Where did the talk of a European and/or global war party dragging the West into war with Russia come from? Propastop conducted a query in the global media monitoring system Meltwater, using the terms “global war party” and “European war party.”
The data shown in the infographic covers all online news published in European countries, Russia, and the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
It turned out that in 2021, such terms were not used in the news at all, but in the first ten months of this year alone, thousands of articles on these topics have been published. Combined with their respective audiences, this narrative has reached billions of unique viewers worldwide.
2022—The starting shot in Georgia
In November 2022, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated for the first time that certain Members of the European Parliament form a global war party whose goal is to drag Georgia into war against Russia. According to Kobakhidze, this would lead Georgia to the same fate that befell Ukraine.
By the end of 2022, politicians from the Georgian Dream party began systematically repeating this narrative. It served a domestic political purpose: to portray the country’s former leader Mikheil Saakashvili and his United National Movement party as tools of the global war party who, if they returned to power, would lead Georgia into war.
Media monitoring shows that at the time, the global war party narrative was still being spread only in Georgia, and the news coverage reached over 2.6 million unique viewers.
2023 – The narrative spreads out from Georgia
The Georgian government continued to repeat the global war party narrative, and over the course of the year, it reached readers more than 455 million times—mainly in Georgia, though the term also began to appear in foreign media covering events in the country.
Gradually, media monitoring also began to pick up stories about European warmongers alongside mentions of the global war party. The first references to a European war party came from two ideologically opposing sources: the left-wing anti-fascist Spanish newspaper El Común and the right-wing Hungarian outlet Mandiner.
Talk of European warmongers reached 1.3 million unique readers. This number of mentions was generated almost entirely by Hungarian media, as the Spanish left-wing publication has a negligible readership, and the article reached only about 16,000 viewers.
2024 – The “global war party” reaches its peak
The use of the global war party narrative in Georgia peaked during the parliamentary election campaign in the autumn of 2024, which was won by the Georgian Dream party. Over the course of the year, online news stories featuring the global war party reached a total of more than six billion views. (Propastop covered this in more detail in May.)
In the early months of the year, the narrative of a European war party also began to spread significantly. A query conducted by Propastop in the Meltwater database shows that Russian media picked up and started disseminating this narrative, with the term first used by the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on March 3.
The influential Russian newspaper wrote about an audio recording that had allegedly reached their newsroom, featuring a conversation between German officers discussing how to help Ukraine attack the Crimean Bridge with Taurus missiles. The newspaper presented this supposed recording as proof of the “European war party’s” involvement in organizing Ukraine’s covert operations. The story proved highly popular, and through citations in other channels, it reached 16 million readers.
Thereafter, other Russian outlets also began to consistently use the term “European war party,” thereby placing blame specifically on European countries for opposing Russia and inciting war. The European war party was mentioned, for instance, in coverage of the European Parliament election results, or when praising Slovak and Hungarian leaders for their pro-Russian statements.
Politicians primarily from Hungary’s ruling party in Europe accused Brussels of inciting war in Ukraine. The story gained traction in the UK thanks to heavily partisan newspapers. The Morning Star, a British socialist newspaper, published an article about the European war party on the left. On the right end of the political spectrum, a piece by American analyst David P. Goldman was published, arguing for an end to aid in Ukraine. The article originally appeared in The American Mind, a publication of the U.S. conservative think tank Claremont Institute. (As a side note—Goldman predicted, three days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that it would not happen under any circumstances.) That year, the narrative of European warmongers reached a total of 93 million views in online media.
2025 – The Rise of the “European War Party”
This year, most news about the global war party is still related to Georgia, but the spread of the term has significantly declined compared to previous years, and the concept has begun to transfer to other countries. For example, in his New Year’s address, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that because of tensions between Azerbaijan and Russia, the Western global war party wants to exploit the situation to drag Azerbaijan into war against Russia.
In contrast, the spread of the “European war party” narrative has grown explosively this year. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, both Russian and Hungarian politicians have repeatedly spoken of the European war party’s efforts to sabotage Trump’s peace initiative in Ukraine. This has been stated explicitly by both Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
In 2025, the term “global war party” began to be used in the Russian Federation as a synonym for “European war party.” For instance, despite Peskov, the presidential spokesman, accusing the European war party of attempting to undermine Trump’s peace efforts, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also criticized the group, despite clarifying that it is solely composed of European countries.
The narrative also spread to other European countries, where critical articles about Brussels warmongers began to appear. Following the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, the term “European war party” reached Estonian readers via the Uued Uudised outlet, through the words of Mart Helme:
Helme stated that if Europe and Ukraine fail to reach a deal, Trump will distance himself from the war, in which Biden was complicit, and allow Putin to act as he pleases. In that case, it is the ‘European war party’ that will be left holding the bag—if you want to fight, then fight alone!”
By October of this year, the narrative of the global war party had reached over 3.2 billion unique readers, while the European war party narrative had reached 2.2 billion viewers. While the global war party narrative spread mainly in Georgia, the European war party narrative was disseminated primarily by Russian media outlets, both domestically and across Europe.
In some cases, the war party narrative entered Western mainstream media directly from the Kremlin. A good example is the Irish tabloid Irish Sun, which referenced a story about European warmongers from RT, the Kremlin-controlled English-language outlet. Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov has described the adoption of Russian narratives as “narrative laundering.” When a well-known Western media outlet, scholar, or politician adopts Russian talking points, their impact increases significantly. When a Western political figure quotes such narratives, it no longer originates from a Russian propaganda outlet.
In the next part of the story, we will focus on the content of the war party narrative and describe the rhetoric used by some European leaders and their like-minded counterparts in Estonia to promote it.
