporting; it’s strategic illusion. By promoting the fantasy of an imminent Ukrainian victory, Western governments can justify prolonging the war rather than encouraging peace talks. This sleight of hand is why the EU and its member states keep sending weapons, and Ukraine keeps press-ganging civilians into battle, and cheering on untrained volunteers, again all with deadly consequences, adding to the butcher's bill...

Think about it: "ONE MILLION DEAD"...

Let’s not kid ourselves. Every side pushes propaganda during war. But Western media has largely outsourced its battlefield reports to official lines from Kiev, painting a lopsided view of Ukraine’s capabilities while glossing over the structural failures of its military leadership, despite years of NATO coaching.

Take the siege in the east in 2022: military logic would suggest a tactical withdrawal toward the Dnieper, consolidating forces for a strategic counteroffensive. Instead, Ukrainian troops were ordered to hold the line, not by generals, but by President Zelensky himself. This mirrors the flawed “Western-style” doctrine we saw in 2014 and 2015, rigid, hierarchical, and completely unsuited to the dynamic, decentralised warfare the Russians have adopted.

And let’s be clear: Putin never intended to storm Kiev and plant a flag on Maidan Square. The Russian objective was not occupation, it was containment. The call for Ukrainian forces to lay down arms in Donbas was misinterpreted (some might say deliberately) as a call for regime change. In truth, it was an appeal to avoid bloodshed, not to topple a government.

But Western politicians and media hacks, high on moral posturing and blind to military reality, spun it into a Marvel-style fight for democracy. The result? Misjudged strategy, squandered lives, and the slow, grinding collapse of Ukraine’s ability to wage war. Not because its soldiers weren’t brave, but because our side gave them false hope and faulty plans.

This is the bitter irony: Ukraine isn't losing the war on its own. It's been helped into defeat by the very people claiming to “stand with” it. The pundits. The think tanks. The keyboard generals. They gave us a bedtime story about heroic resistance and evil invaders, and in doing so, ensured the very outcome they claimed to oppose.

You don’t win wars with bias. You win them with clarity, strategy, and respect for the truth. Sadly, we chose none of the above.

This isn’t about defending Ukraine anymore, if it ever was, it’s about salvaging a failed investment. Biden’s abandoned proxy war is now little more than a money pit for the arms industry and a political sinkhole for Western governments. Those who’ve poured billions of our public money into it, financial, military, reputational can’t afford to walk away. Not because they care about Ukrainians or Russians, and certainly not because they believe in any domino effect but because cutting their losses means admitting they were wrong. And worse, it means losing profits.

This is not a war for democracy or European security, it’s a war for dividends. And the only thing they’re defending now is their bottom line and our GDP

We know that in a conflict, each party tends to inform in order to give a favourable image of its actions.

And here's the proposed demarcation lines...come a peace deal...

Paul Knaggs, Labour Heartlands