Under the Guise of “Peace,” Putin’s Supporters in the West Are Trying to Sell Ukraine’s Capitulation

POLITICS 17.09.2026 / author: Prompolitinform Editorial Team

Ivan Arefiev dissects Kremlin manipulation without diplomatic sugar-coating

French Putin supporter Marine Le Pen has joined the chorus of “peacemakers.” According to media reports, she stated on the French TV channel LCI that either NATO enters the Russo-Ukrainian war—which would trigger World War III—or Europe will witness a hundred-year war between Russia and Ukraine.

It sounds logical at first glance. In reality, this is a classic manipulation—the creation of a false dilemma.

The French are offered only two choices:

* to go and die near Donetsk tomorrow;

* or to support Ukraine at their own expense for the next hundred years.

A third option is intentionally hidden: providing Ukraine with enough weapons, tightening sanctions, utilizing frozen Russian assets, and making the continuation of aggression so costly for the Kremlin that Putin runs out of ways to wage war.

This is precisely the option that Moscow fears the most.

AN OLD HANDBOOK IN NEW ATTIRE

Le Pen’s manipulation consists of several well-known Kremlin talking points.

First: Ukraine supposedly cannot win.

Second: military aid supposedly does not protect people but only “prolongs the war.”

Third: responsibility for the duration of the war is shifted from the aggressor to the victim and its allies.

Fourth: any firm response to Russia is declared an “escalation” and a path to World War III.

And fifth, the most important: if you call capitulation a compromise, it supposedly ceases to be a capitulation.

It does not cease.

If an armed bandit breaks into your house, kills your neighbors, and occupies two rooms, stopping aid to the owner is not peacemaking. It is helping the bandit complete the robbery.

WHO ELSE IS SINGING THIS SONG

Viktor Orban remains the loudest European broadcaster of this line. For years, he has been arguing that Ukraine cannot win, opposing military aid and sanctions, and in 2025 he even claimed that Russia had already “won the war.” Meanwhile, Hungary maintains close political and energy ties with Moscow and regularly blocks or delays EU decisions regarding Ukraine.

Alongside him is Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. His formula is almost the same: weapons “do not solve the problem,” sanctions harm Europe, and negotiations are needed immediately. However, he proposes negotiations under conditions where the Russian army remains on occupied territory. In other words, Putin seizes foreign land first, and then everyone is invited to accept the loot as a “new reality.”

In Germany, similar points are promoted by the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. They call themselves “parties of peace,” oppose supplying weapons to Ukraine, and scare Germans with the prospect of being dragged into a foreign war. Yet the AfD itself does not deny the need to produce armaments—it just does not want them to help Ukraine deter Russia.

In Italy, Matteo Salvini has repeatedly used similar rhetoric: sanctions supposedly harm Europeans themselves, weapons increase the number of casualties, and Russia must be negotiated with. The arithmetic is curious: when Russians launch a missile, the Russians are only formally guilty. Politically, the guilty party is whoever gave Patriot systems to Ukraine.

In the United States, isolationists use their version of this scheme: they call Ukraine an “endless war,” aid “foreign expenditures,” and demands to stop the aggressor “ingratitude.” J.D. Vance voted against aid to Ukraine before taking office and later cited the end of American funding as one of his political team’s achievements.

The words differ, but the construction is the same:

Putin attacked—but Ukraine must make concessions.

Russia kills—but weapons must be taken away from Ukraine.

Moscow refuses a just peace—but the pressure is directed at Kyiv.

An amazing “peacemaking” approach, after which the aggressor receives land, resources, population, and time to prepare for the next war.

LE PEN AND THE RUSSIAN TRAIL

Calling every critic of aid to Ukraine a Kremlin agent would be simplistic. Similar words do not prove direct control from Moscow.

But in Marine Le Pen’s case, we have more than just similar rhetoric.

In 2014, her party confirmed it had received a nine-million-euro loan from a Russian bank. Le Pen opposed sanctions, supported the Russian version of the “referendum” in occupied Crimea, and for years called Putin a political partner. Later, the party repaid the Russian loan, but that does not erase the history of financial and political ties.

Therefore, when politicians with such a past suddenly start explaining to Europeans that supporting Ukraine for too long is unwise, a perfectly legitimate question arises: is this a concern for peace, or is it political service to Russian interests?

WHY “GIVING UP UKRAINE” DOES NOT MEAN RETURNING TO THE STATUS QUO

The biggest lie in this manipulation is the promise to restore a calm past.

After a potential defeat of Ukraine, there will be no return to the status quo.

Instead, there will be a Russia convinced that nuclear blackmail, missile terror, the murder of civilians, and the seizure of territories work.

International law will be destroyed.

There will be a wave of millions of refugees.

There will be a much longer NATO border with Russian troops.

There will be a need to maintain much larger armies in Poland, Romania, the Baltic states, and Finland.

And there will be new ultimatums from the Kremlin—no longer just to Ukraine, but to Europe itself.

Putin did not stop after Georgia in 2008. He did not stop after the occupation of Crimea and part of Donbas in 2014. He did not stop after the Minsk agreements. He perceived every concession not as an invitation to peace, but as permission to prepare the next attack.

Therefore, “freezing the war” without real security guarantees is not ending it. It is announcing an intermission during which the aggressor reloads their weapons.

WHO IS ACTUALLY LEADING EUROPE TO A MAJOR WAR

It is not Ukraine that is bringing World War III closer by asking for air defense systems.

It is Putin, who is bringing it closer by testing how many more countries can be intimidated with a nuclear club.

It is not French missiles that create war.

War is created by Russian missiles that strike residential buildings, hospitals, train stations, and buses. On September 16 alone, a Russian FPV drone struck a civilian minibus near Nikopol: five people were killed, and at least seven were wounded.

The very next day, Russian strikes injured civilians in Kyiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia again.

That is who is continuing the war. Not the French taxpayer. Not the American factory producing Patriot missiles. Not the Ukrainian soldier defending their home.

Russia is continuing the war.

A RESPONSE TO FOREIGN “PEACEMAKERS”

Dear foreign ladies and gentlemen who are so worried about our peace:

There is no need to save Ukraine from Ukrainian resistance.

Stop the one who came to kill us.

Do not tell us how many years we must defend our own land. Ukrainians never asked Putin how many years he is allowed to bomb us.

Don’t want a World War III? Then do not show dictators that nuclear blackmail opens the borders of other states.

Don’t want a hundred-year war? Give Ukraine the ability to end this one—not with capitulation, but with a result that will make the Kremlin remember for the next hundred years what happens when you invade someone else’s land.

And Putin should be reminded separately.

You expected to take Kyiv in three days. Much more time has passed, and your propagandists are still trying to take at least Paris—through television, fear, and useful political proxies.

It isn’t working.

Because peace is not when a victim is convinced not to resist.

Peace is when the aggressor has lost the ability to attack.

Everything else is capitulation wrapped in beautiful words.