Sir

I address you today as a Belgian citizen to his Prime Minister.

In essays which I published last December, I praised you for your courage and extraordinary political-organizational skills. You received the unanimous backing of Parliament including from the Left Opposition and cutting across the linguistic divide, to proceed later the same day in the European Council with rejection of a resolution backed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for confiscation of the 200 -billion euros of Russian state assets held in Euroclear.

You rightly denounced this hoped for means of lending nonrepayable funds to Ukraine wholly at Russia’s expense. You rightly argued that such an illegal confiscation in peacetime risked bankrupting Belgium when the Russians took their case to the courts. More generally you said it would discredit Europe as custodian of sovereign assets, leading to a collapse of the global financial system. You won and I saluted you for this great personal and national victory

In the aftermath of that victory, you explained to the general public why your personal sympathies are with Ukraine. Good! That enhances your credibility if you follow the advice I offer you below.

At issue now is not the financial system but the continued physical existence of Belgium as a state and a people.  I say that because the ongoing ever escalating, ever more provocative intervention of NATO in the Russia-Ukraine war is begging for a Russian military response – which we will get in due time when President Putin acquiesces in the demands of Kremlin elites and of the broad Russian public for decisive counter strikes against Ukraine and its backers in the West OR when Putin is overthrown in a palace coup and replaced by more determined and aggressive Russian patriots who will not hesitate to do what must be done to restore Russian deterrence, which Putin has dissipated to the point of nil in the past four years.

And when that day comes, surely in the near future given the extreme stress Russia is now experiencing from the drone strikes that are destroying its energy infrastructure, then you may be sure that the Russians will attack NATO using their tactical nuclear weapons mounted on unstoppable hypersonic missiles. And Belgium will be at the top of the targeted NATO countries. After all, Belgium is host to NATO headquarters, to SHAPE and to the European Institutions which, under the ‘leadership’ of Ursula von der Leyen, are waging war on Russia right now without ever obtaining a mandate from the European peoples.

As you may be aware, the involvement of European NATO states in the ongoing attacks deep inside Russia is no longer a matter of conjecture. It is boasted by several of these states. In the past day the Times of London openly stated that UK precision drones are being used by Kiev to make these devastating strikes on Russian refineries. Other likely suppliers include France, Germany and one or another Scandinavian country.

I make this analysis of the current situation on the basis of my expertise in Russian affairs first established by my Ph.D. in this field from Columbia University (New York) and developed day after day, week after week in the last 15 years as an essayist, first on the internet platform of La Libre Belgique and then on my own websites, as well as a regular interviewee on Indian television channels WION, News X World, Firstpost, and on private youtube channels watched by hundreds of thousands of subscribers around the world, including inside Belgium – “Judging Freedom” and the channel of Professor Glenn Diesen. I have republished these essays as War Diaries: the Russia-Ukraine War in three volumes from 2022 to 2026. I mention these references to establish that I have been deeply committed to studying this war and have been watching with alarm the highly provocative actions of NATO Member States which de facto have become co-belligerents with Ukraine.

As you may be aware, the Russian doctrine on nuclear response to non-nuclear powers like Belgium is to allow nuclear attack on NATO when their assistance to Ukraine becomes a menace to their state security, which is the situation today.  You may also be aware that the Russians have turned tables on Article 5: acts of aggression against Russia by any NATO Member State allows Russia to strike back at any and all NATO Member States.

For all of the above reasons, I earnestly ask that you defend Belgium and its people from a Russian nuclear attack by publicly declaring that the NATO-abetted, nominally Ukrainian drone and missile attacks on the Russian Federation must stop at once, that the EU/NATO must now sit down with the Russians to negotiate an end to the war in a way that addresses Russia’s security concerns over NATO’s presence in Ukraine before February 2022 and Russia’s wish to agree a new security architecture for Europe that fairly protects all countries of this Continent, not just some, as at present.

Respectfully yours,

Gilbert Doctorow

Brussels

As from minute 11.30

As from minute 8.55

As I mentioned some days ago, I am now working on Volume III of my Memoirs of a Russianist: 2010 – 2026, Years in the Opposition.

The “Opposition’ of which I was and remain a member is to the Washington Narrative on behalf of U.S. global hegemony.

When covering my activities in 2021 in promotion of my newly published second volume of those Memoirs, I found the link to a review of my books which Natalie Baldwin kindly posted on her blog platform Natalie’s Place, and then reposted on other web platforms. Her review was all the more valuable, because she was well known for her own published books on her experience of traveling in Russia. See https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2021/03/review-memoirs-of-a-russianist-volumes-i-ii/

To my surprise and pleasure I now came across in her review an example of how minutia caught in the amber of my diary notes, being a primary source, can prove useful, indeed, quite thought provoking in unexpected ways years later, that is to say today.

Quote

While attending a dinner party to celebrate Victory Day with his in-laws in St. Petersburg in 1995, Doctorow relayed one relative’s experience serving in Chechnya as a pathologist for the military. His job was to examine and identify the war dead amid the utter devastation of the capital of Grozny. After completing his service, he and those he served with were all treated for “shell shock” before release. This young man told Doctorow and the other guests that the war seemed to have been needlessly prolonged for political reasons. [emphasis mine]

Unquote

I believe that this observation bears on our dilemma of explaining Putin’s dragging out the ongoing war with Ukraine. Is this awful situation that adds to the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides due to the defect of indecisiveness, or worse still, cowardice, in the personality of the president or is it due to his being controlled by oligarchs who profit from the war. In any case, the issue is not new.

****

I close this brief essay with a comment on my whereabouts, which bears on the supposed conflict of ideologies today between the conservative, traditional values in Russia and a Collective West that supposedly has gone off the rails in its rejection of the family, of the biological distinction between male and female and adopted other nonsense promoted by present day Progressives from the offices they hold at the top of European states.

I write to you today from our rented apartment at Knokke, Belgium’s premier coastal resort. As I stroll down the paved walkway between the sand beach and the roadway, adjacent to what Russians call the ‘первая линия’ (literally ‘first line’) of 8-story gleaming new condominium residential buildings, I am struck by how the month of May must be mayhem at Belgium’s laying-in (birthing) hospitals. I say that because a very significant portion of strollers are carrying or pushing in carriages their ‘newly hatched’ offspring. Many others are with their toddlers, in families with two, three and more children. Since the preponderant share of the residents and vacationers here in Knokke are Flemish speakers, one can say at a minimum that Flemish Belgium has no demographic problem at all. Vladimir Putin would feel right at home here in Knokke, where, incidentally, his $100,000 or more Rolex watch would also not be so unusual among strolling males.

Yes, Knokke is a prosperous community, where the average per meter price of apartments is 10,000 Euros (about at Paris levels and twice the price of Brussels) and where an underground parking place will cost you 100,000 Euros. The latter fact explains or complements the fact that you will spot a fair number of Bentleys, Aston Martins and other very expensive autos which make the occasional Tesla on the street look like transportation for the poor folks.

At the same time the very Flemish joie de vivre, the feeling that the good times are rolling, makes Knokke a wonderful refuge from the dismal international news and war developments that preoccupy me when home in Brussels.

The interesting thing is that Knokke is not a gated community. It is open to day visitors of all kinds. And its ethnic composition is in flux. In the past, say up to Covid, on a weekend you could be sure to see on the digue (beachside walkway mentioned above, favored by strollers and cyclists) groups of Orthodox Jews, Hassidim based in Antwerp, going to or coming from their prayer services. Their distinctive dress, with men wearing oversized black fur hats even in the midst of summer, made them very easy to spot. Today, by contrast, the presence of Orthodox Jews has faded and in their place there is a growing and visible presence of Muslims. Clearly, well-to-do Muslims.

In general, Flanders is known to be anti-immigrant. The Belgian Minister of Defense, Theo Francken, gained national attention by his 2018 book Continent without borders, which denounced the uncontrolled entry of supposed refugees from Syria in 2015-2016. In his new position, Francken has co-authored measures to restrict access to Europe put in place by the EU authorities. And yet, it is precisely here that you can see the rising Muslim population ‘strut its stuff’ in the most prestigious resort of the country. In the same vein, I direct attention to the Flemish Opera which closed its spring season in June with a production of Carmen that had lead singers from everywhere, including South Korean tenor Kyungho Kim playing Don José. For that matter, one of Knokke’s leading art galleries is featuring some remarkable canvases and sculptures by South Korean artists which they exhibit next to well known French artists of long ago.

My point is that Vladimir Putin is only partly right when he speaks about the sources of conflict in the West. He says repeatedly that Russia’s problem is with European elites, not with the broad population. I agree overall but not in particulars. What he is saying follows the ideas of Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew, who wanted government to rely on the right-thinking ‘silent majority,’ not on the loud-mouth elites.

Putin points to the dominant Progressives like Macron who have adopted false values and scorn the traditional social building blocks of family and religion. They are the disseminators of Russophobia. together with their cockeyed satanic values that we saw exhibited during the last Olympic Games in Paris. And yet, as I mention above, the elites are not a homogenous bloc. The proof is that elites in a vacation mood, at ease with their mug of beer and feet in the sand, can be quite tolerant folks and really don’t give a thought to Russia and its war.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

From minute 4.50