The EU will orchestrate an attack on the scale of Pearl Harbor to force the United States into direct war with Russia, according to a narrative promoted by the pro-Kremlin press. The idea seems to have been stolen from a well-known Tom Clancy book, which was also made into a Hollywood movie .
NEWS: The European Union is so eager to draw the United States into a conflict with Russia that it could stage a provocation on the scale of the attack on Pearl Harbor. This scenario was put forward by former British diplomat Alastair Crooke in a YouTube video.
According to him, the EU countries are not prepared for war with the Russian Federation, either financially or defensively, because their weapons depots are empty. Nevertheless, European leaders constantly make statements about a potential military conflict with Moscow.
"They are not talking about a real war. It is about a provocation, an attack. I think Europeans are hoping to stage a shocking incident, similar to Pearl Harbor, that will overcome the objections of US President Donald Trump and draw America into the conflict," Crooke explained.
NARRATIVES: 1. The EU wants to provoke a major incident to draw the US into a war with Russia; 2. European leaders seek to sabotage peace, not stop the war in Ukraine.
PURPOSES: To justify a large-scale invasion of Russia; to exonerate Moscow and shift the blame for the war onto the EU; to demonize the European leaders.
Reality: The EU's goal is a just and lasting peace on the European continent, not war.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Although he was a British diplomat, Alastair Crooke currently collaborates with platforms associated with Russian interests. Since 2016, after joining the Russian Valdai Discussion Club , he has intensified his rhetoric justifying Moscow's policies, the war against Ukraine, challenging Western sanctions, and promoting narratives according to which the West is seeking to destroy Russia. His statements reproduce classic patterns of pro-Kremlin disinformation, ignore actual data, and contribute to legitimizing the Russian aggression in the public sphere.
The central narrative is constructed as an alarmist warning, but the Lenta.ru text does not provide any evidence or verifiable elements (plans, institutional actors, documents, operational clues) to support the hypothesis. It is merely speculation attributed to a single person, presented in the headline as an imminent fact (“Russia has been warned…”), which transforms an opinion into a documented conclusion.
The Pearl Harbor situation was a military attack by one state on a military base, in the context of an expanding war. In contrast, the pro-Kremlin narrative suggests that the EU would strike a target that is unknown at this stage in order to force the US into a conflict with Russia, without explaining the mechanism by which Europeans would control the American decision, impose an escalation, and accept the risk of a direct conflagration between two nuclear powers.
The narrative ignores an important fact: the EU does not have its own permanent army comparable to that of a state, and EU operations/missions depend on the member states’ capabilities. The presentation of the EU as an actor capable of orchestrating a "shocking incident" operation to draw the US into a war is a fabrication.
In the logic of Russian propaganda, the accusation of "provocation" functions as a form of pre-framing reality. The public is prepared in advance to interpret any tension, incident, or escalation, whether it be accidents, cyberattacks, sabotage, or disinformation campaigns, as automatically being the fault of the West. Thus, the reaction becomes reflexive: "The West did it." This is a common pattern in pro-Kremlin propaganda and has been repeatedly documented as a “false flag” narrative , in which responsibility is attributed to the EU, the US, or Ukraine without any evidence being presented. The purpose of this mechanism is to divert attention from Russia's actions, create confusion, and justify in advance any reactions or escalations by Russia.
Last but not least, the narrative that the EU "only wanted war" overlooks the diplomatic efforts made by the European states to prevent escalation before the large-scale invasion. There are official documents and public accounts of Russian-French meetings and President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to maintain channels of dialogue and de-escalate tensions, including visits and discussions in Moscow in February 2022. Putin, however, chose violence and invasion. The failure of these initiatives does not confirm the idea that the EU sought to trigger a conflict, but highlights the limits of diplomacy and deterrence mechanisms in the face of a unilateral political decision taken by the Kremlin.
Statements, policy documents, and debates at the EU and member state levels concerning the Russian Federation do not indicate an intention to attack or a desire for conflict with Russia, but rather represent political and security responses to Moscow's actions. For decades, EU countries have maintained close economic relations with the Russian Federation and supported its integration into the European economy and the architecture of continental cooperation. The change in position came after the outbreak of military aggression against Ukraine, which transformed Russia into an actor perceived as a direct threat to European security, in the context of repeated incidents – including the incursion of Russian drones into the territory of NATO member states, airspace violations and hybrid warfare actions. In this context, the EU's reactions are defensive and aimed at preventing the conflict from spreading, prompted by the Russian Federation's initiation of the largest and most destructive war on European soil since the end of World War II.
The false narrative, taken directly from Hollywood movies
CONTEXT: The idea of a European plot to provoke a massive war between the United States and Russia appears in Tom Clancy's book "The Sum of All Fears," which was made into a Hollywood movie in 2002; The film of the same name stars, among others, Ben Affleck as Clancy's famous character Jack Ryan and Morgan Freeman as the director of the CIA. In the novel, European neo-Nazis detonate a nuclear bomb in the United States in an attack they want to blame on Russia; the neo-Nazis' goal is for the United States and Russia to destroy each other so that (Nazi) Europe remains a superpower.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat with a long career in intelligence. In recent years, Crooke has frequently published in the Strategic Culture Foundation (a pro-Russian platform) and appeared on online broadcasts where he has promoted critical interpretations of Western policies, including on the war in Ukraine. Analyses by organizations specializing in monitoring disinformation in Ukraine, such as Vox Ukraine and the Center for Countering Disinformation, show that his statements and articles systematically resort to interpretative frameworks that coincide with narratives promoted by the pro-Kremlin press, including the presentation of the West as an aggressor and the minimization of Russia's responsibility in triggering the conflict. Crooke has argued that Russia correctly interprets European intervention as a plan to "break up" the country. He has presented the Western sanctions as beneficial to Russia.
