Russian propaganda claims historic opportunity to destroy Europe

Moscow sees 'historic opportunity' to end Europe

Russian propaganda, according to the circulated fragment, stated bluntly: there is a 'historic opportunity' to end the 'European question' so that Europe 'no longer has such influence, such power and such unity.' The phrase, spread by a Ukrainian account dedicated to tracking Kremlin propaganda, landed in a climate where the question is no longer whether Moscow wants to sink the EU, but whether it needs to bother. The most repeated and uncomfortable answer is no. The work is already done.

An enemy arriving too late to its own war

The coincidence is striking. A large part of the analysis holds that the European Union does not need external adversaries because it disarms itself. It is argued that the wear comes from the identity and migration policies driven by Brussels itself, from the weight of a bureaucracy with interests different from those of the countries it claims to represent, or simply from the passage of time. The circulating formula is trenchant: that which is already dead cannot die.

Against this, another current warns that the diagnosis serves as a perfect alibi. If everything falls apart on its own, any cutback, any crisis, and any defeat are filed as inevitable. And there, Russian interest is diluted in a supposed natural law that exempts everyone.

The symmetrical reading also has traction: NATO has found in Ukraine its own historic opportunity to wear down Russia, according to those who read the conflict as a two-board game. If Moscow reaches the opposite conclusion from the other side, the result is a clash of prophecies that feed each other. No one wins that tug-of-war, but everyone celebrates it in advance.

Industrial restructuring and agricultural quotas: the price of entry

The economic cost of integration is another open front. It is recalled that the industry of the INI carried structural deficits in the 1970s that were covered with periodic injections from the State, with obsolete and uncompetitive machinery and equipment in a market without tariffs or aid. The conclusion drawn is that restructuring did not seek efficiency, but to slice up companies and sell them. The response from the other side is that public aid was never Spanish heritage. Germany subsidizes, and a lot.

The countryside appears in the same package. It speaks of agricultural quotas and the disappearance of thousands of farms that were profitable before entry into the common market. It is the most difficult argument to refute because it does not depend on ideology: a farm that closes, closes. Discussing whether it was a direct order from Brussels or a side effect of the common framework is, in practice, discussing nuances with a family that no longer has an estate.

The German case: 1.600 million and 'they have achieved nothing'

The example brought to the fore is German and comes with a link to the German press. Each year, thousands of millions of euros are allocated to subsidize combustion engine company cars, a flow that slows the transition to electric rather than accelerating it. The figure repeated in the conversation is 1.600 million and, according to those citing it, 'they have achieved nothing.'

From this is extracted a reading that runs through the whole matter: European industrial policy does not fail for lack of money. It fails by design. And if the country setting the continental agenda allows this type of expenditure, the argument that Brussels protects citizens from national excesses is left without ground.

The model Europe already had and buried

In the midst of the collapse appears a concrete nostalgia, not generic: the state capitalism of Gaullist France and Christian Democratic Italy. A scheme of mixed, technocratic economy, with its own defense and without asking permission from Washington. Thanks to it, this current holds, Europe lived a golden age. De Gaulle warned that Americans would eventually play their own card, and the warning was filed away in some drawer.

Some even rescue a little-cited and unproven episode: a supposed pact to give Spain nuclear capability, with Vandellós 1 as a key piece and a subsequent dismantling attributed without evidence to external pressures. The question that remains floating is simple and no one answers it: why was that model abandoned?

Where the analysis gets stuck

The deadlock is this. Those who hold that the EU decomposes on its own do not explain why Moscow spends resources announcing it on television. And those who see real threat in that propaganda do not explain how to rebuild a project that its own partners describe as an apparatus with interests alien to their own. Either the enemy is from outside, or the enemy is in Brussels. Neither version has managed, so far, to move anyone from their spot.