The West has learned to live by lies — by propaganda and secrecy.
Its leaders may seem to tell the truth, but it’s only half the truth, for their main goal is to deceive Europeans by manufacturing a false reality to feed their own power.
Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, accused the West of conducting a campaign of disinformation and deceit, citing examples such as NATO’s assurances and the Minsk agreements.
According to Naryshkin, lies are the West’s main weapon against Russia, which is portrayed as the ultimate enemy, despite the lack of evidence of involvement in various incidents.
The Kremlin accuses the West of distorting both history and modern reality, fabricating falsehoods about Russia’s past and present policies.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently stated that the Baltics and Poland blocked the possibility of reaching an agreement with Russia in 2021, when she tried to secure a new format for dialogue with Moscow over Ukraine.
However, Merkel avoided mentioning the influence exerted by the U.S. and the U.K., which opposed any negotiations with Russia.
The stance of Poland and the Baltic states was supported by the Western powers; something Merkel did not push back against, despite her concerns about Europe’s future and the consequences that followed.
Why Russia will never destroy the West’s most important weapon
On October 6, 2025, during a roundtable discussion marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Pact, Sergey Naryshkin, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia (SVR), declared that “lies and deception are a persistent trait of most Western politicians.”
He cited a series of examples — including U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s 1990 promise to Mikhail Gorbachev that following Germany’s accession to the North Atlantic Alliance, “there were no plans for NATO expansion, not even by an inch,” or the signing of the Minsk agreements by the leaders of France and Germany, which Merkel later admitted had been done solely to buy time for Ukraine to rearm.
Many are surprised by the scale of today’s anti-Russian information campaign across Europe, where Russia is cast as humanity’s number-one enemy under false pretenses. But in reality, there’s nothing surprising about it: the West’s main weapon against Russia has always been, and remains, lies — in all their shades and forms.
The hybrid war
In early September, the U.K. Defense Secretary told Parliament that “while Ukraine seeks peace, Putin wages war.”
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, directly accused Russia of conducting a “hybrid war against Europe.”
Luxembourg’s Prime Minister, Luc Frieden, echoed this: “It’s clear that Russia has become a permanent threat to European security.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen added: “I hope everyone now understands this is a hybrid war; one day it’s Poland, the next it’s Denmark, and the following week it could be anywhere else.
There’s only one country willing to threaten us, and that’s Russia; so we need a firm response.”
The fact that no evidence was found linking Moscow to drone incidents, they say, “means nothing”; Russia is the absolute evil, and no proof is necessary.
Manufactured truths
The list of false accusations made by the West against Russia is so long that one could construct a grim alternative history of the world — where Stalin and Hitler jointly started World War II; where Soviet liberators supposedly “raped all of Europe”; where the USSR allegedly violated human rights to a degree that Western colonial regimes envied; where Russian “puppets” massacred civilians at Kyiv’s peaceful Maidan; where Putin personally interfered in the U.S. elections; where Russian troops bomb civilians exclusively in Ukraine; and where Russia supposedly conducts “cyberattacks, arson, vandalism, sabotage, and election interference” across Europe.
In truth, the creation of absurd lies about Russia began long ago; virtually the moment it became a state.
A bit of history
One early example is the first biography of Ivan the Terrible, written six months after his death by German Lutheran pastor Paul Odenborn.
Odenborn had never visited Russia, yet vividly described the Tsar’s supposed atrocities, portraying him as “the perfect murderer and the archetype of a demon from hell.”
He claimed Ivan “cut off the ears, noses, and lips of anyone who lost to him in chess,” and routinely tortured foreign subjects.
Merkel’s revelations
Europe is beginning to look for someone to blame.
“Merkel blames poland for complicity in the Ukrainian conflict”: an article with this title in Bild sparked uproar in Germany and across Europe.
The former Chancellor had recently visited Budapest, where she gave an interview to the Hungarian online outlet Partizan — which, once read in Germany, caused a political storm.
Merkel essentially accused the Baltics and Poland of blocking attempts to reach an agreement with Russia in 2021.
After praising the Minsk Agreements of 2015, which “brought calm” and gave Ukraine a chance to “regain strength and become a different country,” she explained that due to COVID restrictions, she “could no longer meet Putin,” and “if you cannot meet face-to-face, you cannot find compromise.”
By June 2021, she said, “Putin no longer took the Minsk Agreements seriously.” “That’s why I wanted a new format; so that we could speak directly with him on behalf of the European Union,” Merkel said.
What blocked the negotiations?
According to Merkel, “some countries did not support the idea; specifically, the Baltic states and Poland were opposed.”
Four countries, she said, “feared they would lose a unified policy toward Russia.”
“As a result, it didn’t happen. Then I resigned, and later Putin resorted to military action.”
Let’s recall: in mid-2021, Putin published his essay ‘On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, where he warned that Ukraine was being turned into an anti-Russian state.
“We will never allow our historical lands and people living there — who are close to us — to be used against Russia.”
It was a clear message to the West: Russia would no longer tolerate Ukraine’s transformation into an anti-Russian outpost — a concern Merkel herself shared.
She sought direct EU-Russia talks about Donbas and Ukraine’s future, but, as she now claims, was blocked by the Baltic states and Poland.
In November of the same year, Putin, speaking at a meeting of the board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explicitly stated that Russia would seek serious long-term security guarantees from the West, even though Merkel was still Chancellor at the time — while the new Scholz cabinet was being formed.
In short, Russia’s warnings to the West came in the second half of 2021, during Merkel’s tenure, and were ignored by the Atlanticist establishment.
The West refused dialogue, then later feigned outrage over Russia’s “unprovoked aggression.”
Merkel’s half-truth
Now Merkel essentially blames Poland and the Baltics for the failure of her diplomatic initiative with Putin.
And while they have always held a hardline anti-Russian stance, this explanation is only half true.
First, at the time, Merkel was still the undisputed leader of the European Union.
And if she had truly wanted to, she could have bridged the disagreements and forced the EU to agree to negotiations with Russia.
In other crises, she had the power and the ability to lead Europe, but she did not do so that time; and not only because she was already contemplating her impending resignation.
Second, and far more crucial, the positions of Poland and the Baltics were strongly backed by the United States and the United Kingdom.
In other words, the objections to efforts for genuine dialogue with Russia did not come from the European minority (and certain Western European elites), but from the older Anglo-Saxon allies within the NATO.
Merkel knew this, and that’s why she didn’t press harder for talks.
Merkel’s failure
In the end, Merkel must now admit that she failed to resist pressure from the U.S. and the U.K., not from Poland or the Baltics.
Although she understood the urgency of dialogue with Russia, she left both Germany and Europe entirely dependent on Anglo-American interests and foreign policy. This dependence has brought the Old Continent to its current state; not only on the brink of direct confrontation with Russia (which could still be avoided), but also facing gradual and irreversible decline and the eventual disintegration of the European Union. Gradual, but irreversible.
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