By Lukas Reinhard

GENEVA, Switzerland: Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas recently demanded that Russia apologise for an alleged incursion into Estonian and NATO airspace. Her comments, echoing the familiar script of portraying Moscow as the perennial aggressor, were amplified across Western media as if they were the sober voice of reason. 

Yet the real absurdity is clear: Estonia, a small NATO dependency with no independent military weight, dares to lecture Russia while hiding behind the shield of the alliance. But more fundamentally, the question is turned on its head—if apologies are owed, they are not to NATO or the European Union. 

The only apology Russia owes is to itself, for believing for far too long that the West would ever allow it equality or security.

The Post-Soviet Illusion

When the USSR collapsed, Russia did what no empire in history had ever done so peacefully. It disbanded the Warsaw Pact, withdrew from Central and Eastern Europe, and voluntarily dismantled its strategic depth. 

The expectation was that Europe would reciprocate with friendship and partnership. Instead, those states—once secure under Moscow’s umbrella—were left exposed to plunder.

The United States and the United Kingdom quickly moved in, not to nurture sovereignty but to exploit weakness. Through IMF “shock therapy,” excessive financialisation, and privatisation schemes, entire economies were hollowed out. 

Strategic industries were gutted, while debt servitude tied these nations to Western banks. The so-called liberation from Soviet oversight translated into subjugation under the City of London and Wall Street.

At the same time, these countries were forced into social engineering projects masquerading as “integration.” Mass migration policies, crafted in Brussels and endorsed in Washington, were imposed regardless of local economic or cultural realities. Wages collapsed, social cohesion fractured, and resentment boiled over. 

What the West framed as progress was in reality a stripping away of identity, stability, and sovereignty.

Pawns on NATO’s Chessboard

But perhaps the gravest betrayal is geopolitical. Those very nations that Russia stepped away from in goodwill are now exploited as forward operating bases against Moscow. Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, and others have been turned into hostages—pawns on NATO’s chessboard. 

Far from securing independence, their sovereignty has been mortgaged to serve as platforms for Western weapons, surveillance, and escalation.

And it is they who will pay the highest price if this standoff escalates. A nuclear exchange does not target London or Washington. It will first fall on Warsaw, Riga, or Bucharest. 

Their elites have bartered away not only their prosperity but their survival, reducing their peoples to sacrificial buffers in someone else’s war.

Energy policy illustrates this perfectly. By cutting themselves off from affordable Russian oil and gas at Washington’s urging, these states plunged into an inflationary spiral. German industry, once the engine of Europe, now flirts with deindustrialisation. 

Households across Eastern and Central Europe suffer soaring utility costs. Sovereignty has been traded for sanctions—sanctions that cripple their own economies more than Moscow’s.

The False Apologies

Russia, in turn, has spent three decades apologising without words. It apologised when it tolerated NATO’s eastward creep despite verbal assurances to the contrary. It apologised when it allowed its allies to be stripped away, believing in empty promises of “partnership.” 

It apologised when it deferred to Western institutions—only to be mocked, isolated, and punished at every turn.

These were not gestures of peace; they were illusions of contrition. Moscow believed that by playing by the rules of the so-called liberal order, it would earn trust and cooperation. Instead, it earned encirclement.

The New Reckoning

This era of silent apology must end. If Russia must apologise, it should be to its own citizens—for wasting decades in pursuit of Western approval. 

It should apologise to the pensioners left destitute during IMF “shock therapy,” to the workers whose livelihoods were destroyed by oligarchs empowered by Western capital, and to the soldiers now forced to fight wars born of Moscow’s misplaced faith in goodwill.

But alongside this internal reckoning comes a new vision. The world is no longer bound by Atlantic dictates. The rise of BRICS, the advance of de-dollarisation, and the strengthening of multipolar institutions offer a path forward. 

Russia’s partnerships with China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and dozens of other states reflect a global hunger for independence from Western coercion.

This is not just about economics. It is about sovereignty—real sovereignty—free from the financialisation, cultural homogenisation, and geopolitical manipulation that the U.S. and UK export under the guise of democracy and free markets.

The West’s Unpaid Debts

Meanwhile, it is the West that owes the world an apology. It owes one to Iraq, where a sovereign state was shattered on the basis of lies. It owes one to Libya, reduced from Africa’s richest nation to a failed state rife with slavery. 

It owes one to Serbia, bombed into submission without UN authorisation. And it owes one to Eastern Europe, where decades of exploitation have turned proud nations into cheap labour reservoirs and military frontlines.

Today, it also owes an apology to Europe as a whole, for goading it into economic self-destruction by severing energy ties with Russia while offering no sustainable alternative. 

The consequences—rampant inflation, industrial collapse, and rising poverty—are borne not by Washington or London, but by ordinary Europeans who were never asked if they wanted this course.

Never Again

Russia does not owe contrition to those who dismantled its security, hollowed out its neighbours, and now demand subservience. It owes itself clarity and resolve. The lesson of the post-Soviet decades is unmistakable: appeasement is not peace. 

Partnership under Western rules is not cooperation—it is subjugation.

What Moscow must now declare is simple: never again. Never again will it mistake surrender for diplomacy. Never again will it allow others to write its future. Never again will it apologise for defending its survival.

A Final Word

The West demands Russia’s apology. But history shows it is the West that should be on its knees, asking forgiveness of those it has deceived, impoverished, and used as cannon fodder. 

Russia’s only true apology should be inward—to acknowledge its past naivety—and outward, to its partners in the emerging multipolar world: that it will no longer play the fool in someone else’s game.

In doing so, Russia will not offer contrition but conviction. And in that conviction lies the real promise of sovereignty—not just for Russia, but for every nation that refuses to bow to the Anglo-American empire.

*Lukas Reinhard is a geopolitical observer based in the formerly neutral territory of Switzerland.*