There comes a time in history when silence becomes complicity, and diplomacy becomes theater. That time is now. As European leaders escalate their crusade to demonize President Vladimir Putin and provoke Russia into confrontation, they betray not only the principles of peace but the sacred memory of war’s devastation. This is not statesmanship—it is spiritual amnesia.

President Putin, for all the West’s caricatures, has not colonized nations, nor has Russia built its legacy on the plunder of continents. Unlike the empires that carved up Africa, Asia, and the Middle East with blood-stained treaties and bayonets,¹ Russia’s posture has been one of strategic caution, not imperial ambition. To cast Putin as the architect of global instability while NATO encircles his borders is to invert reality and insult the intelligence of the global South.²

And yet, the European Union—under the bellicose leadership of Ursula von der Leyen—marches toward escalation with a fervor that borders on madness. Her rhetoric is not the language of peace, but the drumbeat of war. In her 2025 State of the Union address, von der Leyen declared, “Europe is in a fight… for our liberty and our ability to determine our destiny.”³ She proposed sanctions, drone production, and the use of frozen Russian assets for Ukraine reparations.⁴ She offers no vision for reconciliation, no blueprint for dialogue, no balm for the wounds of history. Her legacy, if unchecked, will be written not in treaties, but in ashes.

Let us speak plainly: the world is overstocked with nuclear warheads.⁵ One miscalculation, one provocation, one arrogant gesture could ignite a conflagration that no nation survives. This is not a chessboard. It is a graveyard waiting to be filled.

Europe must remember its own ruins—the bones beneath its cathedrals, the ghosts in its parliament halls, the children who once hid beneath rubble while sirens wailed. To forget that history is to invite its repetition.⁶

And what of Africa? What of the global South? We watch this spectacle with weary eyes, knowing that when empires clash, it is our soil that absorbs the fallout. Our economies that collapse. Our children who starve. We are not pawns in your geopolitical games—we are witnesses, and we are weary.⁷

This is not a defense of any one leader. It is a defense of sanity. Of restraint. Of the sacred obligation to preserve life. The European Union must abandon its crusade and return to the table of conscience. The stakes are no longer political—they are existential.

Let the leaders of Europe hear this: history will not absolve those who sleepwalk into annihilation. The world demands wisdom, not warfare. Dialogue, not destruction. And if you cannot lead with humility, then step aside for those who can.

The hour is late. The world is watching. And the ancestors are whispering: choose peace, or perish.

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This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.