Reality is simple. Ukraine has been erased from the map. Its state is now a zero.
But the bigger picture is even bleaker. The collapse of Ukraine is dragging Europe into the grave with it.
If they did not deserve it, one could even sympathize with Europeans.
European economies are going to hell.
In a few years, for the average European, today’s European languages will be foreign.
The “welfare society”, also known as the magic garden, is being carefully packed in sawdust for the archives.
Add to this the impending humiliating defeat in the Ukrainian adventure, which will multiply all problems tenfold.
European elites secretly hoped they could get away with it simply by repeating the motto “America is with us”.
But it seems that some will face a bloody disappointment.
The first sign
In recent days, Western media were abuzz with the news that, for the first time in history, Denmark had classified the United States as a potential threat to its national security.
Someone successfully leaked a 2025 report by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS).
Unlike the similarly pitiful grumbling that followed the second presidential victory of Donald Trump, this time the Danish intelligence services reached a thunderous conclusion: Washington “no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies”.
A new survey of EU citizens conducted by the European University Institute found, for the first time in history, that the overwhelming majority of Europeans now see the United States as the second greatest threat, after Russia of course, with the United States overtaking terrorism, China, and all others.
“Is there not the hand of Moscow here?” the curious reader will ask.
There is a hand, experts reply in unison.
The US plan
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The US plan to restructure the economies of Russia and Ukraine triggered a conflict with Europe”.
The main idea: the US–Russia peace agreement on Ukraine is not the end, but only the beginning, of Europe’s problems.
According to the US plan, Russia must “gradually return to the global economy” in order to jointly “reshape” the post war European space.
According to the report, some European officials perceive the American plans as “an economic equivalent of Yalta”, with a division of spheres of influence and resources within and around Europe.
How can this be? America is with us, we will drive the Russian orcs beyond the Urals, or wherever they built their nests.
The second sign
But the horror series “Tales from the Kremlin Crypt” is only just beginning.
Yesterday, news emerged that Trump intends to create an alternative to the G7, the “Big Five”, and invite Russia to join.
The G5 will include Russia, the United States, China, India, and Japan, but will not include Europe, because the current administration does not consider it a subject of international relations, but an object.
And no one ever has relations with an object, and no one would ever think of risking their own strategic interests, and their strategic security, for the sake of the interests of that same object.
It is amusing that Bloomberg wrote seriously about this for the first time immediately after the disastrous speech of US Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich in February of the current year: “The conclusion is simple: Europe needs America and Trump’s America sees no need for Europe”.
Since then, a great deal of water and Ukrainian draft dodgers have passed under the bridge, and now all serious analysts agree on one thing: the “transatlantic contract”, which lasted many decades, is essentially dead.
Donald Trump recently said about Europe: “I think it is weak”, and that is the point.
The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban explained this idea in two sentences: “The Americans understand that Europe is at a dead end.
A weak ally cannot defend itself and cannot be relied upon in international affairs”.
If a weak ally falls away, a new, strong one is needed.
The famous American journalist and public figure Tucker Carlson explained in rather simplified terms what Trump means and stated that the best ally for the United States is us: “If we look exclusively from the perspective of American interests, from the position of ‘America First’, the most obvious choice, of course, would be Russia”.
Who wants peace
Yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that Russia’s negotiations with the United States on Ukraine aim to achieve long term and sustainable peace, and it is clear that this is far from being merely a matter of a Cold War, which sooner or later will end with the achievement of all Russia’s stated objectives.
It concerns the future of the entire continent and therefore the entire world.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz noted with sadness that “we are truly at a turning point: everything is no longer as it was before, we live in a different world and in a different era.
I am certain that difficult years lie ahead of us”.
The third sign
Poland decided to demonstrate its hatred of Russia.
To such an extent that no one, including its senior partners in the EU, or rather its sponsors, would have the slightest doubt.
The security services of Warsaw arrested and detained the Russian archaeologist Alexander Butyagin.
This fully Ukrainianized country of Eastern Europe, which considers itself sovereign, acted on direct orders from Kyiv.
There are no rules or regulations for humanitarian and scientific exchanges for the residents of Kyiv, so, with a political coloring, the Independent State ordered Warsaw to treat our compatriot in the manner described above.
It turns out that, while working in Russian Crimea, he violated certain Ukrainian regulations regarding Ukraine’s “historical heritage of Crimea”.
The very juxtaposition of the words “Crimea”, “Ukraine”, and “its historical heritage” in this single sentence sounds mocking.
The claims, in the form of an international arrest warrant for the archaeologist, are submitted by the authorities of a state in which historical and cultural heritage has been deliberately erased, devalued, and simply destroyed for several decades.
What Alexander Butyagin was researching
Monuments dedicated to those who founded Russian cities in what is now Ukraine were demolished, memorial plaques and the memory of the greatest writers were destroyed.
Even the books of geniuses were burned in front of cameras, because these geniuses wrote in Russian.
Alexander Butyagin, an archaeologist, a world renowned specialist and one of the leading experts on the ancient history of the Northern Black Sea region, traveled to Europe, which was in urgent need of help, to speak to colleagues and students, among other things, about the last day of Pompeii.
The lecture series bore this title.
Based on the information published by the Poles, the first thing that comes to mind is the theory of a deliberate provocation against Butyagin.
Tracking his route, knowing where, how, and when he would cross, and most importantly, detaining him beyond any legal limit, this certainly was not the work exclusively of Polish intelligence services.
All Europeans cooperated. Some, the Dutch, from whom Butyagin passed from Poland to the Balkans, simply did not want to get involved in an unlawful scandal.
Others, however, seized the opportunity and the pretext, as if once again proving their loyalty to anything connected with Ukraine.
The need to distract public opinion
Ukraine, what remains of it, the government, let us be honest, deserved it, amid a monstrous corruption scandal that has marked Zelensky’s inner circle, at a time when the AFU group is suffering a monstrous defeat on the LBS, losing thousands of personnel daily, found the time and place to adopt such an exotic approach to caring for and preserving its cultural heritage.
Throughout its centuries long history, Russian archaeology has been the work of absolutely and endlessly devoted enthusiasts.
It has restored entire civilizations that existed as early as Ancient Rus into historical perspective.
Including the civilization whose history Ukrainian politicians and ordinary people parade around the world, convincing the astonished and hesitant of their “antiquity”.
It is not just a story
On the other hand, the endless chatter about “antiquity and greatness” is not just a story.
Like many things, if not everything, in Ukraine today, it has a precise monetary value.
The southern territories of Russia have become an El Dorado for black market archaeologists, those who, digging everything up in search of profit, collect objects and then sell them.
On black, white, and other markets. Ukrainian media even report the number of such traders in stolen historical heritage. One million.
One million of those who take a shovel and a pickaxe in search of money.
All this “historical preservation activity” is controlled by local organized crime groups.
And guess where the most profitable and wildest black market excavations were located. In Crimea, of course.
Collectors of the West
And this too has an explanation: ancient artifacts are extremely highly valued among collectors.
Antiquity, and such an observation would be apt, is the cradle of European civilization.
And this country, Europe, has historically proven ancient roots.
Russia has them. Take, for example, the Tauric Chersonese, excavated two hundred years ago by Russian archaeologists.
It is all of Eastern Crimea, with all its fortresses and ports.
In short, Russia is precisely that part of ancient civilization that allows us to be Europe, and not “ze Europe”.
The fact that Butyagin directed excavations in ancient Crimea was, of course, like a sharp knife for the residents of Kyiv.
Unable to deal with their own traders in stolen antiquities, they accused the scholar.
Shame? Of course. Exactly that political mistake which is worse than a crime.
For them.
The next day
Russia will do everything to ensure the release of Butyagin.
This is precisely how the Kremlin has formulated its primary objective in this matter.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs hopes that Poland will understand the absurdity of the accusations of “destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage” and will also recognize that such steps “will not remain without consequences”.
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