Feb 14, 2026
Europe has three excuses for not defending Ukraine. None survive basic logic.
1️⃣ Excuse one: the “steel porcupine” — arm Ukraine enough to deter Russia alone. No NATO membership, no Article 5. But no NATO member defends itself without collective defense. Not France, not Germany, not the Baltics. Ukraine gets a porcupine costume and good luck.
2️⃣ Excuse two: peace talks. Every round of negotiations in 2025 was accompanied by major Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure. The “energy ceasefire” had no known scope, duration, or start date. When Putin violated it, Trump said he “kept his word.”
3️⃣Excuse three: “it’s for Ukraine to decide” — said to a country enduring 80% blackouts, 7°C indoors, and 147 drones every night.
Meanwhile, 2025 was the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since the full-scale invasion. Russia fired 53,732 combat drones. Power production fell to 20% of pre-war capacity.
A coalition that won’t fight a weakened Russia today won’t fight a rebuilt one tomorrow. Everyone in Munich knows this.
Full article :
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Euromaidan reposted this :
Crimean seized at Moscow airport, faces up to 20-year sentence for donations to Ukraine.
• HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN RUSSIAN-OCCUPIED CRIMEA
Halina Coynash, 14 February 2026
Crimean seized at Moscow airport, faces up to 20-year sentence for donations to Ukraine
Kyrylo Kostyhov was detained, subjected to fake administrative prosecutions until the FSB came up with ‘treason’ charges over donations totalling 22 euros.
Russia’s FSB first seized Kyrylo Kostyhov in July 2025, although it was only in September last year that they came up with ‘treason’ charges against the 31-year-old from Kerch, in occupied Crimea. The charges appear to be based solely on records found on his telephone of very modest donations sent to Ukrainian charities.
In occupied Crimea, the FSB regularly abduct Ukrainian civilians and hold them incommunicado for months, sometimes, years, before admitting to their detention and laying charges. Kyrylo Kostyhov was, however, detained at Domodedovo airport in Moscow as he tried to leave Russia, with this, presumably, the reason that the FSB in Moscow first subjected him to so-called ‘carousel prosecutions’ – one administrative charge after another, with Russian ‘courts’ obliging by ordering brief terms of administrative arrest. The human rights group Perviy Otdel [First Department] reportsthat Kostyhov was detained at Domodevo on 14 July 2025 after his telephone was checked. Although the ‘treason’ charges are based on records of payments noticed then, the FSB clearly needed more time to fabricate a ‘case’ and first got him charged with swearing in the entrance to his apartment block. This was the first of three administrative charges on ‘petty hooliganism’ charges evidently used as pretexts to keep him in detention in July and August 2025.
It was in September that he was formally charged with ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code and remanded in custody by the Meshchansky court in Moscow. Ostorozhno, Novosti [Careful, the news] reported in November 2025 that Kostyhov’s social media pages were in Ukrainian and that he was active on Ukrainian chats in Russia. There he had spoken of having received a passport to go to Turkey and had gone to Istanbul several times to reinstate documents.
Russia accuses Kostyhov of having transferred money totalling a little over two thousand roubles (22 euros) to “Ukrainian funds”. There is no further detail as to what these funds were, however Russia’s FSB has for some time been treating any help for Ukraine as excuse for bringing ‘treason’ charges.
Any such ‘trial’ is held behind closed doors and is, more often than not, merely a hearing at which the sentence is passed. Convictions and sentences of between 12 and 20 years are essentially guaranteed.
Kyrylo Kostyhov’s mother lives in Ukraine and he has no relatives in Russia at all. If you can write to him (in Russian, and on ‘safe’ subjects), it will tell him that he is not forgotten (address below).
Kyrylo is not the first Ukrainian to have been detained after trying to either enter or leave Russia, and first subjected to ‘carousel’ prosecutions. In December 2022, Leniye Umerova, a 24-year-old Crimean Tatar who was living and working in Kyiv, set off to visit her family in occupied Crimea after her father was diagnosed with cancer. She was crossing the border between Georgia and the Russian Federation when she was stopped, and then ended up facing one absurd administrative charge after another, before facing mystery ‘spying’ charges. She was, thankfully released in a prisoner exchange in September 2024, after almost two years in Russian captivity.
Very many other Ukrainians remain imprisoned, with a mounting number of Russia’s prosecutions on supposed ‘treason’ charges because of donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces or Ukrainian humanitarian organizations.
The following list is, unfortunately, likely to be far from comprehensive:
Oleksandr Kachkurkin
Young Crimean deported from Kazakhstan to face huge sentence in Russia for donating money to Ukraine
Olha Hulchak; Olena Penza and Yulia Stanika
Russia sentences three Ukrainian women to 12 years for supporting Ukraine’s defenders
Iryna Sukhodei
Maryna Bilousova
Russia sentences 61-year-old Ukrainian to 12. 5 years for donation to Ukraine’s defenders
Yulia Stanika
Russian invaders’ ‘court’ sentences Ukrainian to 12. 5 years for patriotism
Lilia Kachkariova and Svitlana Dovhopola
Huge sentences and videoed ‘repentance’ in Russia’s mounting terror in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast
Serhiy Shtyrov
60-year-old from Russian-occupied Donbas sentenced to 13 years for donations to Ukraine’s defenders
Tetiana Omelchenko
Kateryna Korovina
Ivan Semykoz
Russia sentences Ukrainian to 8.5 years for donation as a teenager to Ukraine’s Azov Regiment
Stanislav Rudenko
Roman Hryhorian
Ukrainian seized in Crimea and sentenced to 12 years for donations to Ukraine’ s defenders
Liudmyla Kolesnikova
Three unnamed victims
Russia stages terror arrests in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast for donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces
Please write to Kyrylo Kostyhov!
Adress
СИЗО №3 ГУ ФСИН РФ по г. Москве, 123308, 1-й Силикатный проезд д. 11, к. 1, г. Москва, РФ
Костыгову Кириллу Витальевичу, 18.09.1994.
I note that Oleksandr Kachkurkin was deported from Kazakhstan to putlerstan.
That suggests to me that the belief that the Kazakhs were drifting away from putinaZi orbit was just wishful thinking.
This is unbearably bleak from the EP full article:
“The fact that Russia rejects even Trump’s peace plan—a plan that rewards the aggressor and meets most of Putin’s demands, leaving Ukraine extremely vulnerable—says everything about Moscow’s true objectives.
The US remains reluctant to provide urgently needed air defense. Civilian casualties have increased 31% under Trump’s presidency. Washington continues its efforts to reset relations with Russia at the cost of European security.
Europe is therefore faced with two options: go all in for a Ukrainian victory to reestablish peace and stability, or continue its present strategy until Ukraine can no longer be saved—and face the very real likelihood of war on its own soil.”
At the moment the feckless idiots are indeed following the present hopeless strategy.
Unbe-fucking-lievable.
Europe’s pathetic dithering is begging for disaster. It’s not only the far-right, AfD, Le Pen, and maga that haven’t learned anything from past mistakes, the European continent as a whole has not learned a lick, either. Lathering themselves with praise and expelling copious amounts of CO2 in a luxury hotel won’t help the evilness lurking over the horizon to go away.
I have 3 excuses for Europe no backing Ukraine to the hilt.
Cowardice
Cowardice
Cowardice