Pomerantsev says fear of Russian retaliation was the West’s biggest mistake

Fear of Russian retaliation and belief that Moscow was ready to use nuclear weapons paralysed the West’s response to Russia, propaganda and disinformation researcher Peter Pomerantsev told LRT. The British journalist and writer, who is visiting Lithuania, said this was the West’s biggest mistake.

He pointed to the previous US administration’s restrictions on Ukrainian strikes against Russian bases, imposed over fears they could trigger a nuclear war. Pomerantsev said similar thinking had taken hold in Washington and Berlin, and called the arguments for restraint absurd and catastrophic.

Pomerantsev also said Western countries should challenge the long-standing narrative that Russia is an inevitable great power destined to dominate Europe. That sense of greatness, he argued, is reinforced by maps and the idea of a “great” Russian culture. He said Russia’s period of dominance in the region was historically relatively short, while Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine had been powers there for many centuries.

He said propaganda draws on myths built over time, and that countering it requires confronting those deeper ideas. Pomerantsev added that the Kremlin had long promoted a narrative in Western Europe that the Baltic states were hysterical and irrational in their fear of Russia. “I think now we are all Lithuania,” he told LRT Television.

Asked about reports of a plague case in Irkutsk that the Kremlin has denied, Pomerantsev said the story was still developing and difficult to assess. He said censorship within a country can also hinder other countries’ responses, citing the Soviet Union’s censorship of information about Chernobyl.