ONT host Dzmitry Bachkou spoke on October 1, 2025, about what he believes are the most bloodthirsty countries, citing alleged historical facts.
“Recently, Dutch researchers released an interactive map. It shows battles from all the wars humanity has fought over the past 2,500 years. Nearly 13,000 battles in total. According to the map, the most bloodthirsty countries turned out to be France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. And leading this bloody quartet are the English, who organized more than 70 major wars over the past 500 years. The United States took part in about a hundred conflicts. But Russia, which the West never tires of labeling an aggressor, fought in only 22 wars during that time,” the host said.
Dzmitry Bachkou referred to a real Dutch project called Nodegoat, which visualized historical conflicts from the past 2,500 years on a global map. The project is nearly 10 years old, with its first version released in 2016.
The map shows Europe and the United States as the world’s bloodiest regions. However, the project’s data came not from academic literature but from the online encyclopedias Wikipedia and DBpedia. 12,703 entries in total. In addition, clicking on a point on the map only shows the years of the battle and a link to an article about it — there are no details about the countries involved or who started the conflicts.
Claims that European countries are more bloodthirsty while Russia is less so appear only on online platforms that can hardly be considered reliable sources. For example, this claim was mentioned in a LiveJournal post on September 29, 2024. Similar posts also appear on in the REN TV's Odnoklassniki profile and on VKontakte. At the same time, neither the Nodegoat website nor any other reputable sources contain such data.
Information about the wars Russia has taken part in over a little more than a thousand years was compiled by contributors to the Runivers project. In 2018, they published a reference book titled “Military Conflicts, Campaigns, and Combat Operations of Russian Troops, 860–1914.” It lists 911 military conflicts, from the battles of the Grand Duchy of Moscow to the wars of the Russian Empire. In 2000, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Institute of Military History released a study called “Russia in Local Wars and Armed Conflicts of the Second Half of the 20th Century.” That publication mentions about twenty wars or military operations involving the Soviet Union.
