The war did not change Russia. It revealed Russia.” - Rihards Kols

 A natureza profunda da Rússia eterna é OPRESSÃO, sobre os seus e sobre a vizinhança. Marx já tinha escrito sobre isso na segunda metade do século XIX. PRA

“The war did not change Russia. It revealed Russia.” - Rihards Kols

Rihards Kols, Latvian Member of the European Parliament, speaking at the #RigaConf2026 plenary session "Preparing for Russia Remade by War". 

“It is important correction we need to make in this room. The war did not change Russia. It revealed Russia. And this is precisely, and I will reiterate, that for years some of us in this region said this plainly, and we were told that we are exaggerating. There are some who are still saying that the Baltics, our region, we are exaggerating, that we were prisoners of our own history. So the war did not create new Russia. It stripped away the excuses that let people pretend the old one was becoming something else. And that is something being spread across Europe. Already was mentioned the dynamics on day to day. What is the changing on the war efforts, war economy? And obviously we can reiterate the numbers. Obviously the Russia today spends roughly 7 to 8% of GDP and roughly 40% of federal budget expenditure on defense and security. And it is the highest share since the Soviet collapse. And that should be noted. But on top of that, which is more alarming, is that church, state media, education curricula, industry, the courts have all been folded into a single machine whose output is the war effort. And that has to be registered. And really, do not make no mistake. That is not wartime mobilisation in the sense we understand in democracy, when we speak about a temporary redirection of resources toward an external goal. It is the opposite. The war has become the organising principle of the state itself, and the state has organised everything else around sustaining it.

So I want to be really blunt, because I think this room can handle it from seeing familiar faces. Russia is not a state that happens to be run by a strong man who came out of the KGB. Russia is a state built and operated by security services, for security services as a permanent condition. 

putin is not aberration sitting on top of normal state apparatus. He is the product of the apparatus, and so is whoever comes after him. We, we ask often and in this format as well, in previous years, what happens after putin? We are asking the wrong question. The right question is what happens to the system whose entire logic is a threat detection, repression, and control regardless of who occupies the top chair. Individuals do leave voluntarily or through windows or having too much tea. The services, the networks, the operating logic, they remain.

And there is a comfortable story in the Western capitals that ordinary Russians are quietly against this war, that repression is holding back at Latin majority that would choose differently if only given a chance. I do not believe that, and frankly the evidence does not support it. If there were a real organised majority demand for change inside Russia, we would see it. Not because Russians are uniquely passive, history proves the opposite when the conditions are right. But because when a majority generally wants a change, it finds a way to make that one visible, costly to ignore, and difficult to suppress indefinitely. 

So the simple, uncomfortable logic conclusion is this. The absence of visible mass demand for change is itself the evidence. Passive discontent that never translates into political consequence is not resistance, it is accommodation. 

And there is the line I want people to sit with. You cannot wake up someone who is only pretending to be asleep. A society that quietly benefits from empire, that quietly enjoys the mobilisation of victimhood and grievance the Kremlin sells it, does not need waking. It needs to be confronted with costs it cannot ignore.”

“So this is where I want to challenge some of the optimism I'm hearing in European capitals about negotiated end to this war. So what would a ceasefire today actually deliver? If Russia is compelled to stop fighting tomorrow, under pressure, exhausted, out of reserves, the war economy does not simply switch off and the state build to run it does not simply dissolve. 

We will still be dealing with a security service state now battle-hardened industry re-tooled for war production, more dependent on Beijing than it has been before, and with the domestic population conditioned to accept permanent hostility towards Europe as a status quo. 

A ceasefire freezes the war. It does not reverse the transformation the war has produced. That is the distinction Europe keeps missing, the distinction between the end of fighting and the end to the threats. 

So where does that leave the sanctions question, somebody will ask, right? Sanctions were never going to make ordinary Russians rise up. That was never the honest premise, and whoever sold it that way owes everyone an apology. The real premise is harder. Deny Moscow of components, the revenue and the technology this machine needs to function. 

Reserves are close to exhausted, energy revenues are down sharply, growth has stalled. That is not collapse, it is a security service state running out of room, and it will double down rather than reform, because reform was never in its vocabulary. 

Europe's task is not to wait for Russia to change from within. It will not, not on any timeline that matters to Ukraine or to us. Plan for Russia this war has actually produced is poorer, more repressive, more dependent on Beijing, and no less hostile. That is, I would say, not pessimism, it is realism, and realism is the only thing that has ever kept this region safe. So we build our architecture assuming the worst about Moscow and we have been proven right every time, and I see no reason to stop now. So that is my answer.”