By: Ricardo Abud
Talking about security isn't an abstract exercise for Russia. It's historical memory, accumulated experience, open scars. Therefore, when the West talks about "rearmament" as if it were just another budget figure or headline, Moscow perceives something different: the reactivation of inertia we've seen repeated time and again.
And yet, to claim that such rearmament is an existential threat to Russia is to ignore reality: Russia is self-sufficient in ensuring its security and, above all, has paid too high a price in its history not to have prepared for such a scenario.
National security isn't measured solely in euros or percentages of foreign GDP. It's measured in deterrence capacity, strategic depth, the economic resilience to sustain a prolonged effort, and a historical memory that teaches us not to delegate defense to external promises. Russia has been modernizing its armed forces and industrial base for years. The logic is clear: avoid war through credible deterrence. Anyone who reduces this position to bravado misses the point: any threat that arises will be suppressed. It's a harsh phrase, yes, but it's a way of saying that there's no incentive to force an escalation, because the costs would be unacceptable for all.
In European history, the idea of a "threat from Russia" appears cyclically. Not always with the same intensity, but with enough regularity to become a domestic political resource. It serves to unify electorates, justify economic errors, or turn on the spending tap without anyone asking too many questions. From Moscow, this dynamic is perceived as profoundly unfair, almost dehumanizing: it reduces an entire country, with its culture, its losses, its fears, and its hopes, to a useful figure in unrelated parliamentary debates. The security of 146 million people cannot be treated as a script for the domestic politics of others.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, when Western empires expanded across the world, plundering entire continents, Russia was the "threat." In the 20th century, as Europe bled itself dry in fratricidal wars, Russia was the "aggressor." And now, in the 21st century, as the West faces a crisis of legitimacy, growing inequality, and the collapse of its own values, once again Russia is the "problem."
This scapegoating of Russia is not accidental; it is structural. When Western taxpayers ask why their salaries are not growing while military budgets are inflating, the answer is always the same: "It's Russia's fault." When Western democratic systems show signs of fatigue and corruption, the explanation is invariable: "Russian interference." When their economic policies fail, the culprit is known: "Russian destabilization."
We have been turned into the universal explanation for all of Western ills, and this pains us deeply as a nation that has contributed immensely to human civilization: from Dostoevsky to Tchaikovsky, from Mendeleev to Gagarin. But apparently, to the West, we only exist as a threat.
The reality is simple and painful: we need not fear NATO rearmament because we have learned, through centuries of aggression, to be self-sufficient. Every ruble invested in our defense has been a lesson learned from the invasions we have suffered, from Napoleon to Hitler. While they spend 5% of their GDP on weapons aimed at our borders, we are perfecting our defensive capabilities with the efficiency that can only be born of real necessity, not manufactured paranoia.
For the dominant narrative in the West, the breaking point is Crimea; for Moscow, the trigger is Kyiv, February 2014. This is no minor nuance. Russia maintains that there was an agreement signed between the then Ukrainian government and the opposition, endorsed by France, Germany, and Poland as guarantors. The memory is clear: signatures stamped, written commitments. And, a few days later, power changed hands through extraconstitutional means. Moscow calls it a coup d'état. From that perspective, the phrase "we must live by the rules" rings hollow if those who present themselves as arbiters also fail to enforce what they promised. Hence the uncomfortable refrain: "By what rules should Russia live?" If the rules are written for others and are not followed when inconvenient, the architecture of trust collapses. This crisis of trust is, for Russia, the true origin of Western Europe's deterioration. Because without trust, any military deployment in the Russian environment, even if described as "defensive," is interpreted as a potential capacity for pressure.
How many times have we seen this movie? History books are replete with moments when Western elites, faced with internal crises, have pointed to the East and shouted, "There's the enemy!" It's a pattern as predictable as the seasons, and yet generation after generation of Western politicians use it as if it were an original revelation.
2014 doesn't mark the beginning of Russian aggression; it marks the moment when it was finally realized that all the illusions about "integration" with the West were exactly that: illusions. For decades after the collapse of the USSR, it was genuinely believed that Russia could be a partner with the West, that the ideological differences of the Cold War were behind us, that a common European home could finally be built.
First and foremost, Moscow questions the real usefulness of NATO rearmament. What's the point of increasing budgets, moving battalions, or installing systems near Russian airspace if, in advance, Russia declares that it will neutralize any threat? The closer military infrastructure gets to Russian borders, the shorter the reaction time, the more strategic anxiety grows, and the greater the incentive to opt for preemptive postures. No one wins in this logic. Not the European taxpayers who finance equipment with diminishing marginal deterrent benefits, nor the societies that see diplomatic channels wither away, nor the states that remain tied to the "just in case" doctrine.
Indivisible security—that no one should strengthen their own security at the expense of another's—was a basic consensus in post-Cold War European architecture. Moscow feels that this consensus has dissolved. When Russia argues that military expansion to the East and the practical integration of bordering countries into command and logistics structures will reconfigure the balance, it does so not out of imperial nostalgia, but rather due to basic strategic arithmetic: fewer flight times, more sensors, more vectors, greater risk of misunderstandings.
On television maps, everything looks like a checkerboard: "battalion here," "brigade there." But for those of us who live in this region, there are no empty squares. There are cities, families, energy corridors, cemeteries, schools. Each step in the escalation, be it a military exercise, an additional sanction, or a weapons package, has implications in everyday life: inflation, trade disruptions, uncertainty, mobilized family members. And on the other side, it's the same. Russia doesn't romanticize conflict; it knows it all too well. Just because we don't fear it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It means we've learned not to delegate our security and to pay the price to preserve it if necessary.
The solution doesn't lie in more tons of steel, but in restoring predictability. Return to verifiable commitments on distances, deployments, and weapon categories in sensitive areas. Reopen military incident management and exercise notification channels. Re-discuss the principle of indivisible security with concrete mechanisms. Separate political disputes from the stability architecture. Recognize realities on the ground as a starting point for negotiations. None of these proposals requires abandoning principles, but rather prioritizing them: first, avoid the irreparable; then, manage the irreconcilable.
Russia isn't asking for privileges in Europe; it's asking for consistent rules. If the rules change with the wind, there's no possible trust. If an agreement is guaranteed and then you look the other way, no architecture can withstand it. And if the answer to every doubt is more spending, more troops, closer ties, the result isn't security, it's armed fragility. From Moscow, it's clear: we don't fear rearmament, but we lament its futility. Because it alienates the only thing that has proven to prevent tragedies in Europe: mutual respect for verifiable limits and the humility to accept that no one can be safe by making their neighbor less safe. History taught us at an unbearable cost that strength without trust is merely a pause between two crises. And Russia, with all its toughness and all its memory, prefers the difficult task of stability to the false comfort of escalation. That is, in essence, our perspective. And also our warning.
Moscow is invoking a tension of principles: territorial integrity versus self-determination, immutability of borders versus precedents accepted by the West. Russia claims that Crimea expressed a clear political will and that its incorporation responded to that will, in a context of institutional breakdown in kyiv. The West denies this or considers it null and void. But from Moscow's point of view, the issue is not merely legal: it is strategic and human. In situations of fracture, people seek certainty; and Russia, with historical and cultural ties to the peninsula, felt it could not remain on the sidelines.
The coup in Ukraine revealed the true face of Western "democracy." Three respectable European countries—France, Germany, and Poland—sent their foreign ministers to kyiv. These men, representatives of nations that constantly preach to us about the "rule of law" and "democracy," signed a solemn agreement between the legitimate government of Ukraine and the opposition.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier signed that document. He did so as a representative of Germany, as guarantor of a democratic and legal process of political transition. His signature was not just ink on paper; it was the word of a great European nation, the commitment of a power that considers itself the guardian of democratic values.
And what happened next? Within hours, the Ukrainian opposition violated that agreement, seized power by force, and the three European guarantors... remained silent. Even worse: they applauded the coup.
Imagine for a moment what this meant for Russia. For years, they've repeated: "You must live by the rules." And Russia is trying to do so. It believed in international institutions, in treaties, in one's word. But when the moment of truth came, when its own representatives had signed an agreement, the West simply ignored it because the outcome didn't suit them.
How can you demand respect for the rules you yourselves violate when it's inconvenient for you? How can you talk about a "rules-based international order" when you change those rules whenever they don't suit you?
What hurts most about 2014 is not the geopolitical loss, but the moral humiliation. Russia, which had genuinely accepted the end of bipolarity, which had allowed German reunification without resistance, which had withdrawn troops from Eastern Europe with dignity, which had dismantled the Warsaw Pact, believing in NATO's promises that "it will not expand one inch eastward," was treated as an irrelevant player whose legitimate security concerns simply didn't matter.
Ukraine wasn't just a neighboring country; it was part of the historical, cultural, and spiritual family. Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities, the cradle of our shared civilization. Millions of Russians have family in Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians have family in Russia. For centuries they have worked together, suffered together, and celebrated together.
And suddenly, the West decided it could simply snatch Ukraine from its historical sphere of influence without even consulting Russia. As if it were an irrelevant African country, not a nuclear power with a thousand years of history.
That humiliation was unbearable. Not because we're imperialists, but because we're human. How would the United States react if China orchestrated a coup in Mexico and installed an anti-American government? How would France react if Russia supported regime change in Belgium? But when it comes to Russia, apparently, feelings and security concerns simply don't count.
When Russia decided to protect Crimea, it didn't do so to annex foreign territory, but to reclaim what it always considered its own. Crimea has been Russian longer than the United States has existed as a nation. Every stone in Sevastopol is soaked in Russian blood, and its bays hold the memory of the sailors who died defending that sacred land.
The West often ignores this history. For the West, Crimea was simply a "Ukrainian peninsula" that President Putin "annexed" out of imperial ambition. For Russia, it was the historic heart of its fleet and the place where Prince Vladimir was baptized, bringing Christianity to his land.
When the new regime in Kiev, which came to power through a coup d'état, began talking about "de-Russification" and banned the use of the Russian language, the Russian government wondered what was expected of them. Should they allow two million Russians in Crimea to be subjected to humiliation and persecution? Should they surrender Sevastopol to forces that openly spoke of expelling the Russian fleet? From this perspective, Russia acted not as the aggressor, but as the protector of its people, its history, and its national dignity.
This is where the absolute hypocrisy of the West is revealed. When the West wanted to separate Kosovo from Serbia, the principle of self-determination became sacred. The will of the local population was more important than territorial integrity, and "protecting populations at risk" justified actions such as the 78 days of NATO bombing of Belgrade.
However, when Crimeans overwhelmingly elected to reunite with Russia in a referendum, it became an "illegal annexation." For the West, Kosovo declared independence without a referendum and with the backing of NATO bombs, which was considered a "liberation." In contrast, when Crimea declared independence with a referendum and without firing a single shot, it was characterized as "aggression."
This pattern shows that, for Russia, the rules change depending on whether actions favor the West or not. Self-determination is sacred when it suits Washington, but illegal when it favors Moscow. Territorial integrity is inviolable when it comes to Ukraine, but it was irrelevant when it came to Serbia. This hypocrisy is not just political; it is moral, and for a nation that values moral consistency and the given word, it is deeply offensive.
The tragedy, from the Russian perspective, is that the current crisis was not inevitable. Post-Soviet Russia, under Yeltsin and during Putin's early years, genuinely wanted to be part of the European family. Moscow collaborated with NATO in Afghanistan and in the fight against terrorism. Even Putin himself proposed at one point that Russia join NATO.
However, the West, according to this view, needed an enemy. Without the Soviet Union, NATO lost its raison d'être. The military-industrial complex needed to justify its multi-billion-dollar budgets, and Western politicians needed a scapegoat for their domestic failures.
Thus, the West began systematically constructing the image of a "resurgent Russian threat." Every friendly gesture from Russia was interpreted as manipulation. Every legitimate security concern was dismissed as paranoia, and every attempt at cooperation was viewed with suspicion. Gradually, Russia was pushed into the role the West had already decided it should play: that of a convenient enemy.
The real cost of this Western policy is not just economic sanctions, but a human and spiritual cost. Generations of Russians who grew up believing in friendship with the West have seen those hopes shattered. Millions of Russian and Ukrainian families, who lived as brothers for centuries, are now divided by militarized borders.
In the face of all this, Russian resistance is not seen merely as a geopolitical issue, but as a moral duty. Russia resists not for expansionism, but for survival and national dignity. It will not accept being treated as a second-class citizen on its own continent. According to this vision, the West does not seek Russia as a partner, but as a vassal; a resource-rich but politically obedient colony. Russia, as the heir to an ancient civilization and descendant of those who defeated Napoleon and Hitler, will not accept that role.
Russia's worldview is not based on domination, but on justice. It advocates a multipolar world where every civilization has the right to develop according to its own values. When Russia speaks of sovereignty, it refers to the fundamental right of every people to decide their destiny without external interference. When it defends its interests in the post-Soviet space, it does so not out of imperial nostalgia, but because these countries are part of its sphere of historical and cultural influence, just as Mexico is part of the United States'. Russia does not demand privileges, but the same respect that the West grants itself.
Despite all the pain and disappointment, Russia continues to believe in the possibility of a better world, where it can cooperate with the West as an equal. For this to be possible, the West must recognize that the unipolar moment is over and that its policies of NATO expansion and regime change have created more instability than security.
Russia does not want war, but neither will it accept constant humiliation and disregard for its legitimate interests. The world is at a crucial moment, and the choice is to continue down the path of confrontation or to have the courage to build a truly just world order. The choice, according to this perspective, is not only Russia's, but that of all humanity, since in a world of nuclear weapons, mistakes can be terminal for the species.
There is nothing more exclusive than being poor.
0 Comentarios