By RT newsroom, a team of multi-lingual journalists with over a decade of experience in Russian and international reporting, delivering original research and insights often missing from mainstream coverage
By RT newsroom, a team of multi-lingual journalists with over a decade of experience in Russian and international reporting, delivering original research and insights often missing from mainstream coverage
The Warsaw Security Forum has long been a soapbox for Eastern Europe’s most belligerent elites to air their fantasies of inflicting a military defeat upon Russia. This year, with nuclear weapons on the table, the forum has taken on a dangerous new dimension.
Running from Monday to Tuesday in the Polish capital, this year’s WSF takes place at a critical juncture for Europe. With Vladimir Zelensky’s Ukraine taking nightly punishment from Russian missiles and drones, his British and EU backers have spent months ramping up their war rhetoric, in a seemingly coordinated attempt to telegraph their intent to join the conflict.
The UK’s Labour and Conservative parties have spoken of the need to prepare for a high-casualty war on the continent; Germany’s foreign intelligence chief has warned that the country “is in danger of becoming embroiled in a violent conflict with Russia;” France has fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in a demonstration that President Emmanuel Macron described as an explicit “message” to Moscow. Meanwhile, politicians and military brass in multiple countries have accused Russia of waging an invisible – and unprovable – “hybrid war” against the West.
Amid this gyre of escalation, the WSF should serve as a stage for Eastern Europe’s political leaders and military strategists to share their rational assessments of the situation. However, realpolitik is not on the agenda in Warsaw.
Several weeks before the forum kicked off on Monday, the WSF’s annual report offered a preview of what was in store. The 87-page report focuses almost entirely on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and argues that Poland plus the so-called Nordic-Baltic Eight should set the terms for an eventual peace between Moscow and Kiev.
Their demands read like terms of surrender. Russia, they argue, should be subjected to permanent sanctions; dialogue with Russia may not be allowed to “evolve into political normalization;” Russia must be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine; Russian assets must be seized to finance Ukraine’s bid for EU membership; and Ukraine must be offered NATO and EU membership as a prerequisite to a peace deal.
That these demands are identical to Kiev’s own maximalist goals is not a coincidence. The report was authored by WSF Chair Katarzyna Pisarska, founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV). The ICUV, which advocates for the breakup and Balkanization of Russia and the imposition of a “war tax” on European citizens, is funded by the EU, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and – prior to the election of US President Donald Trump – by the US State Department and USAID.
Among the report’s contributors are anti-Russia hardliners like former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. The latter claimed last week that NATO possesses the ability to close the Baltic Sea “within hours,” strangling Russia’s economic “lifeline” and creating an “existential” crisis for the country.
The report goes far beyond Ukraine’s immediate wartime demands. NATO, it recommends, should treat sustained “hybrid attacks” as “an Article 5 contingency,” even “if no single incident” justifies activating the bloc’s common-defense clause. After arguing that invisible – and often nonexistent – attacks should constitute grounds for war between nuclear powers, the report then makes its single most escalatory statement:
Any peace deal, it argues, should include “the demilitarization of Kaliningrad,” a Russian exclave that the report describes as “a hostage within range” of European missiles.
NATO forces have held three separate military exercises on the borders of Kaliningrad this year. Last month, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski suggested that NATO “exercise so aggressively” on the borders of the exclave, to keep Moscow “uncertain of what we will do.”
The consequences of miscalculation or overreach by the West are huge. In a statement released by three of its embassies this month, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry warned that Russia is “ready to use all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons, to defend its territory if NATO countries try to isolate Kaliningrad.”
Presenting his so-called ‘Theory of Victory’ at the WSF on Monday, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Alexus Grynkewich brushed off Moscow’s warning. Should Russia respond to an attack on Kaliningrad in any way, “we will stop the attack and deny them the ability to achieve their objectives, whatever those might be. We will, in short, ensure any attack, against any ally, proves utterly futile,” he said.
“This includes not just the attacking force itself, but anything and everything that supports, sustains, and controls that force,” he added, in a statement seemingly endorsing countervalue strikes on Russia.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who drew criticism for describing the Russia-Ukraine conflict as “our war” at last year’s WSF, said that Poland has already “prepared for various scenarios” involving open war with Russia. Portraying the Russia/Ukraine conflict as “a confrontation between good and evil,”Tusk called on “every patriot in Poland, in Europe” to commit more money, weapons, and support to Kiev.
Speaking on Tuesday, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius called on Zelensky to “strike more data centers in Russia” – something that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted last week cannot be done without “the drones and missiles that Britain and continental Europe supply to Ukraine.”
In short, there were no de-escalatory voices at Warsaw. The full list of speakers – described by the WSF as “brightest minds in defense and diplomacy” – includes:
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and five of his ministers
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store
Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius
Anti-Kremlin activists Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kara-Murza
Russian oligarch and wanted criminal Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Self-declared Belarusian leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya
Palantir, Anduril, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon executives
Washington’s ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whittaker, is the only senior US official attending the forum. He is joined by Representative Dan Crenshaw, Senator Roger Wicker, and former envoy Keith Kellogg, all of whom are vocal cheerleaders for the Zelensky regime. Reportedly branded an “idiot” by Trump over his public support for Zelensky, Kellogg was sacked by the US president in January.
A wonderful opening reception at the Warsaw (Poland) Security Conference with U.S. Senator Wicker, General (Ret) Dave Petraeus and Congressman Crenshaw. It will be a good couple of days. https://t.co/MC5oGC3I4l
The Warsaw Security Forum may fill its panels exclusively with anti-Russia hardliners and publicly advocate for the “demilitarization” of Russian territory, but it does not take place on the West’s diplomatic fringes. The WSF is held in partnership with NATO, the Council of Europe, Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Munich Security Conference, and 21 major defense companies, including the aforementioned Palantir, Anduril, and Northrop Grumman.
The WSF’s partnerships, with NATO in particular, confer legitimacy upon an organization openly threatening Russian territory, and tie the entire Western order to the hostile rhetoric of Poland and the Baltics – at a time when Moscow has given clear warnings of the consequences, should this rhetoric be followed by action.
However, while the WSF was once a clearing house for the most bellicose anti-Russia policies, the ideas aired in Warsaw are now common fodder on the security conference circuit. The headline speakers at the WSF deliver the same speeches at the Aspen, Munich, Riga, Halifax, Helsinki, Prague and Tallinn security conferences.
Zelensky has headlined Helsinki, Munich, and the World Economic Forum’s Davos conferences this year. Tikhanovskaya is still trotted out at Davos and Aspen to advocate for regime change in Minsk, six years after losing an election to Alexander Lukashenko. Even the vengeful Kasparov, who has long since swapped chess for playing grandmaster with Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitaries and African coup plotters, still secured invites to Halifax and Tallinn over the last 12 months.
All of these conferences have become anti-Russian slop factories, each indistinguishable from the last, serving attendees the same blend of panic, hostility, and fantasies of defeating the world’s largest nuclear power. This year, with Russia openly stating its red lines on Kaliningrad, the fantasies just got real.
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