Ukraine’s military offensive at the start of September against Russian forces in the northeast of the country had been flagged up by the western ruling class media weeks before it began. Its military successes then came as no real surprise and are the direct result of the massive amounts of arms, military hardware and troop training that NATO countries have been pumping into the country. Since the Maidan coup in 2014 when western imperialism gained political dominance in Ukraine, the US has provided a staggering $17.2bn of what it calls ‘security assistance’ to the Ukrainian state; over $14.5bn of that has been provided since the Russian invasion on 24 February. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
On 8 September the Ukraine Defence Contact Group had its fifth meeting at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The reports to the meeting and the decisions made highlight even more clearly that the western imperialist military alliance, NATO, is waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The death and destruction that are the consequence of this are of no interest to the major imperialist powers; their only concern lies in either defending or advancing their own economic and political interests. The driving force for this is the deepening economic crisis of the capitalist system and the relatively declining power of US imperialism. The US is determined to use the opportunity that Russia’s desperate and ultimately reactionary military invasion of Ukraine has given it to crush Russia as any form of military rival. Russian President Putin’s announcement on 21 September that there would be a partial mobilisation of up to 300,000 military reservists is an indication of the pressure Russia is under.
NATO’s proxy war spelled out
In his opening remarks to the Ramstein meeting, the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin described some of the military hardware that has recently been pumped into Ukraine:
‘In the weeks since the Contact Group last met, the US has committed another $6.3bn in security assistance to Ukraine and yesterday, the President approved the latest tranche of US assistance…valued up to $675m. And this is the Biden Administration’s twentieth drawdown of equipment from US stocks for Ukraine since last August. The latest package includes more Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), 105 millimeter howitzers, artillery munitions, HARM missiles, Humvees, armoured ambulances, anti-tank systems, small arms, and more. And since our last meeting in July, many Allies and partners have come forward with their own important new deliveries of advanced radars, and tanks, and armoured personnel carriers…The UK has sent a second tranche of M270 MLRS launchers and munitions that brings British assistance to Ukraine to a total of £2.3bn’.
This so-called ‘security assistance’ includes the training of thousands of Ukrainian troops in the use of the new weaponry they have been receiving and in battlefield military tactics. In June a training programme for 10,000 Ukrainian troops began at Ministry of Defence sites in Britain; this programme has now been joined by a number of other European states and Canada.
Although the Ukrainian military has clearly made some major gains against Russian forces, the US doesn’t expect the military conflict to end soon, with US President Biden declaring that it’s going to be a ‘long haul’. Austin reinforced that view at the Contact Group meeting and laid out NATO’s longer term plans, ‘Today, this contact group needs to position itself to sustain Ukraine’s brave defenders for the long haul…It means moving urgently to innovate, and to push all of our defence industrial bases to provide Ukraine with the tools that it will need for the hard road ahead’.
Connected with the need to boost arms production to supply Ukraine is the need to replenish and boost the arms stocks of the NATO member states themselves. Most of the military hardware that has been pumped into Ukraine since February has come from the existing stocks of NATO members. Of the over $14.5bn worth of military hardware the US has sent into Ukraine since February, $12.5bn has come from existing stockpiles of weapons. There is an urgent need from the imperialist standpoint to rapidly increase arms production.
Alongside this drive to increase production is the connected need to develop an accelerated strategy for the integration of military hardware used by all NATO members. Out of the Contact Group has now developed a meeting of national armaments directors; its first official meeting on 28 September. According to the US Defence Department, one of the main topics of discussion will be the need to build ‘interoperability between systems and to increase interchangeability…that is the ability for us to take a munition from one country and use it in a weapons system of another, and vice versa’.
Parroting the interests of US and British imperialism, Ukrainian President Zelensky has declared that there is no basis for peace talks with Russia until all of Ukraine is ‘liberated’, including the Donbass and Crimea. He has been consistently calling on the US to supply Ukraine with rockets with a 190-mile range which would allow them to strike Crimea and targets deep into Russian territory. This is a recipe for an escalating conflict with no end in sight as Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based in Sevastopol in Crimea. Russia views Crimea and the Donbass not only as strategic assets but as being integral parts of a historic ‘Greater Russia’. As we go to press Putin has announced that between 23 and 27 September there will be referenda on unification with Russia in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which make up the Donbass, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions. If, as expected, they vote for unification with Russia, it will underline the fact that there is no current basis for any peace talks.
Despite Russia’s aggressive stance on the referenda, President Putin’s September meeting with Chinese President Xi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan reflected some of Russia’s problems. Here it became clear that China has concerns about the direction the war is taking. Putin, while praising the ‘balanced position of our Chinese friends’, acknowledged that Xi had doubts about the war. Putin was also reported as saying to Xi that he was prepared to discuss a peace agreement. NATO will of course not allow this to happen unless Russia capitulates.
The grain fraud
At the end of July Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement to allow grain shipments to leave some Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. This much heralded agreement, overseen by Turkey, was supposed to help poor countries in Africa and Asia access cheaper grain. UN figures show that 44% of the grain shipped out went in fact to ‘high income’ countries. According to reports on Telesur, Putin claimed that most of the grain shipped out went to EU countries. Of the first 87 ships that left Ukrainian ports under the agreement he said that only two arrived in the poorest countries for UN food programmes, Yemen and Djibouti. This would amount to just 60,000 tons or 3% of the grain exported under the deal. The grain agreement was also supposed to lift sanctions to allow Russia to export fertiliser and its own grain shipments; this has only been partially implemented and Russia is still struggling to export its fertilisers. Whether the agreement carries on depends on the full lifting of sanctions against the export of Russian grain and fertiliser. These would be lifted immediately if supplies reaching poor countries was really the issue.
Growing fuel problems and waning support
On 5 September Russia announced that the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which usually supplies 33% of Russia’s natural gas exports to Europe, would be shut down for an indefinite period. This brought about an immediate 30% rise in gas prices on the financial market making gas prices now twice as high as they were 12 months ago. Russia blamed the shutting of Nord Stream 1 on NATO countries for imposing sanctions that made it difficult to access the parts needed to keep the pipeline open.
Germany imported around 40% of its gas supplies from Russia in the first quarter of this year and has been trying desperately to reduce this dependence and search for alternative gas supplies. As part of that strategy Germany is rapidly installing temporary liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to enable it to receive gas from producers such as the US and Qatar. France has put a 15% price cap on fuel bills for next year which will still mean €25 a month extra on gas heating bills and €20 a month for electricity bills. A suggestion to cap the price the EU pays for gas from Russia was dropped after the EU Commission was unable to come to an agreement when Russia responded that it would just cease all gas supplies to the EU if this was imposed.
The devastating social impact of the war in Ukraine will fall on the working class and poor in Ukraine, Russia, Europe and elsewhere. The ruling classes are acutely aware of the dangers of social upheaval and are constantly playing the nationalist and patriotic card. Reflecting ruling class nervousness, on 9 September NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared,
‘In the coming months our unity and solidarity will be tested with pressure on energy supplies and the soaring cost of living caused by Russia’s war…But the price we pay is measured in money. While the price the Ukrainians are paying is measured in lives. Lost lives, every day…we must stay the course, for Ukraine’s sake and for ours.’
The recent military advances Ukrainian forces have made in the east of the country have been accompanied by predictable stories of the uncovering of supposed ‘war crimes’ carried out by Russian forces. These allegations play an important political role for the US and British ruling classes as a counterweight to waning public enthusiasm for fuelling the war.
War crimes and atrocities carried out in times of war are inevitable, but it is a political decision which of them are promoted by the imperialist media. The recent report by Amnesty International, Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians has been effectively ignored and buried. The report clearly states that Ukrainian forces have engaged in war crimes during the conflict:
‘Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals…Such tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians, as they turn civilian objects into military targets’.
Publicising this sort of information would clearly go against the warmongering interests of the western imperialist ruling classes.
The reality is that the soaring cost of living and the massive rises in fuel prices are not primarily caused by ‘Russia’s war’. The underlying cause is the growing economic crisis of the capitalist system. The rise in fuel prices and inflation had all begun before the war in Ukraine and had been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The drive to war by the imperialist countries and the escalating attacks on working class living standards can only be stopped by the building of an independent, anti-imperialist, socialist movement rooted in those sections of the working class that have the most to gain from the destruction of this capitalist system.
Fight racism! Fight imperialism! Fight for socialism!
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 290, October/November 2022
