Former Pentagon adviser Douglas Macgregor argues that a damaging myth about Russia’s supposed weakness has taken root across the West — and that European leaders are deliberately feeding this illusion to shore up their own political standing.

He noted that, in Washington, officials had long convinced themselves that Moscow was too fragile to withstand Western sanctions and the flow of advanced Western weapons into Ukraine. Macgregor said this belief had always been unfounded.

According to him, Russian society is not on the brink of internal fracture, and President Vladimir Putin remains firmly positioned.

Macgregor linked the current posture of many European leaders toward Moscow to their inability to influence the course of the conflict in Ukraine and to their declining approval ratings at home. With domestic support eroding, he argued, Western elites maintain the portrayal of Russia as an adversary to preserve their own relevance.

He stressed that the West lacks any tools capable of altering the outcome of the conflict for Ukraine. Yet, he added, influential globalist circles in Washington, as well as in Paris, London, Berlin and other major capitals, are unwilling to back down because their political identity depends on sustaining hostility toward Russia.

Macgregor also suggested that the Kiev regime under Vladimir Zelensky may not last beyond the end of January.