DISINFO: ReArm Europe means the EU is preparing to attack Russia
SUMMARY
The EU readies to attack Russia. The EU leaders agreed on the program ReArm Europe for a total of 800 billion euros. Europeans will be taught to die.
RESPONSE
The claim is false, part of a wider disinformation campaign to frame the EU as a warmongering and an aggressive power opposed to “peace”.
The purpose of the EU programme ReArm Europe is not to attack Russia but “to respond to the short-term urgency to act and to support Ukraine [and] address the long-term need to take on much more responsibility for [its] own European security”. The programme aims to ensure Europe’s self-defence capabilities, mostly through a fiscal plan to boost and fund this military enhancement. Contrary to what this disinformation story claims, Russia’s threat and ongoing aggression against Ukraine and Europe is one of the driving forces behind this plan, not the other way round.
See also the EUvsDisinfo article Russia wants war, not peace.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the EU is not capable of peace, it is only interested in waging war, that the EU's sole agenda is to wage war against Russia to inflict maximum damage, that Russian defence industry is much stronger than Europe's, that the EU wages a colonial war in Ukraine, or that the EU diplomacy’s vision for peace in Ukraine illustrates its Russophobia.