Will Russia Be Rescued Again?

This time must be different.

Russia is indeed unraveling. Its economy is crumbling, its resources – both human and material – are depleting at an alarming rate. The trajectory is clear: collapse is on the horizon. There is no longer any question of whether Russia will win or lose its war against Ukraine. It is losing. It will lose, as long as events continue to unfold as they are now.

Yet, my concern lies elsewhere. My deepest fear is not that Russia might somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat – it won't – but rather that the West, led by the United States, will once again intervene to rescue it from total ruin. This pattern has repeated itself time and again: in the 1920s, during World War II, and in the early 1990s. At each of these historical junctures, Russia stood at the brink of collapse, only to be saved at the last moment by American benevolence. The true danger therefore lies in Russia’s renewed salvation at the hands of those who should have let it fall.

In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, Russia was drowning in chaos and famine. This was the moment to strangle the nascent Soviet regime in its cradle, to prevent its consolidation. Instead, the United States provided massive humanitarian aid, unwittingly stabilizing Bolshevik rule. But the damage did not stop there. Following World War I, as the victorious Entente powers eagerly dismantled the German and Austro-Hungarian empires in the name of self-determination, they conspicuously refused to apply the same principle to Russia.

Take Ukraine, for instance. A Ukrainian delegation stood before the Paris Peace Conference, alongside the Poles and the Czechs, seeking recognition and independence for their nation. Yet, they were summarily dismissed. The prevailing argument was that the “people of Russia” should resolve their own internal disputes – an argument that, in practice, meant the Russian state could crush independence movements at will. No such generous rationale was extended to the Germans or Austrians. The Habsburg and Hohenzollern empires were forcibly dismembered, their former subjects encouraged to chart independent futures. But when it came to Russia, the world suddenly discovered a newfound respect for imperial unity.

This undeserved leniency – this pathological fixation on humiliating Germany while letting Russia off the hook – enabled the Bolsheviks to consolidate their power unchecked and re-establish the Russian Empire, albeit under a different name and ideology. And from that failure, a monstrous regime emerged, one that would go on to commit atrocities on an unprecedented scale, unleashing unimaginable suffering upon Europe throughout the 20th century.

It is also crucial to recognize that Russia would never have had the capacity to commit its countless atrocities without American aid. In the early years of Stalin’s rule – the 1920s and 1930s – it was American companies that built the foundation of Soviet industrialization. It was American engineers who designed and constructed the very factories that would later churn out weapons of war. The Soviet economy, so often portrayed as an achievement of socialist planning, was in reality an edifice erected with Western expertise. The emerging Soviet industries, which would soon be turned into instruments of mass repression and militarism, owed their very existence to American effort.

Then came the Second World War, when the Soviet Union once again stood at the precipice, battered by the German onslaught. And once again, the United States came to the rescue. Through the Lend-Lease program, the Americans provided the Soviets with an avalanche of military aid, without which the Red Army would have crumbled under the weight of a far superior German war machine. It was American tanks, American trucks, American food, and American fuel that enabled the Soviet war effort. It was American generosity that allowed the Red Army not just to survive but to push forward – first repelling the German advance and then raping and pillaging its way to Berlin. One could argue that the United States first saved the Soviet Union from certain defeat and then facilitated its brutal conquest of half of Europe.

This era – the age of Franklin Delano Roosevelt – is instructive in many ways. The official narrative presents America's alliance with the Soviet Union as a necessary, albeit unfortunate, partnership in the fight against absolute evil. But this is a convenient myth, crafted to justify not only that alliance but the immense suffering that followed in its wake. The post-war Western self-perception rests on the notion that Nazi Germany was the ultimate evil, while the Soviet Union was, if not exactly good, at least an acceptable partner. Such a view allows us to forget that long before Nazi Germany turned genocidal, the Roosevelt administration had already viewed the Soviet Union as a natural ally – regardless of what was happening in Germany, or anywhere else in Europe. And this, mind you, when the Soviet Union had already been genocidal since its inception, having killed tens of millions of people and committed numerous genocides by that time – among them Holodomor, during which 8 million Ukrainians were intentionally starved to death.

Indeed, Roosevelt’s government was teeming with literal Stalinists. From the very beginning, the FDR administration harbored a deep ideological affinity for the Soviet regime. The alliance with Stalin was not merely a tactical necessity; it was, in many ways, the realization of a broader geopolitical vision. Roosevelt himself mused about a future in which the world would be divided into spheres of influence, managed jointly by the United States, the Soviet Union, and China (then under Chiang Kai-shek). Europe – its nations, its ancient cultures, even the British Empire – was conspicuously absent from this vision. America's hostility toward Germany, culminating in its alliance with the Soviet Union, was not the result of Hitler’s crimes. It was the logical outcome of Roosevelt’s grand strategy. Nazi Germany merely provided the convenient pretext for a decision that had already been made.

The speed with which the United States provided aid to the Soviet Union is revealing. Lend-Lease shipments began flowing into Russia as early as October 1941 – two months before the U.S. officially entered the war. Even at a time when Stalin was an adversary and clearly no friend of America, Washington extended its hand without hesitation. There were no conditions, no strings attached. The urgency and scale of the aid stand in stark contrast to America’s current, hesitant support for Ukraine – a true, sincere friend of America, unlike the Soviet Union. Today, as Russia wages an unprovoked war of aggression, the moral lines could not be clearer: Ukraine is the victim, Russia the perpetrator. Unlike in the case of Nazi Germany vs. Soviet Union, Ukraine is clearly good, Russia is clearly evil. And yet, instead of an unambiguous commitment to Ukraine’s victory, the West provides support that is calculated – just enough to keep Ukraine from losing, but not enough to allow it to win.

Compare this to World War II, when, if there was ever a case for ambiguity and strategic restraint, it was then. If there was ever a time for hesitation, for moral uncertainty, it was in weighing Nazi Germany against Stalin’s Soviet Union. If there was ever a situation where a "both sides" argument might have applied, it was then. A reasonable and morally justifiable course of action would have been to support the Soviets only enough to prevent outright defeat, but not enough to hand them complete victory – or to allow them to reclaim lost territories and impose their rule over half of Europe. If there was ever a case for measured support, it was then, not now.

Instead, the United States unreservedly threw its full weight behind Stalin – arguably the greater evil – when it was attacked by Nazi Germany. And now, when the roles are reversed, when Russia is the clear aggressor and Ukraine is fighting for its very survival, the West hesitates. Now, when there is no moral ambiguity, when the demarcation between good and evil is as bright as day, Ukraine is subjected to calculated half-measures. If there was ever a time to decisively declare a country and its people as irredeemable evil, it is now. If there was ever a moment for the West to commit, without hesitation or restraint, to a just cause, it is now. Ukraine should have been the recipient of the same unapologetic support that the Soviet Union received – deluged with arms, equipped to not just repel the Russians but to march all the way to Moscow.

The reality is that the United States never truly saw Russia as an enemy, let alone as evil. After World War II, Washington accommodated the Soviet Union, granting it sweeping concessions – the rape and subjugation of half of Europe included. The U.S. did not immediately turn against the Soviet Union out of principle. It did not instinctively recognize Russia as a fundamental threat. Rather, it was only when Soviet hostility became too brazen, when Russian behavior became too ungrateful, that the West was reluctantly forced into confrontation. The Cold War was not the product of an innate Western opposition to the Soviet Union, but of Russian intransigence. Left to its own instincts, the United States might well have coexisted peacefully with the Soviet Union, indulging Russia’s pathologies and making endless allowances. It was Russia’s own actions – its shameless ungratefulness to the extensive goodwill and boundless, apocalyptic hatred of the West – that finally forced the United States to take a stand.

And then, history repeated itself once more. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, it was the golden opportunity to put an end to Russia’s destructive cycle once and for all – to dismantle the empire completely, ensuring it could never rise again to menace its neighbors. But, yet again, the West balked. Apparently, the decades of hatred, threats, and violence that Russia had directed toward the West throughout the 20th century were still not enough to warrant decisive action. Instead, the Americans convinced themselves – against all logic and historical precedent – that this time, Russia would finally become a civilized, peaceful nation. That all it needed was a push towards "democracy" and "market reforms".

Even the most basic, common-sense measures – like stripping Russia of its nuclear weapons -were dismissed out of hand. Instead, the world was asked to take Russia at its word, as if a "pinky swear" was enough to ensure it wouldn’t one day again turn those weapons against the West. And yet, even as Washington indulged this naïve fantasy of a democratic Russia, it treated the victims of Russian imperialism – those nations striving for independence – with thinly veiled suspicion, if not outright contempt.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Ukraine. Just months before the Soviet Union formally dissolved, then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush traveled to Kyiv, where he stood before the Ukrainian parliament and urged them not to declare independence. In his infamous "Chicken Kyiv" speech, he warned against "suicidal nationalism", painting the desire for self-determination as reckless and dangerous. The implications were chilling: Ukrainians were being cast as the troublemakers, their aspirations dismissed as destabilizing, even selfish. It was not Russia – the brutal aggressor, the country that had spent centuries committing genocide, repression, and terror – that was being lectured. It was Ukraine, the victim, that was being scolded. The burden of responsibility was placed not on the abuser, but on those seeking freedom from his grip. It was a grotesque inversion of morality.

And when Ukraine went ahead and declared its independence anyway, defying Washington’s pressure, the U.S. continued to act in Russia’s interests at every turn. Instead of disarming Russia, the U.S. pressured Ukraine to dismantle its own nuclear arsenal. The Budapest Memorandum, hailed at the time as a diplomatic success, was in reality one of the most lopsided and unjust settlements in modern history. Ukraine, the country that had been subjugated and brutalized by Russia for centuries, was coerced into handing over its last line of defense – not just destroying its nuclear weapons, and nuclear-capable conventional ones as well, but transferring many of them directly to Russia. This was not an agreement based on justice or fairness; it was a grotesque act of appeasement that set the stage for future catastrophe. History has now rendered its judgment: the Budapest Memorandum was an open invitation for renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine in the future, that came to be materialized twenty years later.

But that was only half of the betrayal. The West didn’t just strip Ukraine of its defenses – it also actively rescued Russia from the abyss. As the Soviet economy imploded and Russia teetered on the edge of starvation, the U.S. and its allies rushed in with financial and humanitarian aid. Russia was flooded with Western money, food, and technical assistance. Yet again, the West extended a fresh batch of goodwill – no accountability required, no demands for atonement for Russia’s past crimes, no reckoning for the genocides it had committed. Everything was forgiven, everything was forgotten.

Even worse, the West then stood by as Russia resumed its old habits of aggression and imperial conquest – sometimes even tacitly endorsing it. When Chechnya, a small nation that had suffered unspeakable horrors under Russian rule, fought for its independence, Russia responded with a campaign of utter savagery, flattening entire cities and slaughtering civilians en masse. And yet, what was the reaction from Washington? Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton infamously likened the Chechen freedom fighters to the Confederates in the American Civil War. The implication was sinister: the Chechens were the "bad guys" for daring to seek independence, while Russia – the empire that had razed their land and massacred their people – was the rightful authority.

And it was not just words. As Poland’s then-president Lech Wałęsa later revealed, he had been prepared to act decisively when the First Chechen War broke out – to push for Russia’s final collapse and end its imperial ambitions once and for all. But it was the United States, through Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that intervened, arguing that Russia’s disintegration would lead to "unforeseen consequences" and therefore must be avoided. Let that sink in: the criminal was allowed to survive, because there was concern that it might hurt itself in the process. That was the priority – not the suffering of the nations Russia had already brutalized, not the atrocities being committed in real time, but the hypothetical danger that Russians might turn on each other. That was deemed unacceptable. But the continued oppression and slaughter of others by Russians? That was apparently a price worth paying.

The reality is that throughout the 1990s, even as Russia waged its barbaric wars, even as it seized new territories and crushed resistance with savage brutality, it was still showered with Western support. While Russian bombs flattened Grozny, while its soldiers murdered and raped their way through Chechnya, Western leaders, first and foremost Bill Clinton, were heaping praise upon Russia’s supposed "democratic transition". Boris Yeltsin, the man who presided over these atrocities, was treated not as a war criminal, but as a hero of reform. And even as Russia instigated a coup in Georgia in 1991, deposing its popular leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia, invaded and occupied Moldova’s Transnistria in 1992, and waged a genocidal war against Ichkeria (Chechnya) in 1994 – it continued to receive aid and goodwill from the West, welcomed into the family of civilized nations.

The pattern was unmistakable. Time and again, the West chose to see Russia as it wished it to be, rather than as it actually was. Time and again, the West placed its faith in the idea that Russia could be rehabilitated, that it could be a partner, that it could be reasoned with. And time and again, Russia proved that it would never change – that its fundamental nature remained that of a barbaric entity, built on conquest, violence, and subjugation.

And now, with Russia once again waging war, with its genocidal ambitions in full view, with its actions leaving no doubt as to where the lines of good and evil truly lie, what does the West do? It hesitates. It equivocates. It provides just enough support for Ukraine to survive, but not enough to ensure victory. Because at its core, the West, especially the U.S., has never truly seen Russia as an enemy. It has only ever seen it as a wayward partner – a country to be accommodated, indulged, and, when necessary, rescued from its own self-inflicted disasters.

The tragedy is that this endless cycle of indulgence and appeasement has never led to peace – only to greater horrors down the line. The world had a chance to end Russia’s reign of terror in 1991. It had a chance to finally rid itself of this predator, to ensure it would never rise again to threaten its neighbors. But it chose instead to save it. And now, Ukraine pays the price.

However, history is once again presenting the world with a golden opportunity to rid itself of the Russian menace. The trajectory of history may bend and twist, but it remains unrelenting in its course. Russia, in its current unitary form, is an aberration – an unnatural construct held together by force, deception and external help. This aberration could have been corrected in the 1920s, in the 1940s, in the 1990s, but each time, it was artificially sustained – propped up by foreign intervention, shielded from the consequences of its own failures. Yet, because it is an unnatural construct, its demise is only a matter of time. It is an inevitability, a question of when, not if.

But once again, the greatest danger is the all-too-familiar impulse, particularly in Washington, to prevent Russia’s collapse. The greatest threat is that, just as in the past, the United States – especially under a second Trump administration, though the same risk would likely exist under any American leadership – will step in at the critical moment and try to save Russia from total defeat and disintegration. There will be attempts to "freeze" the war precisely at the moment when it needs to continue, when just a little more pressure would push Russia’s crumbling economy into total implosion. There will be calls for a "deal", an armistice, a "pragmatic settlement" – all of which will be nothing more than veiled efforts to grant Russia the breathing space it so desperately needs to rearm, regroup, and return stronger in the future. And part of this betrayal will inevitably involve lifting sanctions at the very moment they are finally beginning to bite, at the very moment when they are inflicting real, irreversible damage.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Not this time. This time, it is Eastern Europe that must step up and take control of the narrative. This is where history shifts – where those who were once treated as objects of history become its subjects – its driving force. Thirty years ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the nations of Eastern Europe were still too weak, too dependent on the West. They had only recently escaped Russia’s grip, and they lacked the agency to shape their own destiny. That is why, in the 1990s, Washington could so easily pressure Lech Wałęsa into abandoning support for the Chechens and the push for Russia’s total collapse. That is why the Clinton administration could so effortlessly coerce Ukraine into surrendering its nuclear arsenal for empty promises. Eastern Europe, at the time, had no real power of its own.

But this time is different. Thanks, first and foremost, to Ukraine’s resilience and military prowess, Eastern Europe is no longer an afterthought in global politics – it is now a force to be reckoned with. Ukraine has proven itself not just as a courageous defender of its own sovereignty, but as the leader of a new, emerging power bloc. Today, Ukraine has the strongest army in Europe, an army that has adapted, innovated, and revolutionized modern warfare – particularly in the domain of drone warfare, where it now leads the world. Meanwhile, Poland is rapidly becoming a military powerhouse, modernizing and expanding its forces at a pace unparalleled in Europe. If Poland and Ukraine were to fully coordinate their military strength, they would form one of the most formidable military forces not just in Europe, but in the world.

And Ukraine has already begun flexing its newfound agency. It is no longer merely taking instructions – it is making demands, setting terms, dictating conditions. President Zelensky has openly defied attempts to exploit Ukraine’s resources, refusing to sign an exploitative agreement on rare earth minerals that was recently presented by the Trump Administration almost as an ultimatum. He rightly recognized the extortionist nature of the deal – one that demanded much from Ukraine while offering nothing in return, not even the most basic security guarantees. More importantly, Ukraine has been a crucial force in mobilizing Western support for the war and in opposing the ever-present temptation of appeasement towards Russia. It has repeatedly refused to bow to American pressure to make concessions – whether under Biden or Trump. It is resilient, it is bold, it is unyielding.

But Ukraine cannot do this alone. The rest of Eastern Europe must step up. This time, Russia’s salvation must be prevented. And the responsibility to ensure this falls to Eastern and Northern Europe – the part of the world that understands Russia better than anyone else. These nations have the clearest, most unflinching insights into Russia’s nature. Their voices must now guide Western policy. No "peace deal" that lifts sanctions, no ceasefire that grants Russia time to recuperate, no settlement short of Russia’s total collapse, disintegration, denuclearization, and demilitarization can be accepted. If Washington, in its infinite naïveté, chooses to turn its back on this reality, then Europe must take the lead. If necessary, even without American aid. Eastern Europe, likely in alliance with Northern Europe, must seize the initiative – because noone else will. The traditional giants of Europe – Germany, France, Britain – will eventually follow, but they will not lead. The task of forging the correct path, the only acceptable path, falls to those who understand the stakes better than anyone: the nations that know Russia’s true, ghastly nature.

America has always been a paradox – a colossus with immense talent, boundless energy, and unparalleled innovation, but also a country plagued by a fundamental naïveté. It has repeatedly been manipulated, deceived, and led astray – subverted to act against its own interests and the interests of Western civilization. It was duped into aligning with Stalin in World War II, just as it was duped into shielding Russia from collapse in the 1990s. The Roosevelt administration was filled with Stalinist sympathizers, and the result was a disastrous policy of accommodation towards the Soviet Union. Today, history is repeating itself: Trump’s administration is being packed with open Russophiles, eerily mirroring the FDR era.

This time, the nations of Eastern and Northern Europe must act as the counterbalance. They must counteract these renewed pro-Russian leanings in Washington and push forward with the only acceptable outcome: the total and irreversible collapse of Russia. Poles and Ukrainians, in particular, must take the lead in shaping this narrative. They must strengthen their presence in Washington, work closely with their diaspora in the United States, create their strong lobbies, and ensure that their voices are heard. They must make the case – not just in diplomatic circles, but directly to the American public – that Russia’s destruction is not only a necessity for Eastern Europe but a vital interest for the entire Western world.

At the very least, they must ensure that this time, if nothing else, America stays out of the way and allows Russia to finally implode. Because history has already shown what happens when Russia is saved from itself. The world cannot afford to make the same mistake again.

Not this time.