Europe Wants War. Russia Now Agrees | Stas Krapivnik

## The “Russia has stalled” narrative returns again A familiar pattern has resurfaced in Western coverage: a storyline that insists Russia is stalled, its economy irreparably collapsing, and its military momentum exhausted. This narrative persists like a seasonal myth—recycled in headlines and social feeds regardless of changing reality. The conversation with Stanislav Krapivnik exposes how that propagation is not merely error but function: it shapes expectations, fuels policy choices, and primes publics for escalation. When an adversary is portrayed as impotent, decision-makers feel emboldened to press forward; when the depiction flips to existential danger, fear and urgency take hold. Both distortions risk producing the very outcome they claim to describe. Krapivnik’s observation that these collapse stories reappear each year captures a broader truth about wartime narratives: they are resilient and often serve political ends. Reports of mass “fleeing” or systemic breakdown are cherry-picked snapshots amplified until they seem general. That is not to say Russia is monolithic or without problems. But reducing a complex state to a caricature of inevitable failure ignores its adaptive capacities—and, more dangerously, it misleads Western policy debates about risk and restraint. The recurring “Russia is finished” theme has a practical effect: it lowers the perceived cost of escalation in the short term and raises the risk of miscalculation in the long run. ## Strategic drones, escalation, and attacks on Russia’s deterrence One of the most consequential trends Krapivnik outlines is the mass-manufacture strategy around strategic drones. Cheap, numerous, and increasingly effective, large drone fleets are designed not to win a single battle but to overwhelm defensive systems through saturation. The logic is straightforward: if you produce drones at scale, you can exploit every gap in an opponent’s air defenses and then strike the systems that matter most—early warning radars, bomber bases, antisubmarine assets—reducing an opponent’s ability to detect and respond. Responses have followed in kind: layered, inexpensive “tripwire” radars, corridors of denial and distributed defenses. But there is a structural asymmetry. If massive drone salvos succeed in blinding a nuclear-armed state’s early warning and degrade its second-strike assurances, the strategic calculus tilts dangerously. Krapivnik stresses that saturation attacks aim at deterrence itself. They are not only a battlefield tactic; they are an escalation mechanism that can force an opponent into a crisis mindset. That mindset, in turn, shapes choices about preemption and the acceptable thresholds for retaliation. The conversation makes painfully clear that escalation is not a linear ladder but a series of interconnected feedback loops. Each tactical innovation—drones, cyberattacks on sensors, stand-off strikes against warning infrastructure—can cascade into strategic vulnerability. When a state perceives its survivability threatened, the safe, conservative options narrow dramatically. ## Nuclear umbrellas, tactical nukes, and Europe as a battlefield European debate about “nuclear umbrellas” and extended deterrence is no longer abstract. Krapivnik and interlocutors recount a chilling shift: discussions once confined to strategy seminars now surface in public politics across capitals. The idea of “umbrella” deterrence historically meant protecting allies by making clear that escalation to nuclear use would be intolerable. But when policymakers speak of umbrellas casually—in the context of arming the continent, stationing weapons, or offering guarantees without reckoning with the technical and moral realities—they risk reimagining Europe as a potential nuclear battlefield. A key point from the discussion is how tactical nuclear weapons reconfigure expectations. Tactical nukes—low-yield, battlefield-oriented—blur the line between conventional and strategic nuclear use. If deployed on European soil as part of an allied “umbrella,” they would turn partner states into proximate targets, not just victims of collateral damage. Krapivnik underscores an uncomfortable truth: an “umbrella” may mean making a territory the first place that receives nuclear strikes. The rhetorical ease with which some European voices now trade in such ideas reflects a broader mass-formation dynamic where ideological certainty crowds out sober risk assessment. There is also a doctrinal asymmetry. The United States, as Krapivnik notes, has a history of first-strike doctrine; many others, including Russia and several nuclear powers, emphasize secure second-strike postures. In a setting where early warning systems can be degraded, a state that normally would wait to retaliate might conclude that preemption is the only rational choice. That conclusion is the single most dangerous hinge of modern deterrence: technological advances intended to prevent war could instead make surprise, preemption, and all-out nuclear exchange more thinkable. ## Russia’s preparations and the risk of a wider European war The conversation highlights that Russia does not sit idle while doctrine evolves around it. From distributed radar walls to hardened lines of defense and different deployment postures, Russia is adapting to the drone and precision-strike era. What matters is the interplay of perception and capability: as Russians increasingly share the belief that a broader conflict is inevitable, policy hardens. Krapivnik describes Kremlin factions ranging from those yearning for rapprochement with the West to militants who advocate forceful responses. When a critical mass within a polity converges on a single catastrophic expectation—war is inevitable—policy options narrow and belligerent choices gain traction. There is also the geopolitical geometry to consider. Europe’s political fragmentation and NATO’s political limits constrain coordinated responses. Some NATO members have the political will to risk escalation; others do not. The example of the episode that almost invoked Article 5—shut down when evidence pointed away from Russian culpability—shows that when escalation touches NATO directly, internal brakes can work. But those brakes are limited and contingent. If a sequence of incidents—drone attacks, strikes against allied logistics hubs, or targeted assaults on bases—unfolds, initial restraint can fray. Krapivnik warns that the combination of mass-production strategies by Western-aligned forces and a credibly armed Russian response could escalate into combat beyond Ukraine’s borders. That escalation need not happen overnight; it can be the result of cumulative steps, each rationalized in the moment—and each making the next step more likely. ## Can Europe de-escalate, or is mass formation pushing it toward war? At the heart of the conversation is a sociopsychological diagnosis: mass formation. The concept refers to a collective process in which communities cohere around a singular narrative—often emotional, moralistic, and resistant to nuance. When entire political classes and media ecosystems align around the certainty that a geopolitically adversarial actor must be defeated at all costs, the space for de-escalation shrinks. Krapivnik paints a picture where European elites and publics, energized by a moral narrative, edge toward policies that normalize permanent militarization and tacitly accept escalation as a price of principle. The remedy is not merely technical adjustments to defense arsenals. De-escalation requires a countervailing political and cultural shift: voices willing to stress prudence over moral outrage, diplomacy over symbolic gestures, and restraint over performative militancy. The conversation recognizes that pockets of restraint exist—incidents earlier in the conflict demonstrated NATO’s readiness to avoid direct confrontation—but mass-formation pressures can override those brakes if unchecked. There is also an age

Europe Wants War. Russia Now Agrees | Stas Krapivnik It's now a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Europe is in the grip of Mass-Formation that drives them ever deeper into a war hysteria in which they are not asking anymore "if" there will be war with Russia, but "when". Germany is re-militarizing and so is the rest of EU-NATO. For the longest time, Russia has ignored these tunes as unrealistic or stupid. Well, not anymore. More and more Russians are starting to believe—and agree—with the Europeans in that they believe that war is inevitable. It's a spiral of doom, called a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stas' Channels: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com /@MrSlavikman Telegram: https://t.me/staswasthereenglish2 X-Twitter: https://x.com /STANISKRAPIVNIK Support us on Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Our Shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com 00:00:00 Introduction: Stanislav Krapivnik on Russia, Ukraine, and Western narratives 00:00:50 The “Russia has stalled” narrative returns again 00:05:21 What Russia wants now and factions inside the Kremlin 00:09:32 Strategic drones, escalation, and attacks on Russia’s deterrence 00:13:24 Europe’s slogans, nuclear risks, and the logic of escalation 00:18:53 Nuclear umbrellas, tactical nukes, and Europe as a battlefield 00:23:35 Donbass, historical Russian lands, and the ceasefire question 00:31:17 Russia’s preparations and the risk of a wider European war 00:35:00 NATO’s limits, US withdrawal, and Europe buying old weapons 00:44:51 Can Europe de-escalate, or is mass formation pushing it toward war? 00:55:00 Russia’s self-sufficiency, China, and the final outlook 00:59:58 Guest links and closing #Pascal Welcome back, everybody. Today, again, with our friend and colleague Stanislav Krapivnik. Stas, welcome back. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Great having you here. We want to talk about Russia mainly today and about some of the things that we've heard from the Kremlin. For instance, the spokesman for the Kremlin, Mr. Peskov, actually said that Russia would consider a ceasefire if the Ukrainians withdraw from the Donbass, from the few positions that they're still holding. At the same time, we hear from the Europeans now and from the West, from the United States as well, in several media outlets, that Russia is basically at a standstill, hasn't advanced, and the momentum is gone. There seems to be a new narrative being built up. What do you make of this? And where do you think Russia actually wants to take this now, four years into the war? #Stas Krapivnik -- 1 of 21 -- Well, first of all, the narrative—they just haven't finished the narrative. If you look at the narrative in ’ 23 and ’24 and ’25, surprisingly in ’26, the narrative that pops around March and into April is this exact same, almost word-for-word narrative: Russia's stalled, Russia's economy's collapsed. We're always collapsing. We're collapsing 24/7. We're collapsing so hard that we just can't collapse. #Pascal Russia's favorite thing to do is collapse from morning till evening—the economy, the Kremlin, everything. #Stas Krapivnik Well, you just said it. From morning to evening, and the little dwarfs and gnomes, they come out at night and they build it all back up. That's how you guys do it. That's our secret. We've got armies of gnomes. That's right. It's the underpants gnomes from South Park. First we steal the underpants. Then we get rich. That step two somehow goes missing. #Pascal It's fascinating that for four years, I mean, people still write in the New York Times—you know, I read it again today or yesterday—that the economy is slowing down, it's not working, the momentum is gone, and it's collapsing. #Stas Krapivnik I'm going to make a prediction. We can put money on this if you wish, or you can hold me to it. But come the end of August, Russians will be fleeing from Crimea. #Pascal Ah. #Stas Krapivnik By the last two weeks of August, all the Russians will be fleeing Crimea, and they'll be out of fuel, or at least a few very small private gas stations will be out of fuel. There'll be whole lines of Russians fleeing from the southwest right at the end of the tourism season. Every freaking year, they run the same columns. #Pascal -- 2 of 21 -- All the Russians are running. They freaking realize they're running. Wait, do they actually do that? Like tourists leaving Crimea for a season, and then some report that there are Russians fleeing? I didn't actually hear that. #Stas Krapivnik Every single year. Yeah, at the end of every August. So this family, and the wife's like, oh, I don't want to leave, this is so great, we had such great people, so great, I want to go back. And they cut out everything about the people—so great, I don't want to leave, we got to leave—cut out this little piece of it, and they use this in the West as propaganda. See, all the Russians are running, they're running for their lives every single year. And they always... At the end of August, I know we used to do that too. We said, okay, we'll take our vacation earlier and come back when we're sane in time. You get massive traffic jams because you get like 5 million, 6 million people in their cars heading up the same major interstate. So the small gas stations, the mom-and-pop gas stations, petrol stations, they'll run out of fuel a lot of times because everybody's fueling up. The bigger ones normally don't because they've got better logistics, the big chains. But sometimes they do too, because, I mean, when you get that many people in such a short time getting on the road, you have a tendency of doing that. The main road and then the feeder roads. So five, six, seven million people, they'll get on about the same three days, right? So you have a massive amount of cars going up. And that's every single year. The Russians are fleeing from the southwest. Any day now, the Ukrainian army is going to conquer Sevastopol. And probably every single year, just like they've been. Yeah, they've been predicting our collapse in, like, Time magazine and these other publications since about 1999. #Pascal That's the narrative on the one hand. But then, on the other hand, we have the realities. And I mean, from what has happened so far, I would just say, like, let's expect that Russia will still be here tomorrow. I think that's kind of reasonable to expect. But what's going to happen now with Ukraine? I mean, so what's the approach toward... There needs to be a way to somehow wind it down, right? Russia has no interest in fighting a 30-year war over this. So where do you see it going? #Stas Krapivnik Well, there are several factions in the Kremlin. Let's begin with that. Like any government, everybody prefers to... In the West, people prefer to put a name and a face to one, to any country, any problem, and say that's the whole problem. Well, Russia, like any large society, any large country, has factions within factions. There's still a liberal faction left. It's much reduced, but there's still a liberal faction left that wants to play nice with the West and try to come back to 2012 and other delusional moments like that for various reasons. -- 3 of 21 -- Some may be invested in the West. Some may have children living in the West. Some may just be delusional, think that, oh, we can just make amends and bygones be bygones and we'll all be friends again. Who knows, some may be on the take. That's one side. You've got a more rationalized neutral party, and then you've got a hardcore party. And, you know, I thought I was a bit militant. I thought I was militant. But no, after watching Karganforov's interviews, no, no, I'm actually, yeah, actually much more rational than I thought I was. #Pascal That interview was pretty hard for me. I mean, I watched it through. It's scary hearing him advocating for nuking Europe. But yeah, so there is a hardcore faction, yes. #Stas Krapivnik You know, I have said that Russia needs to strike, and possibly strike into Europe conventionally. And I have said, you know, for example, give NATO 24 hours to close down the base in Poland that's on the border, that's feeding all the equipment and everything in. And if they don't, if they won't, unfortunately, wipe it out. That's your warning shot. That's your shot over the bow. Not hit it once or twice, but wipe it out. Fully wipe it out. Lord, gentlemen, do you want to proceed? We can proceed from that. But take it in that kind of rational steps. Don't jump straight into the corner. The thing is, the moment was lost to stop all of this by timidity from Russia back in ’22. Back when Slovakia gave the first tanks over to Ukraine. Why was it Slovakia that gave the first tanks? Because the collective West kind of pushed Slovakia forward. That way, if Russia was to strike Slovakia hard for that, they would have gone, ah, yeah, yeah, stupid Slovaks, they didn’t understand what we said, don’t give them any tanks. And that would have ended that. That was the moment you should have struck. That would have been the shot across the bow. But when it didn’t happen, they went, oh, okay. And the gates of hell opened. #Pascal Yeah. #Stas Krapivnik And it just went step by step by step. We've seen it's going. The problem now is we're quite literally at a choice. I prefer the conventional over the nuclear, of course. But we're at a choice between running down a hill to a conventional war or to a nuclear war. We can maintain the pseudo-peace for a bit longer and wind up in a nuclear war. And I'll explain why. It's actually quite logical from a nuclear angle. Look, right now, the modus operandi from the West is mass manufacture of strategic drones, right? Russia right now is, for the most part, handling anything that's being tossed at it with buffer. Yes, I mean, Russia's giant. They find corridors they can get through, and eventually those -- 4 of 21 -- corridors get closed. There's also plans right now in building lines of these virtual radar walls where you put up towers. You have a relatively cheap radar system that only looks out about 20 kilometers, or 10–15 kilometers, but every tower is about 15 kilometers apart. So they put up these barriers, and you can put them up pretty quickly. The electronics are not that advanced—you don't need them to be. It's just there as a tripwire for anything that's flying through. So you close any venues or avenues of approach that the enemy can use for their drones. And that gives you the radar signature of anything coming in, and then you can react to it. Because that's what they're doing right now. You know, they find—like I said, Russia's giant—you'll always, when you have the main radar systems, powerful radar systems, there's always some corridor you can find. The U.S. is doing the finding for the Ukrainians. Let's not... I think the U.S. is not fully involved. It quite still is. Well, the problem is you can overload any system if you manufacture enough drones. And their aim is to overload the Russian system and then keep mass manufacturing to overload the Russian system. And then what's going to happen? Well, we've seen what happens. They strike the early warning radar systems, and they strike at least the strategic bomber triad of the nuclear deterrence. And I'm sure if they can catch submarines at port, they would try to strike them too. So what you get is, you get—okay, so except for America, I'm not going to talk about Israel, which officially doesn't have nuclear weapons. Of course it does. And it has a first strike doctrine for the weapons it doesn't have. But for those countries that actually admit to having nuclear weapons—everybody else—there's only one country with a first strike doctrine, and that's America. Russia, everybody else—India, Pakistan—everybody has a second strike doctrine. We don't shoot first. We'll shoot second. Well, the point of the first strike doctrine is to strike hard enough not to prevent the enemy from being able to shoot, but to destroy so much of the enemy's capability