Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Bill O'Brien ☭ republishes a speech he delivered at a conference In Athens in 2016, explaining what his group was doing in Ireland.

In May 2014, the week following the Odessa massacre, a small group of mostly non-aligned antifascists in Ireland organized through word of mouth and through social media a successful demonstration in Dublin. We rallied against the fascist atrocity and described it as part of an imperialist anti-Russian agenda in the EU and we called for support in Ireland for the struggle against the Ukrainian army in Donbas. 

There was very little reporting on the atrocity in the mainstream media. Unfortunately, it was complimented by virtual silence from nominally anti-imperialist, socialist organizations in the country, despite the fact that a massacre had occurred the day after Mayday, the historical day of workers' solidarity and that it was committed by openly fascist groups inside a trade union hall. What seemed surprising to us at the time was the fact that the Irish trade unions had issued no statements at all on the tragic event of May 2. There were no messages sympathising with the loss of life or condolences to grieving families sent by the union hierarchy, no expression of solidarity as one would have expected. There was no condemnation, or even any acknowledgement from the trades union movement that a horrendous crime had been committed against young anti-fascists who had sought refuge from an armed fascist mob in the Odessa House of Trade Unions.

When we raised the question of this silence with members of groups associated with the Left in Ireland, we found that most were hardly interested in addressing a threat that even some right-wing commentators had been drawing attention to - i.e. the re-appearance of Nazism and the support fascism was receiving from the Ukraine government - in a part of Europe that was aspiring to join the EU. To the extent that these leftists mentioned Odesa at all, they argued that the massacre took place in the context of a war in Ukraine between forces aligned with two equally regressive imperialist regimes -. between supporters of the EU / NATO on the one hand and supporters of a paramilitary Russian nationalism aligned to Russian "imperialism", which was attempting to redraw the Ukrainian borders. Those who died or suffered injury in the Odessa massacre were portrayed, when they were mentioned at all, as unfortunate victims of inter-imperialist rivalry.

The successful resistance and defeat of fascist brigades in Donbas earlier this year - by "tractor drivers and miners" as Putin put it - halted a march to the right that was taking place across the whole of Europe. That defence gave the world time to face reality. Social media and non-Western media sources have allowed us the space to counter much of the propaganda. We have received support from trades unionists as well as from those political groups that are not tied to the pro-UK line followed by most of the official Irish media.

But we have found that attempts to oppose a pro-imperialist narrative are too often treated as affronts to the unity of the Left political project in Ireland. Political discourse of the sort that insists on a precise understanding of the meaning of words is too often dismissed as sectarian or divisive. In the lexicon of much of the Left, the concretely understood word "imperialism" has been replaced by words taken from the language of "humanitarian" intervention that has been promoted by groups such as Amnesty. When we say that Russia is not an imperialist country for instance we get accused of introducing what are termed "sectarian ideological squabblings." Bono's latest political musings seem to outdate Lenin's formulation on any matter! According to the humanitarian Left words like " imperialism" get in the way of a united strategy that should be aimed at electing progressive left-wing representatives to the Irish parliament institution that is largely powerless in the face of austerity measures dictated by international finance.

Left unity that is based on the abandonment of principles can only weaken the fight against imperialism. This has been demonstrated in the Irish "humanitarian" Left's responses to the present conflict in Syria and the current refugee crisis. The influential Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine wrote correctly this month about how Russian involvement in Syria is inextricably linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Such links have to be understood and taken fully into account in the building of a genuine internationalist movement against imperialism.

The Odessa massacre, as we know, occurred on May 2, 2014. Sightly over a month later, the Zionist onslaught against Gaza began - on 7 July 2014. The responses in Ireland to the two events were totally different - almost as if two tragedies were simultaneously taking place on different stages on different planets. In response to Gaza, a pro-Palestine demonstration was called in Ireland's capital city, Dublin, for Gaza; it was attended by something in the order of 10,000 people. Those ordinary citizens at the march had undoubtedly been moved by an act of incredible brutality by a Western-backed regime on a defenceless Palestinian people. Those speaking on the Save Gaza platform did not ever mention the Ukraine bombardment of civilian areas - supported by the US and its allies - that was taking place in Donbas at exactly the same time as the Israeli military strikes on Gaza were occurring. The same people had supported the Maidan coup. The bombardment of Donbas was also supported by the US and its allies so wouldn't it have been sensible for the Gaza rally organizers to mention Donbas? At exactly the same time as Gaza and East Ukraine were under attack, the US and its allies were organizing proxy "rebel" forces in Syria aimed at the destruction of the nation's secular state and its replacement by a pliant regime. The Syrian crisis did not get mentioned at the Gaza rally either on account of the opportunist alliances between leftists who dominate the anti-war movement in Ireland and the Muslim Brotherhood.

We have been working since 2014 with members of the Ukraine and Russian communities in Ireland and called demos in support of Donbas. We visited trades union headquarters in Ireland and helped Russian and Ukrainian leftists in Ireland bring the Odesa massacre photo exhibition to the country's major cities - Dublin, Cork and Belfast. We have held events to coincide with the showing of the photos, which have been attended by sympathetic trades union leaders, members of the Russian and Ukrainian communities and Irish republicans and socialists. We were very pleased that our limited endeavours in Ireland have been well-matched across Europe and beyond and we draw strength from this international solidarity.

🖼 Bill O'Brien is an independent republican.

Odessa Massacre 2014

New Politics An Interview with Taras Bilous.

Taras Bilous is a Ukrainian historian, an editor of Commons: Journal of Social Criticism, and an activist in Sotsialniy Rukh (Social Movement). He is currently serving in the Ukrainian army. He was interviewed by Stephen R. Shalom, a member of the New Politics editorial board. Denys Pilash helped with the translation.

New Politics (NP): How would you assess the influence of far-right forces in Ukraine? We have seen claims that, on the one hand, suggest that Ukraine is a Nazi state, or, on the other hand, that the far right is an insignificant factor in Ukrainian life. What is your assessment?

Taras Bilous (TB): Basically, their electoral influence is abysmal, it is small, but they use their strengths in other fields, like on the streets, to try to influence policies. Their extra-parliamentary influence should be neither diminished nor exaggerated.

NP:
Is it the case that the far right has the ability to block policies it doesn’t like by threatening violence?

TB: The most significant example of this was the so-called “protest against capitulation,” the protest against peace initiatives in late 2019 after Zelensky was elected president. This was an effort by the nationalist right to stop the initiation of the peace process. 
Continue reading @ New Politics.

The Far Right In Ukraine

Gearóid Ó Loingsighwriting in Socialist Democracy on the Wokerati taking to Ukraine. 

Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov

Whilst many of the Wokerati repeat uncritically any statement from the Western media or even NATO on Ukraine, wokeness itself was not to be found in Ukraine.

The rabid right wing homophobic sentiment expressed at gay rights marches before the war was not a fertile ground for the Wokerati. Homophobia abounds, as does racism, something we saw when black people were taken off or prevented from boarding trains leaving Ukraine at the start of the war. Gay rights and racism are not woke issues per se, in fact the Wokerati in the West have abandoned gay rights, particularly Lesbian rights, in favour of male heterosexuals invading women’s spaces. But you get the general idea about Ukraine being a hostile terrain.

Not anymore, wokeness and its methods have come to Ukraine. How it has done so, and on what issue, is illustrative of the reactionary nature of wokeness. When Russia invaded Ukraine, ridiculous calls were made to ban everything from Tchaikovsy to Tolstoy. In doing so, they emulated woke calls for authors to be banned from the airwaves and also the rewriting of history with long dead authors being judged by current understandings of society on issues like race, but not class. Class was still fair game, in fact it is the target of many woke comedians, whose middle-class audiences like to show their social sense of rightness by frowning on historical authors on issues, like race, women (to a degree only) and others. So, we are only a few steps from Shakespeare, John Donne and others getting chopped, but they have no problem with working class people being the target of their jokes.

Now the Ukrainians have got in on the game with calls for the closure of a museum in Kiev dedicated to the writer Mikhail Bulgakov.(1) Yes, I had to look him up too. I have to confess to the woke literati that he was never on my radar before this moment. I mean, he is not Tolstoy, is he? And he is certainly not anything closer to home like Beckett, or even the English author Thomas Hardy, both of whom have survived the woke banning spree so far, but this might be because their stuff is a little dense and maybe they haven’t read them yet. I know I haven’t, though as a child my Da would read them and sometimes out loud. So, I knew not to bother with them at an early age, unless you were going to get very serious.

Bulgakov’s crime was that he wasn’t enamoured with Ukrainian nationalism and so he must be expunged from the record.

Ukraine’s national writers’ union has called for the museum at number 13A Andriivskyi Descent – a historic cobbled street linking the upper town with the district of Podil, on the banks of the Dnipro River – to be closed down.(2) Apparently, he even criticised some Ukrainian nationalists of his time and Stalin was fond of some of his plays, though he censored him at the same time. Bulgakov opposed the idea of an independent Ukraine. And even The Guardian acknowledges that this was a common position at the time. He was not alone.

The museum’s director, Lyudmila Gubianuri, has also hit back against criticism, calling Bulgakov “a man of his time”. “He was born and lived in the Russian empire. Bulgakov had an inherent imperial mindset, but neither he nor his family were ever Ukrainophobes,” she stressed. “Bulgakov did not believe in the reality of an independent Ukraine, like quite a lot of people at that time.”(3) 

Were we to do this in Ireland, lots of people would come a cropper. Seán O’ Casey would get it in the neck. Joyce would be frowned upon as well, not for the views that saw the Catholic Church come down upon him, but perhaps his general view of Ireland. Brendan Behan was certainly in favour of Irish independence, but he joined the IRA and was arrested on bombing charges, so in the new climate of blessing the British government for taking up the White Man’s Burden in relation to us, he might also get it. There is no end of writers who might be banned. Roddy Doyle, is no friend of Irish independence. His unpublished play My Granny Was A Hunger Striker, written shortly after the 1981 hunger strike which saw ten men die, gives you an idea of where he stands. Maybe in the future someone might call for his works to be removed, no more The Van or Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha, or his work on violence against women in the home, The Woman Who Walked into Doors. I knew I should never have read him or even Behan, Joyce or Casey. Yes, I actually read them, unlike Beckett.

The reactionary nature of wokeness can be seen in its arrival in Ukraine. It is about stifling dissent and debate and generally promoting reactionary ideas. It is something more at home in an authoritarian regime like the Ukrainian one. Russia has been more straightforward in its censorship, though now a capitalist regime, its take on repression and censorship, has been borrowed straight out of the Soviet era book. The Wokerati under the guise of liberalism also want to shape a view of society on the basis of authoritarian methods, such as social shaming and the banning of literature to the literary equivalent of Outer Mongolia and have had some success.

Liberals ban books and place authors in quarantine, Ukrainian nationalists adopt the same tactics. Tells you everything you need to know about both. Though, that the Western Wokerati were streets ahead in the book burning club probably means they have the edge over the zealots of the East and this is also telling.

Notes

(1 ) Luke Harding (31/12/2022) ‘Propaganda literature’: calls to close Mikhail Bulgakov museum in Kyiv. The Guardian.

(2) Ibíd.

(3) Ibíd.

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist in Latin America.

Wokeness Goes To Ukraine

Simon PiraniUkrainian socialists hosted an on line discussion on “Energy Crisis and Sustainability: lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian war” on 22 October. 

28-October-2022

You can watch a recording on youtube here in English, or here in Ukrainian. The panel of speakers included Ukrainian climate policy researcher Maryna Larina; Leszek Karlik of the Energy Policy Group of Razem, the Polish left party; and Christian Zeller of the University of Salzburg; and me.

The event was part of an on-line conference on Reconstruction and Justice in Post-War Ukraine, hosted by the editors of the socialist journal Spilne (Commons). Recordings of all the sessions are now up on line, and well worth viewing.

Here’s the text of my talk. At the end I have added some comments on the discussion, and some links to further reading. I look forward to the continuation of our discussion ➤ Simon Pirani.

♜ ♞ 

I have not been to Ukraine since the invasion in February, and I only understand the difficulties people face at second hand. Furthermore, it is difficult for all of us to talk about post-war reconstruction when the war is raging. Every day this means not only deaths and injuries, but also the destruction of civilian infrastructure, including power stations and boiler houses.
 
Delegates from the Independent Miners Union of Chervonohrad
delivering food, medicines and other aid to front-line communities last week.
Photo from the 
Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine twitter feed

This winter, Ukrainians will not only be trying to protect themselves from bombs and bullets, but also trying to stay warm and healthy in the face of disruptions to gas, heat and electricity supplies. [This month, Russian bombing has focused on civilian infrastructure, putting one third of power stations out of action and forcing widespread power cuts as winter temperatures set in.]

But even under these circumstances, discussion has begun about post-war reconstruction, in the first place between the Ukrainian government and European governments at the Lugano conference in July. They are making plans for the long term.

The labour movement, and social movements, need an approach to these issues that takes the side of working people and of society, as opposed to economic or political elites. I am going to suggest four principles that can help develop such an approach.

1. Energy should be supplied mainly from renewable sources.

Society internationally needs an energy transition – that is, a transition to a system without fossil fuels, centred on electricity networks, with the electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar, wind and wave power. In Ukraine, there is also some potential for biofuels made from agricultural waste.

I am sure everyone present knows why this is: because global heating could seriously damage human society, and the chief cause of global heating is the burning of fossil fuels.

For the last 30 years, the world’s most powerful governments have gone to great lengths to delay the energy transition while simultaneously pretending to deal with the problem.

The labour movement and social movements need to advocate a transition that serves the interests of society, not capital.

Two points to make about Ukraine specifically.

a. Coal has historically been central, in the Donbas in particular. Coal use has been falling since 2016, mainly due to Russian military aggression. Now, political forces in the Donbas are discussing a future without coal. For example in the recent open letter by the Mayors of Myrnohrad, Chervonohrad and other towns (here in Ukrainian, here in English). I hope that the labour movement and social movements will engage in this discussion.

b. Gas has also played a key role. The government has sought to reduce dependence on Russian gas, and there have been no direct imports since 2015. However, in Ukraine, as elsewhere, gas companies make the false argument that gas is part of the solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, because it produces energy with fewer emissions than coal. Actually, it’s part of the problem. The energy transition means moving away from gas.

2. It is in society’s interests to cut the flow of energy through technological systems.


To understand this, we should, first, forget the idea of “energy demand”. People do not want “energy”. They want the things that it provides – heat, light, electricity to run computers, the ability to travel from place to place, and so on.

These things can be provided, using far less energy than is used now, by making better use of technologies that have existed for decades.

An obvious example is heat for people’s homes. In Ukraine, this comes mainly from gas boilers, or by district heating systems based on combined heat and power plants.

Governments, not only in Ukraine but across Europe, can start tackling this problem now. First, we need insulation, to reduce the amount of heat needed. Second, we need electric heat pumps that are four or five times more efficient than gas boilers.

This would keep people warm, reduce the amount of gas needed and cut greenhouse gas emissions. These technologies are very simple, although retrofitting them to old buildings can be tricky.

These are short-term measures. In the long term, engineers see the creation of integrated urban energy systems as the priority. In such systems, there would be multiple inputs of renewably-produced electricity. These would be integrated with a range of electricity storage facilities, from hydro storage to electric vehicles.

These systems can be integrated, but also decentralised. This makes them more compatible with collective, non-state forms of social organisation that socialists favour.

Non-governmental organisations in Ukraine who favour such systems have advanced the idea of “energy freedom”, that is, “the greatest possible freedom for citizens, organisations and communities to produce energy and manage it in their own economies”.

In my view, socialists should take part in the discussion about what this means in practice.

3. We should demand that fuels and electricity are treated as services, as rights for all, not as commodities.

Now, after decades of neo-liberalism, oil, gas and electricity are treated as commodities not only for international trade but, in many countries, in retail markets.

In Ukraine there is a public service obligation on companies to supply electricity and gas to households at fixed prices. There are discussions at government level about how to change this system, in the name of reducing inefficiencies.

It’s a basic principle for the labour movement that these changes should not made at the expense of households. However, we should also go further, and challenge the notion that fuels, or electricity, are commodities to be bought and sold.

4. We should favour technologies that are compatible with our aims of social justice, and resist the imposition of technologies that serve the state and capital.

This is relevant to post-war reconstruction.

The EU has its “green new deal”, that involves a limited shift to renewable energy supply technologies, but that protects powerful energy corporations and liberalised markets.

Many Ukrainian politicians are happy with this political framework and some of the technological choices it implies. This takes them along paths that I believe the labour movement and civil society should oppose.

For example, the EU is discussing plans to produce electricity from big wind and solar farms in Ukraine, and use it to produce hydrogen for export. The hydrogen would be produced by electrolysis of water, a very energy-intensive process.

This is greenwash at its worst. Clearly, Ukraine needs electricity from wind and solar to end its reliance on coal and gas. To use it, instead, to produce hydrogen for export would be a form of neo-colonialism. I hope the labour movement and civil society, in Europe and Ukraine, will block this plan.

Another live political issue is whether new nuclear plants, specifically Khmelnitsky-3 and Khmelnitsky-4, should be built. This is in the interests of some Ukrainian politicians and business elites, but not in society’s interests.

It is feasible to aim for a system that provides the electricity that Ukraine needs from renewable sources, without new nuclear. So investment in it will obstruct this aim.

Of course behind this are broader arguments about whether and how nuclear power should be part of post-fossil-fuel energy systems at all. I am not enthusiastic about nuclear power, because it is, by its nature, closely bound up with powerful state and military structures. By contrast, decentralised renewable technologies are by their nature compatible with collective, egalitarian ways of organising society.

♜ ♞ 

Some points that came up in the discussion

About gas supplies in the short term. A questioner asked whether Ukraine could get through this winter, given the constraints on gas supplies. The answer is, yes it can. In recent years, Ukraine has produced about 20 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas each year from its own gas fields, and imported about 12-15 bcm/year at its western border. No gas has been imported directly from Russia since 2015. Although almost all of the gas imported physically originates from Russian gas fields, it is sold to Ukrainian gas companies by European traders. The prices have shot up, and that problem faces Ukraine along with other countries. But for emergency purposes, since it produces most of the gas it needs, Ukraine is well placed to deal with it – although it is likely that gas production will be lower this year, due to Russian aggression. However, it seems very likely that a far bigger problem, in the short term, will be the destruction caused to the electricity system by Russian bombing.

About new nuclear. A strong case was made in favour of nuclear power by Leszek Karlik (see also his article here). He argued that grid-scale deployment of renewables would be too slow to meet energy demand. In my view, supply should not be considered separately from demand. Energy throughput in post-war Ukraine, as in all countries, could be reduced by energy conservation (e.g. programmes to insulate homes and replace gas boilers with heat pumps, which reduces the throughput of energy needed for domestic heating). Second is a political point: nuclear power already has powerful support from state, corporate and military forces, in Ukraine and many other countries. Why should the labour movement and civil society use our political resources to support this expensive technology that for the foreseeable future will be controlled by social forces inimical to us? We should instead focus on technological changes that will benefit society, from home insulation and decentralised renewable power to re-making urban transport systems with fewer cars.

About workers in the energy sector. It was suggested during the discussion that it would be easier to organise labour solidarity among workers in the nuclear industry, than among workers who are e.g. installing solar panels and are not physically gathered in a workplace together and are not as highly skilled. In my view this is a poor reason to favour investment in nuclear power as opposed to investment in renewables. Trade unions in many European countries have made big steps forward in organising precarious and potentially hard-to-find workers including delivery drivers, call centre staff and others who work outside traditional industrial frameworks. And as a movement we should support union organisation everywhere. We should decide our attitude to energy technologies (nuclear, renewables, fossil fuels etc) by considering which of them best fit with the sort of energy transition we hope to achieve.

♜ ♞ 

More to read

📗 For Ukrainian environmentalists’ view on post-war reconstruction and renewables, see the Ecoaction site here in English and here in Ukrainian

➤ For a view of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction its energy system by Low-Carbon Ukraine (a German-funded NGO that accepts EU market principles, while having a good grasp of the technological issues) see here in English and here in Ukrainian.

➤ My comments on decentralised renewables and energy systems integration, in a UK context

➤ How energy was commodified and how it could be decommodified

⏩ Follow People & Nature on twitter … instagram … telegram … or whatsapp. Or email me on peoplenature[at]protonmail.com and ask for updates.

Ukraine’s Energy System 🌳 Principles For Post-War Reconstruction

Right Wing WatchLauren Witzke, the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate from Delaware in 2020, gushed with praise for Vladimir Putin this week after the Russian dictator unleashed a military invasion against Ukraine.

Peter Montgomery 
While somewhat shocking given the timing, Witzke’s admiration of Putin’s “Christian nationalism” has a long precedent among U.S. Christian ​right leaders, who embraced Putin as a “savior of Christian civilization” during the Obama administration.

Shortly after Donald Trump became president, far-right activist Pat Buchanan praised Putin as “a God-and-country Russian patriot” and champion of Christianity “against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be.”

In 2018, prominent Trump-aligned dominionist Lance Wallnau brushed aside Putin’s tendency to kill journalists and run the country “like a mafia state​,” ​and praised Putin’s anti-LGBTQ policies as having been “shaped by Christians​,” ​adding, “I fear more liberals in America than I fear Putin in Russia.”

At an infamous 2018 press conference with Putin and Trump, the U.S. president said he was more inclined to believe Putin than U.S. intelligence agencies that ​had concluded the Russian government had interfered with the 2016 election.

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

US Far Right Adore​s Vladimir Putin’s Christian Nationalism More Than Freedom and Democracy

John PilgerMarshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. 


Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave”. He was referring to independent journalists and whistle blowers, the honest mavericks to whom media organisations once gave space, often with pride. The space has been abolished.

The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, “shaping the narrative”, much if not most of it is pure propaganda.

Continue reading @ Counterpunch.

War In Europe And The Rise Of Raw Propaganda

People And Nature ☭ The danger of renewed Russian military action in Ukraine is growing. 

Simon Pirani
29-December-2021

The build-up of Russian armed forces on the border, near to the Russian-supported separatist “republics” in Donetsk and Lugansk, is alarming Ukrainians. They have already suffered more than six years of war during which 14,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced from their homes.

Central to the Kremlin’s approach is to keep the western powers guessing. President Putin has raged against NATO, despite senior western politicians making it quite clear that they would not commit troops to defend Ukraine from an invasion.

There are some reasons to believe that Putin is aiming not for war, but for a negotiation with the US – and initial talks have been fixed for January. But the preparations on the border continue nonetheless.

In the face of a possible major land war in Europe, socialists and internationalists across the continent have a responsibility to speak out, to be at the forefront of the anti-war movement. We must act in solidarity both with the Ukrainian communities that face the physical danger of Russian military action, and the so far small number of Russian voices being raised against war.
Demonstration in Kirov, Russia, on 18 December. “No to war: no to Putin”;
 “Hands off Ukraine”. Photo from 
Guildhall (ghall.com.ua)

With this in mind, I have translated these two articles. The first is a statement opposing war, by the Russian Socialist Movement. The second is a blog post by the Ukrainian community activist, trade union organiser and lawyer Pavel Lisyansky.

This is the Russian Socialist Movement’s statement, published on facebook on 7 December.

On 4 December, the Associated Press, citing information from the US intelligence services, reported that Russia was preparing to put 175,000 troops near the Ukrainian border. “[Deploying] Russian armed forces on Russian territory – that’s the legal right of a sovereign state”, responded Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without denying the build-up of forces on the border.

Along with the migration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, these actions are an episode in the cynical and dangerous geopolitical game of Russian and the west, in which millions of working people in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other countries are being held hostage. This sabre-rattling is not only an attempt to push other states into retreat. Behind it also stands the aspirations of the elite to “rally the nation” once again around the Putin regime, as it did in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea.

The so-called “hybrid war with the west” is needed to distract the population’s attention from the poverty, inequality, political repression, falsification of elections and the collapse of the fight with the coronavirus. This “hybrid war” serves as a justification for round after round of attacks on the rights and freedoms of Russians, for the continuation of a social and economic policy directed against the majority of people – and for power becoming un-removable.

Militarism and nationalism are lethally dangerous drugs that are being injected into Russian society and, at the same time, are poisoning the consciousness of the ruling clique, which is becoming more and more removed from reality.

The loss of social support, the absence of any vision of the future and the determination to stay in charge by any means have pushed Russia’s rulers towards this terrible step: an attempt to cut the Gordian knot of their problems by dragging Russia into a major war.

In this situation it is essential that the progressive forces in Russian society, including the left, are united in opposition to war. Whatever our attitude to the political situation in Ukraine, or to the policy of the USA or the EU in the region, another military adventure will lead to nothing but a humanitarian catastrophe and the reinforcement of authoritarianism on both sides of the border.

We must not allow a repeat of 2014, when a section of the Russian opposition, gripped by illusions in the supposedly progressive character of the so-called “Russian spring”, in practice supported the Kremlin and its imperial expansion.

It must be axiomatic, that a regime of record-breaking social inequality, of lies, repression and obscurantism, can not bring “freedom” to anyone, including the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine.

==

To put the blog post by Pavel Lisyansky in context: he argues that the situation in eastern Ukraine can not be resolved by implementation of the Minsk accords. These agreements, struck at the end of the 2014-15 military conflict, required (i) an end to hostilities, an amnesty and the disbanding of illegal military formations, and (ii) the granting of special status to the territories controlled by the separatists. (I recommend the excellent summary in this article by Taras Bilous, a Ukrainian socialist.)

From the start, the Ukrainian government pressed for the security and humanitarian issues (i) to be dealt with first; Russia demanded action on the special status of the “republics” (ii). There have been breaches of the agreements on all sides. As time has passed, the armed guards, barbed wire and checkpoints that run through eastern Ukraine have taken their toll. Divisions between the population of the “republics” and other Ukrainians have deepened.

Lisyansky describes the economic and political processes in the areas controlled by the separatists. He represents the Eastern Human Rights Group and has worked as an advocate of labour rights and democratic rights in both the “republics” and in Ukrainian-controlled territory. This is an abridged translation.


At present, the implementation of the Minsk accords would destabilise the social-political situation in Ukraine. There are a number of substantial reasons for this.

First. The “Minsk accords” are agreements reached in 2015 providing for the mutual carrying-out of obligations, signed by the ex president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, and leaders of the unlawful armed formations “LPR” [Lugansk People’s Republic] and “DPR” [Donetsk People’s Republic] Igor Plotnitsky and Aleksandr Kharchenko. The intentions of these signatories were that the agreements had to be fulfilled within two years of the documents being signed.

As of December 2021, the situation in the parts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions occupied by the Russian Federation differs significantly from 2015, which must directly influence the regulation of military conflict in line with the “Minsk accords”. In the separate areas [the acronym used is ORDLO (otdelnye raiony Donetskoi i Luganskoi oblastei), i.e. separate areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions controlled by the Russian-supported separatists, i.e. separatist-controlled areas], the Russian occupation administration has given 813,000 Russian Federation passports to local citizens. The higher education institutions have moved on to the standards and educational programmes of the Russian Federation; in the schools, the Ukrainian language is prohibited; school pupils are educated through a militarised process or, to put it another way, military ideology is propagated and they learn through the conduct of military operations. Young people are asked to join the social-political projects of the unlawful military forces of the LPR and DPR, who promote the principle of the “Russian world”.

Second. The ideological principle of the “Russian world” is promoted in the occupied territories of the Donbass by the Russian Centre organisation, an executive partner of the Russian state fund, Russian World. There were 13 of these Russian Centres in Ukraine (in the regional capitals); after the revolution of dignity of 2014, they remained only at Gorlovka, Donetsk and Lugansk. The Russian Centre in the separate areas, for example, has a permanent project entitled The Russia-Donbass Integration Committee, which is led by Andrei Kozenko, a deputy in the Russian Duma [parliament]. Since 2017, this project has been used to strengthen the integration of the separate areas into the Russian Federation, by means of social-political, academic and cultural projects. All large-scale mass events in the separate areas are run by the Russian Centre. […]

In December 2020 the Russian occupation administration in the separate areas put together the socalled Russian Donbass doctrine. It was presented in January 2021 at a forum of the same name. The doctrine is a 47-page text that portrays the unlawful armed formations of the LPR and DPR as bastions and strongholds of the “Russian world”, on the historic territory of the “Russian empire”. […] In November 2021, the leader of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, announced in Moscow that it is necessary to form a “Russian national state” on the territory of the separate areas.

Third. The political parties of the Russian Federation also influence the integrationist processes. Since 2014, all the parties represented in the Russian Duma have been active in the parts of Lugansk and Donetsk that are occupied by Russia. The parties that have been most active are Just Russia – For the Truth, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). Since May 2021, United Russia [the pro-Putin party that dominates the Duma] also became active. In the summer and autumn of 2021, elections to the Duma were organised in the separate areas. In the course of the campaign, virtual polling stations were organised, and also, on election day, the transportation en masse of residents of the separate areas to polling stations in Rostov region [over the border in Russia].

Fourth. One of the key aspects of the integration of the separate areas into the Russian Federation is the labour migration of the working-age population. […] During 2021, 1400 workers from the coal industry went to work in Russia. In 2021 the occupation administration closed 43 coal mines, which had previously been in the Ukrainian state sector. These actions led to an upsurge of unemployment in the separate areas, caused by the pit closures and the systematic non-payment of wages at other enterprises. In Russia this situation was taken advantage of: through the Fellow Countryman programme, they began to encourage Ukrainian citizens living in the separate areas to get a Russian passport and move to distant regions of the Russian Federation.

Fifth. The integration of young people by the occupation administration is being carried out through sports, and clubs for military-patriotic education. Since 2015, the occupation adminstration of the Russian Federation in the separate areas has founded sport federations of the LPR and DPR, and competitors from these federations complete at regional, national and international competitions held in Russia. […]
Troops of the “Donbas People’s Republic”. Photo from Depo.Donbas

The policy of the Kremlin, for the integration of the separate areas into the Russian Federation is accelerating at a geometric rate. Accordingly, the government of Ukraine needs to examine all the processes and consider the risks. The implementation of the Minsk agreements at this point would result in the destabilisation of the social-political situation across the whole country, and could result in new losses of territory.

□ I have translated this blog post not to support its view of the Minsk agreements, but because of the information it provides about the situation in the separatist-controlled areas. It highlights the way that the Russian state has, since 2014, established facts on the ground in the separatist-controlled areas, by way of integrating them into Russia.

The blog post shows how the Russian state has worked to deepen divisions between sections of the population on the basis of language and nationality. The Ukrainian state and Ukrainian nationalists have also played a dangerous role here. In April, an alliance of human rights groups warned that sanctions announced by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky against citizens living in the separatist-controlled areas were unconstitutional, and a “serious threat to human rights and liberties”.

International solidarity means finding ways to support the communities directly impacted by the military conflict. There’s some more about that in a linked article, “Putin’s little helpers undermine solidarity”. SP, 29 December 2021

Putin’s little helpers undermine solidarity

Women organise in the war zone (April 2018)

Ukraine: war as a means of social control (October 2014)

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Russia And Ukraine ✑ “Militarism And Nationalism Are Lethally Dangerous Drugs”

Dr John Coulter ✒  Former US President Donald Trump needs to convene a Singapore-style peace summit in Dublin to bring the Ukraine crisis to an end, maintains the TPQ Monday contentious political commentator.

The prophets of doom already have predicted a nuclear Armageddon of Biblical proportions as the world descends into global war over Ukraine, but I am not one of those so-called ‘prophets’ who maintain that the crisis in the Ukraine can only be resolved through military action.

What is needed is not the endless round of shuttle diplomacy as the various world leaders or their representatives fly in and fly out of Moscow in a ‘Munich agreement-style’ approach to persuade Russian president Vladimir Putin not to bomb the living daylights out of the former Soviet Union republic of Ukraine.

In this respect, the only man for the job is former US President Donald Trump, who during his Presidency kept the United States out of any war. Whilst his domestic policy was surrounded in controversy, his massive achievement in foreign policy was the hugely successful Singapore Summit in 2018 which cools the crisis in the Korean peninsula involving North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

North Korea, since it became a nuclear power, always gave the impression it was looking for a fight with the Western democratic powers. What was building towards a global crisis, was cooled by Trump’s negotiating skills, culminating in the photograph of the famous handshake between The Donald and Kim - just as famous as the handshake in the development of the Irish peace process between the late Derry IRA commander and former Stormont deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and the Queen.

The West seems to be totally underestimating the desire of Putin to rebuild the Russian Empire. Putin is no Boris Yeltsin, a former Russian leader whom the West could push around. Similarly, Putin - in spite of his Soviet past - is no Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former USSR before the collapse of communism.

Putin is more like the character of the Soviet Union’s tough talking ruler from the Seventies - Leonid Brezhnev. In policy, Putin reminds me of the last Tsar of Russia - Nicholas II - and his imperialist policy towards Germany in 1914 which took Russia into the disastrous Great War, which ultimately cost him his crown in the 1917 Russian revolution.

Looking at Putin’s desire to rebuild the Russian Empire, this President of Russia is the new Tsar. The Donald can bring a calming influence to the crisis as he doesn’t have the pressures of the Oval Office, or have to worry about what Congress or the House of Representatives will think.

Had Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu still been alive, I would have been recommending him to chair any round-table peace summit.

Why Dublin? The Republic of Ireland has always maintained its neutrality and one of the main problems facing the organisers and chair of any peace summit to resolve the Ukraine crisis is a suitable venue.

So what better place for all the participants to meet than the grand setting of Leinster House, the home of the Dail.

Chaired by The Donald, the Dublin Summit would involve US President Joe Biden, European Union leaders, the Ukrainian government, and Putin. Then again, the difficulty could be in persuading Biden to attend as he would interpret Trump’s chairing the Dublin Summit as another link in the political chain leading to The Donald returning to the Oval Office in 2024.

The problem for the UK is that whilst it is no longer a member of the EU, four existing EU member states - Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia border the Ukraine. And it must not be forgotten these four EU members states were once integral territorial parts of the old USSR.

If Russia invades - depending in what counts as an invasion - it will inevitably mean a refugee crisis as civilians flee the fighting as Putin seeks to rebuild his Russian Empire. Initially, this could mean refugees wanting to flee to the safety of the UK.

Threats of economic sanctions against Russia by the EU, UK or the USA will not frighten Putin if we take Russian policy towards the former Soviet territory of the Chechen republic. Just as the leadership of the rebels in Chechnya what happened when they tried to militarily claim independence from Moscow!

It will also put a strain on NATO - of which the UK is a member, especially if any fighting was to spill over into EU states. There is some talk the Ukraine might not want a relationship with NATO in return for a ‘no strike’ agreement with Putin.

A number of key issues need to be addressed:

1, How severe will Putin’s military action be - taunting flyovers by Russian aircraft, huge military exercises along the Ukrainian border, but no actual Russian boots on Ukrainian soil, a hit and run incursion attack, or a full-scale invasion along the lines of the Coalition’s attack on Iraq?

2, If Putin takes over the Ukraine by military force, which state is next? Could he actually sabre rattle so much that existing EU states feel the need to leave the EU and rejoin a Russian Empire, or be neutral in terms of NATO?

3, What does it mean for energy costs in the UK if a lot of gas comes via Russia?

4, What would be the future of the Northern Ireland Protocol if the EU - which does not multi-task politically - could we actually see a situation that the Protocol slips down the league of priorities because the EU becomes obsessed with dealing with the military action in Ukraine?

5, Could a situation deteriorate so deeply that we actually see conflict between NATO forces and Russian forces? This would involve UK troops as a part of NATO - put bluntly, British boots on Ukrainian soil.

Perhaps the real worry in this crisis is not what Putin plans, but what the reaction of Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson might be. Could Putin be goading both premiers into military action as both Biden and Johnson could use any Ukrainian conflict as an excuse to deflect attention from domestic woes.

In Biden’s case, it would be a chance for him to shake off the perception that he is merely ‘Sleepy Joe’. Sending American forces into Ukraine would prove he is a President who can not just talk tough, but act tough - especially as he was the President in the Oval Office when American forces left Afghanistan, leaving the country to be ruled by the fanatics of the Taliban.

What did all those American personnel die or be wounded for simply for America to have the humiliation of a second Vietnam war-style evacuation in less than a century?

As for Boris Johnson, given the ‘Partygate’ scandals, issues of Tory sleaze, and the damning Sue Gray report, put crudely, there’s nothing like a war to take the public and media’s attention over a crisis at home!

Unlike Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War, Putin does possess weapons of mass destruction. However, with cool heads, diplomacy can still be the big winner in the Ukrainian crisis.

Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online

Bring Back The Donald To Cool Ukraine Crisis!

People And Nature  ✒ We know what solidarity in the face of war looks like. 

Simon Pirani
29-December-2021

It looks like the Grupa Granica, set up to support those stranded on the Polish border by the government’s vicious anti-migrant policy and the Belarussian government’s cynical manipulation of refugees.

It looks like the thousands of Polish people who have demonstrated, demanding “stop the torture at the border”. And it looks like the solidarity networks set up further afield (including the Solidarity Without Borders appeal for cash to support groups on the spot).

To those supporting refugees – whether in Poland or Belarus, or in the English Channel, targeted by the UK government’s murderous crackdown – it makes no difference which war people are fleeing. It might be the US-UK-supported war in Iraq, or the bloodbath perpetrated in Syria by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Demonstration in Warsaw, October 2021, to “stop torture on the border”.
Photo by Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Now, we face the possibility of renewed Russian military action in Ukraine. This carries the greatest threat of war in Europe since the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.  

The war in eastern Ukraine in 2014-15 has already caused 2 million or more people to flee their homes: more than 1 million now counted as “internally displaced” in Ukraine; at least as many have crossed the border to Russia. A new conflict would be both a human tragedy and a threat to social movements.

Solidarity is needed. An anti-war movement is needed.

Already, pro-Putin propaganda – that corrodes parts of the so-called “left”, as well as thriving on the extreme right – is being dialled up. It seeks to justify Russia’s military preparations. And it could endanger efforts to galvanise anti-war protest.

Putin’s little helpers on the “left” generally have a world view inherited from Stalinism: they believe that authoritarian regimes that spout anti-American rhetoric (Russia, China or both) are to be praised; the imperial character of these regimes’ actions is ignored; and these regimes, rather than popular movements, are seen as the means to resist western powers.

Four of the fairytales told by Putin’s helpers, on the Stop the War website and the Morning Star newspaper, are:

Fairytale no. 1: NATO started it

Andrew Murray, writing on the Stop the War website, claims that “if there is conflict over Ukraine, it is the west that bears most of the blame”. But it’s not “if”. There has been a conflict going on for more than six years, which has taken more than 14,000 lives.

The forces involved are the Ukrainian army, the vastly better-resourced Russian army, and separatists and mercenaries supported by, and to a large extent funded and armed by, the Russian state. The western powers have been noticeable by their absence.

Murray says the 100,000 Russian troops stationed on the Ukrainian border are “allegations” and “media speculation”. John Wojcik in the Morning Star says they are there “if corporate press outlets are to be believed”. In the real world where the rest of us live, the Russian forces actually exist (see satellite pictures here and here).

Murray claims that the NATO military alliance is “trying to seize Ukraine by means of moving NATO right up to Russia’s borders”, that the US is “arming Ukraine to the hilt to resist” and that “British troops are stationed in the Balkans”. The journalist and commentator Paul Mason has demolished these claims point by point. He writes:

There is, in short, no NATO plan to “seize” Ukraine; no possibility of Ukraine joining NATO; no “arming to the hilt”; no significant number of British troops in the Balkans; no major deployment of NATO troops “eastwards towards Poland”.

The US military support for Ukraine so far amounts to Javelin anti-tank missile systems, and small arms and a group of training officers. It remains dwarfed by the Russian mobilisation.

The danger of war is real. But to deny the central role of the Russian military is to deny reality.

Putin’s helpers have form on this. During the civil war in Syria, the Stop the War campaign and their friends had little or nothing to say about the murderous Assad regime and the Russian government that armed and militarily supported it – despite the fact that they were responsible for an estimated 90% of the killings.

While the regime preferred to butcher and torture its own citizens, rather than to grant them a measure of democratic rights, Putin’s helpers spoke up only about minor incursions by western forces … the “anti-imperialism of idiots”, as Syrian-British writer Leila al-Shami called it.

As for Ukraine, the Stop the War campaign did nothing to support the victims of the 2014-15 conflict, but nevertheless hurried to the defence of the Russian “leftist” Boris Kagarlitsky, who joined fascists and nationalists in supporting the Russian intervention.

Fairytale no. 2: Ukraine is fascist, really

There was a “fascist coup” in Ukraine in 2014, writes John Wojcik in the Morning Star (in an article republished from the US-based People’s World, of which Wojcik is editor). “Hundreds of trade union leaders and activists were murdered by the new right-wing Ukrainian government shortly after it came to power.” He also claims that the new government “banned opposition political parties, including the widely supported Communist party”. And it “banned the use of the Russian language, the primary language of 40% or more of the Ukrainian people”. Let’s go through the bits of this fairytale one by one.

(a) A “fascist coup”. The overthrow of the government headed by President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was, by any measure, a mass popular action. A crowd of more than half a million people occupied the centre of Kyiv for more than two weeks, in the face of assaults ranging from baton charges to sniper fire, making it impossible for the government to continue. There were mass actions on a similar scale in dozens of other towns and cities. The politics of this “Maidan” protest were complex. Participants ranged from fascists, who played a key part in the violent confrontations with the old regime’s armed forces, to socialists and anarchists. But the word “coup” is meaningless to describe it. As for the new government, while its record on defending democratic rights was mixed to put it mildly, it was no more “fascist” than the governments of e.g. Poland or Hungary. And, in terms of the rights to assembly, free speech and workplace organisation, less repressive than the governments of e.g. Turkey or Russia.

(b) “Hundreds of trade union leaders and activists were murdered by the new right-wing Ukrainian government.” This is false – shockingly so. No such murders took place. No such murders have been recorded on the web sites of Ukraine’s two trade union federations. None have been mentioned in the detailed reports of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights on attacks on civil rights in Ukraine. Demonstrators were killed in clashes with the security forces, but this was mostly before Yanukovych was overthrown. Activists and journalists have been attacked, and some killed, apparently by non-state actors, albeit sometimes with covert support from elements in the state. In 2014, prior to the military conflict, there were other deaths and injuries resulting from civil conflict. The most serious incident, by far, was the deaths of demonstrators opposed to the new government who, confronted by its supporters, took refuge in a trade union building in Odessa that was then set on fire. Ukrainian law enforcement did little to investigate. Tragic as these deaths were, they were not murders of trade union leaders or activists by the government.

(c) The government “banned opposition political parties”, including the Communist party. It didn’t. The electoral commission banned the Communist party from participation in the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections, under the 2015 “decommunisation” law. This law, which forbids the promotion of “totalitarian regimes”, defined as Nazi and Communist, and their symbols, has been and is being used to attack democratic rights. Together with similar laws in other eastern European countries, it deserves to be denounced and resisted. But note, too, that the Communist party continues to operate legally; that it has mounted legal challenges to the ban; that no other party has been banned from electoral participation under the law; and that the government and the electoral rights group OPORA are currently in dispute over the extent of proportional representation – an election procedure that in the UK, for example, remains an unattainable dream.

(d) The government “banned the use of the Russian language”. It didn’t – and it’s irresponsible and inflammatory to sit in an editorial office in the US claiming it did. A law making Ukrainian the single state language was adopted in 2019 – the culmination of three decades of argument, shaped both by by aspirations to revive Ukrainian culture that has suffered historically from Russian imperial domination, and by hard-line Ukrainian nationalism. Ukrainian socialists opposed the measure (and I sympathise with them). Remember, though, that the law requires that Ukrainian be used in public spaces, and not exclusively; that it does not apply to private or religious life; that it will be applied in the education system, and to TV, over an extended period; and that breaching the law is essentially a civil, not criminal offence. (See reports by Russia’s state owned TASS news agency here, and Russia’s opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta here.)

Another of Putin’s helpers’ favourite tricks is to portray Ukraine as protective of the memory of wartime Nazi collaborators. With no reference to the real, complex battles over memory (see e.g. here and here), they point to Ukraine’s opposition to a Russian resolution on the holocaust at the UN, in a ridiculous diplomatic ritual repeated annually since 2005 (see here and here). This is a facile attitude to a serious subject. Putin’s helpers seem blind to the reality that it is the security forces in Russia, not Ukraine, that have recently tortured and jailed a group of young anti-fascists.

Fairytale no. 3: Ukraine is part of Russia, really

Putin’s helpers insist that Ukraine is not really a country with a history. The Stop the War site says that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 “turned what had been internal borders, arbitrarily drawn with no great significance, into inter-state boundaries”; Ukraine has “failed to develop anything like a common democratic culture”; therefore what is now “decisive” is the “international aspect” and the actions of the western powers; and what mattered about 2014 was that the government established in Kyiv was “anti-Russian”.

Both Stop the War and the Morning Star quote Putin’s article On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in July. It heightened fears in Ukraine of imminent invasion, with insanely exaggerated warnings of a path towards “an ethnically pure Ukrainian state”, that would be comparable to “the use of weapons of mass destruction against us”. (Putin followed up earlier this month, with a deranged claim that “current developments in Donbass” are “very reminiscent of genocide”.)

In his article, Putin explains the tsarist empire’s anti-Ukrainian legislation of the 1870s on the grounds that the Polish nationalist revolt was in progress; argues that Ukrainian nationhood was an invention of the Poles and/or Austro-Hungarians; and describes the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, by which Poland and the Baltic states were divided between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, with the words “the USSR regained the lands earlier seized by Poland”. He never once refers to Russian imperialism and colonialism, and the role they have played in shaping, and trying to deny, Ukrainian national identity.

That Putin justifies his imperial aspirations with reference to Russia’s imperialist past is not surprising. For western “leftists” to endorse this logic suggests that the “left” has sunk to a new low.

Fairytale no. 4: Putin is protecting Russia’s riches from imperialist looters

“Possible western aggression against Russia” is caused, in part, by “the desire of the fossil fuel monopolies to control the world energy market”, the Morning Star claims. These western interests seek to “turn Ukraine into a base”, in order to “achieve economic control of Russia”. This is unbelievably upside-down and back-to-front.

The Russian economy was subordinated to world markets, as a supplier of raw materials such as oil, gas and minerals, in a process that took two decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In the first decade of Putin’s presidency, especially, large chunks of the wealth earned from these exports found its way into private hands and was shipped to offshore locations, at the rate of tens of billions of dollars per year.

Although Putin insisted that the private owners of oil and metals companies pay more taxes than they did in the 1990s, and some oil assets have been renationalised (the state owns an estimated 50% of the oil industry now), investigations by journalists and the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny have shown conclusively that his governing team put far, far more effort into diverting many billions in to their own accounts. Russian oil companies remain open to foreign investment; the largest of them, Rosneft, is 22% owned by BP.

So Russia’s economy has been integrated into the world capitalist economy in a way that serves its elite, not its people. Material inequalities have widened substantially under Putin.

Since 2014, a giant contradiction has opened up for the Russian government. The elite’s economic interests would be best served by developing these good relations with foreign capital. But its political interests required it to stoke up nationalism, to seek to reinforce its diplomatic and military control over its near neighbours that have slipped from its imperial grasp, Ukraine first among them. The war fought by Russia in Ukraine in 2014-15 was driven by these politics, not by economic interests. It, and western sanctions that resulted, damaged those interests.

The western powers already have most of what they want from the Russian economy. The idea that they are plotting military action to control it is, frankly, daft. There’s no doubt that the US hopes to constrain Russia’s geopolitical and military reach in central Europe – although the western alliance is split, and Germany is generally readier to compromise with Russia. But there is another factor here: the popular movement that removed Yanukovich and drastically weakened Russia’s political control over Ukraine, rooted in a history of colonialism. Putin is not only trying to reassert Russian influence against a divided NATO, but is also reacting to those changes in Ukrainian society. And it is Ukrainians who are being killed, and Ukrainian communities divided and devastated, by war.

In conclusion

The arguments put by Putin’s helpers are so absurd that I find it hard to explain them to Russian and Ukrainian friends. In 2015, a Ukrainian friend living in the UK asked: “What is it with these people? Are they being paid by the Russian embassy?” I answered that I was sure they are not. They justify Putin’s actions on account of their messed-up ideology, which on some level they must believe. That’s why, although it’s a bit like explaining why the earth isn’t flat, I offer readers these thoughts. SP, 29 December 2021.

■ A linked article – Russia and Ukraine: “militarism and nationalism are lethally dangerous drugs.”

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Putin’s Little Helpers Undermine Solidarity

Mick Hall ☭ Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

After the disastrous 2003 Iraq war and occupation which eventually had British troops scurrying out the back door in Basra in the middle of the night. The recent chaotic scenes when the British military retreated from Afghanistan leaving much of the country decimated and many Afghans without food or work, and ten years after NATO intervened in Libya. it's gone from a cohesive country, all be it with major flaws, to a failed state.

Now, you would have thought lessons would have been learnt from these failures but, no. The British prime minister is now poking the Kremlin with a long stick and has not dismissed putting British troops on the ground in the Ukraine. This beggars belief, when a casual glance at history would see the outcome would be disastrous for the Ukrainian people not least because NATO intervention would antagonize the bear.

Nevertheless the British MSM have been daily stoking up a war with Russia. Night after night, BBC TV news has been showing the same clip of Russian troops with a narrative - Putin is warmongering.

What is indicative of this shoddy reporting is the almost total failure of MSM outlets to report from the ethnic Russian speaking part of the Ukraine which makes up a third of the country's population.

What the Russian government wants was summed up succinctly by Alex McCrory:

If you found your home being surrounded by hostile forces, what would you do? This is precisely the position Russia finds itself in today. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West, in the shape of NATO, has fashioned a noose for the Bear's neck. Most of the former Russian satellite states have been wooed by the West via the European Union and NATO at the behest of America. Nuclear missiles are capable of striking Russian cities in minutes from a number of NATO bases located along its border. What Russia demands is a Pan-European security agreement that removes the current existential threat. A reasonable request in the circumstances.

China is already surrounded by US bases and the hawks in the Pentagon are doing the same with Russia, you don't have to be a groupie of President Putin or President Xi Jinping to understand how dangerous this is for world peace.

It's worth reminding ourselves who is the serial aggressor here. Since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.*

* Taken from the American historian William Blum who until his death in 2018 yearly updated a summary of the record of US foreign policy.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

US ✑ A Serial Aggressor