Disclaimer: This opinion piece is not condoning violence escalation, nor is it meant to instill fear; the author has merely examined the situation developing over the past weeks and has come to the following conclusion.
On September 9th, 2025, Russian drones entered Polish airspace. This move, originally thought to be an accidental spillover from the Russian war in Ukraine across the border, was later revealed to be a blatant violation of international law as the Russian drones soon after entered Estonia, Romania, Germany, all of the NATO Scandinavian countries, and Lithuania.
Because of this crap, panic set in at the UN General Debate on the 22nd, with representatives from NATO countries, including Radoslaw Sikorski, Marco Rubio, Alexander Stubb, and Margus Tsakna, all delivering fiery speeches related to the issue.
However, Russia stood firm. Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov stated at the UN the same tired Russian narrative we’ve all heard a thousand times before about how Russia and China are actually embarking on a great liberation of the world, in the face of American and other Western imperialism (of course replacing that imperialism with their own) Lavrov also said that NO ONE was allowed to shoot down Russian drones. Needless to say, Trump, who previously had been trying to find a pragmatic peace with Russia, has given up vocally supporting his allies (possibly preparing America for the worst).
And trust me, it’s good to prepare for the worst. Thanks to BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg, we know that Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda interviewed Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on the topic of Russia’s current relationship with NATO. He said, “What’s happening around us is war, and we must win it for our children.” You can find multiple other examples of Moscow officials basically admitting that hostilities between them and the West are only a matter of time.
But the question on everybody’s lips is WHY? Why would Russia even bother starting WW3? They have already been tied down in Ukraine for the last 3 years, and they have lost the lives of 100,000 brave young men. Their allies, China, Iran, and North Korea, all either don’t want this war as badly, or they’re just straight up not prepared for it (evidenced by Iran getting its butt kicked by the USA and Israel earlier this year and North Korea getting blasted by Ukraine in Kursk last year)
My theory is that the Kremlin is panicking; they haven’t taken Ukraine in 3 years, their HUGE summer offensive that culminated in the Battle of Pokrovsk FAILED (the Russians tried to Blitzkrieg the city, but the Ukrainians encircled them in a counteroffensive).
The Kremlin is looking for a new scapegoat to distract the Russian people from the failure in Ukraine. It’s like how Imperial Japan promised its people that it would conquer all of China in just 6 months in 1937, but while they made decent progress at the start, they quickly stalled, and years later, they declared war on the Allied powers as a distraction from their failure in China.
However, let us hope it doesn’t get that far, as the aforementioned Radoslaw Sikorski said to the UN Security Council:
“By ordering mobilization in 1914, you precipitated the start of WW1, which bled Europe white. By signing the Hitler-Stalin Pact, you helped launch WW2, the bloodiest conflict in human history. By Sovietizing Central & Eastern Europe, you caused the Cold War. Don’t start another one.” Let us hope they don’t.
