Jeffrey Sachs: ‘Britain is the number one warmonger of all’ and driving escalation with Russia

Commentator Jeffrey Sachs said in an interview on Wednesday that he would advise Britain to focus on keeping the National Health Service (NHS) from collapsing rather than going to war with Russia.

Sachs added that Britain is the ‘number one warmonger’ driving dangerous escalation between Ukraine and Russia. He was pointing to Britain’s role in arming Ukraine and providing it with intelligence.

He said:

Britain, of course, is the number one warmonger of all. Britain still lives in the dreamland of the British Empire. And it wants to escalate at all times.

Sachs was condemning the escalation by Ukraine, which struck a school dormitory in Russia last week.

Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, said 86 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 had been asleep inside the hostel belonging to Luhansk Pedagogical University’s Starobilsk school when Ukrainian drones attacked during the night. At least 21 children have been killed by the attack.

Sachs called the attack “a human tragedy” and “an extraordinarily dangerous provocation,” and lamented that Russia signaled a dramatic military escalation in response.

Britain — the number one warmonger

UK is indeed great at warmongering. Just this week, Former special forces soldier-turned-defence minister Alistair Carns boasted on Wednesday that drones were the “most effective killing weapons” at a summit in Riga, Latvia.

Carns said the UK delivered £600 million worth of drones to Ukrainian forces last year, increasing numbers by a factor of ten from 10,000 in 2024 to 100,000 in 2025.

According to Sachs, de-escalation is still possible — but it requires Europe, and particularly Germany, to take responsibility.

Sachs pointed to the open letter he has published to German Chancellor Merz in the Berliner Zeitung this week.

Sachs laid out six serious failures of German foreign policy toward Russia since reunification in 1990. He argues that Germany must confront these failures before it can pursue peace.

6 points for Germany

According to him, the six points for which Germany bears the responsibility are:

• The Two Plus Four Agreement and the eastward expansion of NATO — Germany promised the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward in exchange for reunification,  and yet, as early as 1993, German politicians began to break these assurances.
•  ​​Chancellor Merkel’s own statement — Merkel wrote that inviting Ukraine into NATO would be a “declaration of war against Russia,” yet she yielded to US pressure.
• The betrayal of the 2014 agreement — Germany helped broker a peace deal in Kyiv, then failed to enforce it when Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup within 24 hours. Following the example of the United States, Germany supported the new government as if no agreement had ever existed
• Minsk II — Merkel later admitted the 2015 agreement was used merely to give Ukraine time to rearm, not as a genuine peace plan.
• Nord Stream — Evidence points to a joint Ukrainian-American operation, yet Germany allowed blame to be shifted to Russia.
• The Istanbul Agreement of April 2022, which was within reach  — Ukraine agreed to neutrality in April 2022, but the UK’s then Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv and instructed Ukraine not to sign. Germany remained silent.

In the interview, Sachs presses that direct negotiation between Berlin and Moscow as “the only real exit ramp from disaster.”

Sachs is right — the best thing the UK can do so the war is not escalated is to concentrate on the state’s own failings.

Featured image via Reuters