The Ledger of Armageddon: Europe's Financial Gambit in Ukraine and the Delusional Dance with Russia’s Nuclear Satan II, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)

 Europe's elite have scripted a proxy war in Ukraine not as a crusade for democracy, but as a high-stakes poker game for fiscal survival. John Leake's piercing essay (link below) lays bare the hypocrisy: Moral platitudes about sovereignty and human rights serve as the velvet curtain cloaking a desperate scramble for assets, Ukrainian reconstruction trillions, frozen Russian oligarch fortunes, and the tantalising promise of EU expansion to shore up a crumbling monetary union. As the ECB teeters on the brink of another sovereign debt implosion, the war machine grinds on, fuelled by the unquenchable thirst of big business for profit amid peril. But here's the delusion: While corporations salivate over wartime windfalls, Russia's Satan II nuclear behemoth looms like a thermonuclear guillotine, capable of vapourizing nations in minutes. Europe's leaders, and their boardroom puppeteers, gamble that commerce can conquer apocalypse, a hubris as old as empires and as fatal as fallout.

Europe's Fiscal House of Cards: The ECB's Sovereign Debt Time Bomb

John Cochrane's Hoover Institution diagnosis isn't hyperbole; it's an autopsy of a patient still breathing only because the ventilator hasn't failed yet. The 2010 sovereign debt crisis was the tremor: COVID and the Ukraine war the aftershocks. Today, in 2025, the eurozone's fragility is etched in red ink: Member states' debts have ballooned to 90% of GDP on average, with Italy and Greece flirting with 150%, while the ECB clutches €3 trillion in sovereign bonds like a junkie hoarding fixes. Overregulation chokes innovation, Europe's growth sputters at 0.5% annually, while banks, stuffed with toxic sovereign paper, teeter on the edge of another "doom loop" where state defaults trigger bank runs, and vice versa.

The ECB's playbook? "Whatever it takes," redux: Unlimited bond buys, negative rates, and fiscal backstops that Mario Draghi could only dream of in 2012. But as the November 2025 Financial Stability Review warns, inflation's 2% perch masks rollover risks; higher yields could spike spreads, forcing the ECB into ever-larger interventions. Frankfurt's mandarins whisper in boardrooms: The next crisis, fuelled by U.S. tariffs or global slowdown, could dwarf 2010, demanding chaotic defaults or Weimar-level inflation. Enter Ukraine: Not as a humanitarian flashpoint, but as a financial lifeline. Accession talks dangle €136 billion in EU budget infusions over seven years, but the real prize? Reconstruction costs estimated at $500 billion to $1 trillion, funnelled through EU mechanisms that dilute the bloc's liabilities while enriching contractors.

Proxy War Profiteering: Oligarch Assets and the Lure of Ukrainian Gains

Leake's suspicion rings true: Negotiations with Ukraine's oligarchs, Rinat Akhmetov, Ihor Kolomoisky, and their ilk, aren't about de-oligarchisation; they're asset grabs disguised as reform. Ukraine's 2021 "anti-oligarch" law bans them from politics and privatisation, but war has supercharged the purge: Zelenskyy's NSDC registry has neutered their influence, freeing up steel mills, energy grids, and ports for Western suitors. EU lawmakers now eye confiscating Russian oligarchs' frozen €200-300 billion in assets, yachts in Monaco, villas in London, to bankroll Kyiv's rebuild, a "proceeds of corruption" windfall that turns sanctions into slush funds.

Big business smells blood: Siemens, TotalEnergies, and BlackRock salivate over Ukraine's vast lithium deposits and Black Sea gas fields, rebranded as "green reconstruction" bonanzas. The EU's €50 billion Ukraine Facility, tied to accession milestones, funnels contracts to German arms makers like Rheinmetall (up 300% in stock since 2022) and French firms like Thales, who profit from endless proxy attrition. It's no coincidence that ECB bond buys surged post-2022 invasion, stabilising yields while war bonds yield 5-7% returns for investors. For Europe's unaccountable elite, insulated in Brussels' bubbles, this isn't war; it's a balance-sheet booster, cloaked in Zelenskyy photo-ops. Financial motives, as Leake notes, have ignited conflicts from the Opium Wars to Iraq; Ukraine's just the latest ledger entry.

The Satan II Shadow: Big Business's Delusional Deterrence Waltz

Yet, amid this fiscal frenzy, delusion reigns supreme. Russia's RS-28 Sarmat, derisively dubbed Satan II, isn't bluster; it's a 208-ton liquid-fuelled leviathan, silo-launched to hurl 10-16 MIRV warheads (up to 40 megatons total yield) across 11,000 miles, evading U.S. missile shields with hypersonic gliders. Capable of glassing Paris to Paris in 12 minutes or turning the UK into a "nuclear ashtray," as Putin quipped, its September 2024 test failure, exploding mid-flight, only underscores Moscow's resolve: Four more launches by 2026, per Roscosmos.

Big business? They treat it like a market dip: Diversify into "resilient" assets, bunkers from Vivos Group, fallout-proof data centres from AWS, while lobbying for NATO's €2 trillion rearmament, a boon for Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems. CEOs at Davos 2025 chuckled over "escalation dominance," betting that Putin's sabre-rattles are sales pitches for their drones and cyber suites. Delusion? Absolutely. As CEPA warns, Sarmat's FOBS (fractional orbital bombardment) could loop over the South Pole, unchecked by NORAD, turning MAD into a Russian monopoly. Yet, Airbus execs greenlight €10 billion in Ukrainian F-16 deals, ignoring that one Satan salvo erases balance sheets, and boardrooms, in radioactive irrelevance.

This corporate calculus, profit now, pray later, echoes the tobacco barons denying cancer or oil giants scoffing at climate Armageddon. Europe's war hawks, bankrolled by these titans, extend the Ukraine quagmire, blind to the thermonuclear guillotine. Putin's threats aren't theatre; they're the only brake on escalation, yet NATO's "rethink" post-Sarmat flop? More Minuteman upgrades, not de-escalation.

Awakening from the Delusion: Before the Bombs Balance the Books

Leake's indictment stands: Europe's "passionate desire" for proxy perpetuity stems from Frankfurt's fear, not Kyiv's freedom. Big business, ever the opportunist, amplifies the madness, hawking war toys while hedging with doomsday vaults. But Satan II isn't a spreadsheet risk; it's existential roulette. The delusion, that finance trumps fallout, that oligarch spoils outweigh oblivion, threatens not just Ukraine, but the continent's soul.

To shatter it: Demand ECB transparency on Ukraine-linked bonds; claw back corporate war profits via windfall taxes; and broker Minsk 3.0 before Sarmat's silos empty. History's wars end in ledgers of loss; this one could end civilisation. Europe's leaders must choose: Fiscal fixes through fire, or fragile peace through prudence? The clock ticks, not to market close, but to mushroom clouds. Wake up or wake to ashes.

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/does-europe-seeks-war-with-russia