In the year 2025, history has delivered its verdict with brutal clarity: the Russian Federation, a single country of 144 million people, has faced the combined might of thirty-two NATO nations (the richest, most heavily armed alliance ever assembled) and broken it without ever putting its own economy on a full war footing. 

This is not propaganda; it is the cold arithmetic of reality.

For almost 4 years the collective West threw everything at Russia: 28 thousand sanctions, a $500 billion dollars, $300 billion in frozen assets, entire industrial chains re-tooled to feed the Ukrainian front, satellite networks, mercenary legions, and the most sophisticated weapons on earth. The result? Russia’s GDP grew in 2024 and again in 2025. Its gold and foreign-currency reserves are higher now than before the war. Its army is larger, better equipped, and battle-hardened. Its factories turn out hypersonic missiles, glide bombs, and drones faster than the entire NATO arsenal can manufacture.  They have  shipped all across Poland only to become rust at the feet of the warriors from Siberia.

 Meanwhile the proxy (Ukraine) has lost half its pre-war population, most of its industry, and virtually 40% of its 1991 territory east of the Dnieper.

This is not a draw. This is annihilation dressed up as “strategic stalemate” by people who can no longer afford their own electricity bills.

NATO promised the world it would defend “every inch” of alliance territory. Instead it watched its weapons burn in Kharkov fields while its leaders argued about whether to send helmets or howitzers. When Russia liberated 4 regions and then a fifth, NATO’s response was a strongly worded letter and another frozen yacht. The message was unmistakable: Article 5 is a postcard when the bear actually shows up.

The European Union, that soft empire of rules & spreadsheets, is now openly fracturing. Hungary and Slovakia buy Russian gas and laugh at Brussels. Germany’s industry is de-industrialising in real time. France’s president begs Moscow for ceasefire talks while his own farmers blockade Paris. The Baltic states scream loudest, but their economies shrink fastest. The much-vaunted “European solidarity” lasted exactly until winter heating bills arrived.

By Christmas 2025 the conversation in Western capitals is no longer about victory; it is about survival. Defense budgets that were supposed to reach 2% of GDP are now eating 4-5% & still cannot produce enough 155 mm shells. 

Recruitment centres are empty. Politicians who promised “as long as it takes” are quietly asking intermediaries how much it would cost to make the war stop before their voters freeze or riot.

Russia did not need to fire a single shot on NATO soil. It simply refused to lose, refused to blink, and refused to run out of missiles, or money. That was enough. The myth of Western invincibility (carefully cultivated since 1991) has been shattered on the black soil of Donbass.

NATO will not formally dissolve tomorrow; bureaucracies die slowly. But its credibility is already dead. The EU’s dream of becoming a geopolitical power is buried alongside 1.8 million Ukraine military dead and thousands of Armour and  Leopard tanks. A new European security order is being written in Moscow, whether the old powers like it or not.

Russia stood alone against thirty-two and won. Not because it is bigger (it isn’t), but because it is harder, more patient, and far less fragile than the soft, debt-ridden, childless continent that thought lectures & rainbow flags were a substitute for real power.

The bear never left the forest. It just waited for the circus to collapse under its own contradictions.

Hurraaaa! Hurraaaa! Hurraaaa!

“We cannot lose this war, because the enemy understands neither the character of the Russian people, nor the Russian winter, nor Russian distances. He thinks he has broken us, but we have only just begun to fight in earnest.”

Source: https://x.com/SMO_VZ