Two pro-Russian media outlets are promoting claims in Europe that the West is using Ukraine to wage a war against Russia, portraying support for Kyiv as proof that Brussels seeks direct confrontation with Moscow.
The narrative was circulated on 6 September 2026 by the French-language Réseau International and the Italian outlet L’AntiDiplomatico. Their articles presented Ukraine as an instrument of Western policy and repeated the claim that European governments are deliberately escalating a confrontation with Russia, rather than responding to Russian aggression.
The material targets European audiences with a familiar Kremlin argument: that the war is not primarily Russia’s assault on Ukraine but a proxy conflict between Moscow and the West, fought through Ukrainian lives. Such claims shift attention away from Russia’s decision to launch its full-scale invasion in 2022 and seek to recast European assistance to Ukraine as the cause of the conflict.
Claims dressed up as alternative analysis
At Réseau International, the French journalist Jean Marc described those supporting the war as “war profiteers” and an irresponsible clique of neoconservatives and liberal interventionists allegedly provoking a suicidal war with Russia after military failures in the Middle East. The article uses inflammatory language to present Western policy as the product of a reckless ideological faction.
Fabrizio Poggi, writing for the Italian publication, similarly argued that Brussels’s objective was direct confrontation with Moscow. He claimed that the deaths of Ukrainians were being treated as the price of defending European liberal values, while referring to Ukraine in terms associated with Russian propaganda, including the unsupported label “Nazi junta”.
Réseau International and L’AntiDiplomatico are described as representatives of the marginal ultra-right and ultra-left segments of the European media landscape. They regularly relay pro-Russian propaganda, anti-globalist conspiracy theories and conspiratorial narratives presented as alternative journalism or analysis. Their use in this campaign allows claims hostile to Ukraine and its supporters to appear in European media rather than coming directly from openly Russian state outlets.
Europe did not create the confrontation
The suggestion that Western governments sought a war with Moscow conflicts with the course of European policy over many years. European states invested billions in joint projects with Russia and sought to integrate Moscow into international and European security structures. Even after Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, European countries continued looking for political ways to manage the conflict and preserve channels for dialogue.
It was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that forced European governments to reassess their security policies and increase defence spending. The sequence matters: European support for Ukraine followed an existing threat rather than creating one. Moscow’s account reverses that chronology, presenting its invasion as an allegedly compelled response to an external danger.
The same narrative also serves a domestic purpose for the Kremlin. By describing the war as a confrontation with Nato and the wider West, Russian authorities can explain the failure to achieve the declared objectives of the so-called “special military operation” and account for the heavy losses suffered by the Russian army. Responsibility is transferred from the decision to invade to an alleged Western strategy of encirclement.
Why the message matters in Europe
The proxy-war argument is designed to create a false choice for European citizens: either governments stop helping Ukraine or they supposedly risk entering a direct war with Russia. That framing seeks to make support for Kyiv appear contrary to European interests, while concealing the fact that Ukraine is defending itself against an attack on its territory, population and statehood.
Describing Ukrainians as instruments of the West also denies their political agency. Ukraine did not enter the war at another power’s command. Russian aggression directly threatened the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, while European states provide assistance at Kyiv’s request, in support of its right to defend itself under international law and the UN Charter.
For Europe, the issue is therefore also one of its own security. If Russia captures Ukrainian territory and restricts Ukraine’s sovereignty, it would create a dangerous precedent for the European security system by demonstrating that military force can produce political gains. The continuing information campaign seeks to weaken the public support on which assistance depends before that wider security calculation can be made clearly.
Should European governments respond to these narratives primarily by exposing their origins, or by focusing on stronger public explanations of why supporting Ukraine serves Europe’s own security?
