This is not sleepwalking into war. The European elites' eyes are wide open and crazed.
The European Union has officially joined the war effort against Russia. This week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed a "historic pact" with Ukraine to integrate the production of combat drones to strike Russia.
According to Euronews reporting, the pact also envisages the joint production of ballistic missiles.
This scaled-up war effort will be funded by the €90 billion loan that the EU is releasing to Ukraine. A bill that will be paid for by generations of European taxpayers.
Von der Leyen was greeted in Kiev by Ukraine's unelected martial-law president, Vladimir Zelensky. That makes two people who do not have a democratic mandate making decisions that are driving Europe to all-out war with Russia. Von der Leyen is a political appointee. She is not elected by popular ballot. Formerly, she was Germany's Minister of Defense, and not a particularly bright one either. Dogged by corruption scandals and abuse of power over procuring Covid-19 vaccines from Big Pharma, von der Leyen is an exemplar of "failing upwards."
On her 11th visit to Kiev since the conflict escalated in February 2022, von der Leyen declared that the "tide is turning" in the NATO proxy war against Russia. She was referring to the increase in long-range air strikes on Russian territory and the release of €90 bn to fund the war.
In a public speech, she brazenly announced that the European Union was explicitly allied with Ukraine as a participant in the war.
"In Europe, we already have huge technological and industrial capacity that can be deployed. And we have safe and secure production sites that can help to scale up," von der Leyen said.
She added: "But we do not have that battle-tested knowledge and expertise that Ukraine has forged. So the point I am making is that we need to combine our strengths. Together, we can work on joint production."
The innovation, which von der Leyen and her NATO planners presumably think is ever-so smart, is that European countries will produce munitions that are "safe" from Russian retaliatory strikes. The drones and missiles will be transported to Ukraine, from where they can be launched to hit deep into Russian territory to target the capital, Moscow, and take out oil industrial facilities all over the country. In recent months, NATO-backed Ukrainian drones have killed hundreds of Russian civilians. Von der Leyen's pact with Ukraine is giving a green light to intensify this terror campaign.
But it's von der Leyen's arrogant sense of impunity that is astounding and should be viewed as deeply disturbing. She apparently assumes that European countries can serve as an arsenal of weapons for Ukraine to attack Russia. Yet, in her view, Russia is not permitted to take retaliatory action against the EU (and NATO) as a participant in the war. This is insanely reckless and stupid.
Of course, the European Union, NATO, and the United States have been participants in the proxy war against Russia since their coup in Kiev in 2014 to install and weaponize a NeoNazi regime. That background of weaponization and ideological programming culminated in war erupting in 2022. The Collective West has supplied an estimated $400 billion to prop up the regime since 2022, has supplied NATO mercenaries and advisors, as well as providing targeting logistics and operational expertise for long-range missiles.
Ukraine has also signed bilateral military pacts with individual EU countries, such as Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway. Britain has signed a One Hundred Year Defense Pact. All of these arrangements provide weapons, warplanes, drones, and missiles.
However, the EU support that von der Leyen unveiled this week is a commitment from the entire 27-nation EU bloc to join the war on an industrial scale.
In April this year, the Russian Ministry of Defense published a list of European companies and their locations that it said were partners in Ukraine's war effort. Russia said that these sites could henceforth be considered legitimate targets for retaliation. So far, Russia has refrained from directly striking any EU or NATO state. But how long this Russian restraint will last is a pressing question in the light of increasing provocation by the EU and NATO.
Von der Leyen has taken to describing the Ukrainian regime as a "net provider of security for Europe." This is to supposedly justify European citizens enduring economic hardship as public monies are funnelled to the corrupt regime.
This week, on cue for the drone deal and fusing of the EU and Ukrainian economies, Zelensky reshuffled his Cabinet for the second time in only a matter of months in an attempt to give the impression that he was cleaning up notorious corruption. Prime Minister Yulia Syrvydenko was sacked because she was close to Zelensky's former Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, who was forced to quit owing to a massive corruption scandal involving military procurement. In his latest clean-up act, Zelensky made the mistake of sacking Defense Minister Myhailo Federov, sparking public protests in Kiev and other cities. Federov, who had only been in the job for six months, was seen as an earnest reformer. His efforts riled military commanders, such as Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who want the graft gravy train to continue running. No surprise that Zelensky backed the old guard to stay in place, especially as the €90 bn EU freight car is soon to arrive in Kiev.
Indeed, the tide is turning, but not in the way that delusional von der Leyen imagines. Russian forces on the ground are wearing down the last NATO-backed Ukrainian defenses while ramped-up Russian air strikes are destroying drone-making centers in Kiev and other cities.
That is why the EU and NATO are innovating a new tactic of removing drone production sites from Ukraine and seemingly out of Russia's reach by stationing these sites in European nations. The implicit idea is that the EU can scale up the war effort safely without suffering any consequences.
The Russophobic EU leadership is driving Europe to war against Russia, as Professor Richard Sakwa commented this week in an interview with Glenn Diesen. The decisions are being made autocratically without any democratic mandate. Effectively, the EU has become a dictatorship for war. Another manifestation of this was seen at the Bastille Day parade in Paris on July 14, when NATO troops joined French and Ukrainian regiments in a unified show of belligerence towards Russia.
And brain-dead bureaucrats like Ursula von der Leyen on her €400,ooo a-year salary are happily painting target signs across European nations.
This is not sleepwalking into war. The European elites' eyes are wide open and crazed.