Tank of the Ukrainian Army (Photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

This article was first published by Truthmeter.mk (North Macedonia), within the framework of Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Project.

The post predicts a war between NATO and Russia, blaming London for it, but it is Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine that leads to it. The post speaks of some sort of “reduced NATO,” but although Trump wants to take the United States out of the alliance, he has not done so yet and it is not that simple—a legal act of December 22, 2023 prohibits him from doing so without the approval of the Senate or Congress. The post also claims that the West has been waging war against Russia for centuries, but in the more distant past there was no collective West and something like NATO, nor a common and consistent position of Western European countries towards Russia

We analyze a Facebook post on the social network Facebook which says:

War between a REDUCED “NATO” (without the US) and RUSSIA is increasingly certain. THIS IS NOT A NEW WAR. THIS IS JUST A CONTINUATION OF A WAR THAT HAS BEEN WAGED FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS.

p.s. There will be peace when London is gone.

This is a pro-Russian propaganda statement, and the source of the problem, which could lead to war between NATO and Russia, is not London, but Moscow. That problem is the war in Ukraine.

It is not London that attacked Ukraine and it is not the British army that destroyed the cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut there and massacred the inhabitants of Bucha and Irpin, but Russia, for which it has been condemned by the majority of UN member states with resolutions such as: 68/262, ES-11/1, and ES-11/7.

This problem has been going on for 11 years, but the author of the post pretends not to see it. In February-March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, after which it sent agents like Igor Girkin-Strelkov to tear Donbass from Ukraine. Thus, on April 7, 2014, the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic emerged, and five days later, Strelkov and his fighters attacked the city of Slavyansk, thereby provoking the Donbass War, in which regular Russian forces also secretly intervened.

Britain responded only with sanctions on Russia, and only in 2015 did it launch Operation Orbital to train Ukrainian forces, far from the frontline and with only non-lethal military assistance.

The then British Prime Minister David Cameron and his successor Theresa May met with Vladimir Putin (at international forums, etc.), but although they condemned him, they did not take any further action than the above, let alone military intervention. Yet the post claims that London is aggressive.

In fact, Moscow is threatening peace and security, as it did to Britain by sending agents there to kill fugitive Russians like Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal.

Litvinenko was killed with the substance polonium, whose radioactivity also endangered people who were not the targets of the operation, and even the agents themselves, who were subsequently treated. Traces of polonium were found on the plane, taxis, hotels and restaurants where they stayed. Skripal, on the other hand, was unsuccessfully poisoned with the nerve agent novichok, but other people were also unintentionally poisoned.

Towards the end of 2021, Russia began amassing forces on the border with Ukraine, under the pretext of “holding maneuvers,” which the British correctly understood as preparation for a full-scale invasion, but added that they would likely not intervene. Yet the post described them as aggressive.

It wasn’t until January 2022 that they first provided Ukraine with lethal military aid, but it was purely defensive and short-range, so it didn’t threaten Russia (they were hand-held rocket launchers). The following month, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to persuade him not to attack Ukraine, only for Putin to threaten him with a missile strike within a minute. Such violent threats by the Kremlin to the West have long been commonplace.

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched an attack and attempted to seize Kyiv, but it did not succeed. In March, there was an attempt to reach a peace agreement between the Russians and Ukrainians in Istanbul, and the Kremlin claims that they were on the verge of signing it, but that the Ukrainians rejected it under the influence of Johnson. Perhaps this is what the post means when it says that London does not want peace, but we have already written that this claim does not hold up.

Propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov then made nuclear threats against Britain on Russian state television, but the post convinces us that London is being aggressive.

Similar threats to Britain are also made by propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, politician and former general Andrey Gurulyov, and other public figures from Russia, all of which we see in the following clips.

The post also talks about a “reduced NATO,” which is also a manipulation. Although Donald Trump wants the US to withdraw from NATO, it has not been done and it is not that simple. The National Defense Authorization Act of December 22, 2023 prohibits the US President from withdrawing from NATO without two-thirds approval from the Senate or an appropriate act of Congress.

These legal restrictions were enacted precisely to prevent Trump from doing such a thing if he were to win the election in the future. It is said that he could find a way to circumvent this, but we do not know exactly what will happen. For now, the US is in NATO and the Alliance has not been reduced.

The post creates the image that Trump can do whatever he wants like Putin in Russia, but power in the United States is limited, not absolute, and it doesn’t work that easily. As a democracy, power in the United States is changeable, so this is Trump’s second and constitutionally last term and he may not succeed in realizing those ideas, and even if he succeeds, it may return to the previous state in the future. We don’t know who will be elected in the future.

The post says that war between a “reduced NATO” and Russia is increasingly certain, and by describing London as aggressive, it suggests that NATO will start the war by attacking Russia, but that is not true.

NATO is indeed talking about war against Russia, but not in the sense that NATO will attack it, but vice versa. That is why NATO members are strengthening their defense, some of them are restoring conscription or even planning to mine their borders, but this is not done for attack, but for defense.

Not long ago, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed sending NATO troops to Ukraine, but other members of the alliance, including Britain, disagreed.

According to the post, that war between NATO and the Russians will be a continuation of some war that has been going on for centuries, which is pseudohistory. In the distant past, there was no collective West and no Western military alliance like NATO, nor a common and consistent stance of Western European countries towards Russia.

Russia did not have such an attitude either. For example, in 1799, Britain and Russia attacked the Netherlands, whose ally was France, but Russia later reconciled with it and clashed with Britain (1807–1812). Immediately afterwards, Russia reconciled with Britain and together with it defeated the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. However, Britain and France were against Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856), but were together with it in World War I, and in World War II, they defeated Adolf Hitler with joint forces.

History is chaotic, so it is incorrect to say that the West has been at war with Russia for centuries, while the Crimean War was a rare case of a joint action by Britain and several Western European countries (not all) against Russia. Britain and other Western European countries worked against Russia at the Congress of Berlin (1878), when they treated it with disrespect, but that was a diplomatic, not a military conflict.

The Western bloc emerged only during the Cold War, not centuries ago, and it was a response to the aggressiveness and expansionism of Moscow, not London (see: here, here, here, here, and here).

Taking into account everything stated so far, we assess the post as untrue.