Russian military action inside Ukraine began on 24 February 2022, three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised the independence of the two breakaway areas of eastern Ukraine, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Russia’s reckless military action is a consequence of the relentless build-up of NATO’s military forces in Eastern Europe, coupled with the refusal to engage in any serious talks with Russia over its security concerns. Russia is attempting to defend its own capitalist and imperialist interests and to stop the advance of NATO. It is an expression, not just of desperation, but of the growing inter-imperialist rivalries within a global capitalist crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
Putin announced the recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk in a speech in which he set out his reactionary views on the history of Ukraine in opposition to the progressive stance adopted by Lenin. More importantly for the immediate situation, he documented the persistent encroachment of NATO military forces further into Eastern Europe up to Russia’s borders, and the refusal of the US to reach any agreement on this. Putin declared that he had made a decision to ‘carry out a special military operation’ to protect people living in the People’s Republics who ‘for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine’.
Although Putin declared that Russia had no plans to occupy Ukraine, military action rapidly began to spread across the whole country, with attacks on military bases and strategic targets around the major cities. On 12 March Russia launched a Cruise missile attack on the ‘International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security’ in Yavoriv, a few miles from the border with Poland. This innocently named Centre is in fact a military base where NATO supplies entering Ukraine are stockpiled, where Ukrainian troops have been trained by NATO officers and where the ‘International Legion’ has been based. The ‘International Legion’ is the military force that the Ukrainian government has been encouraging foreign mercenaries to join. It has connections with the fascist Azov Battalion which has played a central role in the ongoing shelling and attacks on the separatist areas in east Ukraine.
As Russia’s military action intensified, with residential districts of major cities being hit, it has been the working class and poor who have suffered the most. There are now hundreds of civilian casualties and around four million people have left Ukraine.
Inter-imperialist rivalries
Behind NATO’s proxy war with Russia lies the US’s rivalry with China, as well as its relationship with the EU. The US fears an alliance between China and Russia and wants to crush Russia before a large rival power bloc can be consolidated. In his phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 17 March, US President Joe Biden attempted, and failed, to pressure Xi into supporting sanctions on Russia. In a 23 March press conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared:
‘I expect we will also address the role of China in this crisis. Beijing has joined Moscow in questioning the right of independent nations to choose their own path. China has provided Russia with political support, including by spreading blatant lies and disinformation. And Allies are concerned that China could provide material support for the Russian invasion.’
Meanwhile, underlying divisions between the US and EU countries, which on the surface seem to have disappeared as the various imperialist states fall over themselves to ‘help’ Ukraine, are still simmering under the surface. On 7 March the head of the Federation of German Industries rejected the US government’s demand for a decoupling of the German economy from China saying, ‘We were not and will not be a recipient of orders from the American government, [Putin’s] crimes are not the end of global trade and global division of labour.’
NATO’s military build-up
The response of the imperialist powers to Russia’s military actions was to launch an all-out offensive, short of direct military action, against Russia. NATO’s forces are being built up across Eastern Europe. By the beginning of March the US had around 100,000 troops in Europe. Boris Johnson laid out the aims of imperialism when he declared, ‘Putin must fail and must be seen to fail’.
Over 20 countries have been supplying Ukraine with military equipment. For the first time in its history, the EU as an entity has bought arms, providing €450m worth to Ukraine. At the beginning of February Britain sent 2,000 shoulder-held anti-tank missile launchers, then delivered another 1,615 promising the future delivery of longer-range Javelin missiles and surface-to-air missiles. Britain has also doubled the number of troops it has in the NATO ‘battlegroup’ it leads in Estonia, sending another 900 with tanks and armoured vehicles. NATO is now building up new ‘battlegroups’ in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, similar to those it has in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
The pressure on all NATO members to openly support Ukraine has led Germany to change its policy on arms shipments to war zones, announcing that it would supply Ukraine with 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Germany is also seizing the opportunity to re-arm itself on a scale not seen since the Second World War.
The day after Russia began its military action, Biden instructed the US State Department to release an additional $350m worth of weapons for Ukraine. In 2021 the US granted over $1bn in security aid to Ukraine, with a similar amount pledged for 2022. After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the US Congress on 16 March, Biden announced an additional $800m package, including drones and anti-aircraft systems. He also joined British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in branding Putin a ‘war criminal’.
The sheer hypocrisy of this is breath-taking. On the same day Zelensky addressed Congress, Johnson visited Saudi Arabia to ask it to produce more oil to substitute for Russia’s supply. Just days earlier 81 men had been beheaded by the Saudi regime and a further three were executed while Johnson was in the country.
All sections of the imperialist media have been mobilised to churn out wall-to-wall war propaganda promoting the idea that Ukraine is standing up for European ‘democracy’ and its independence against the ‘evil’ Putin. The reality though is that the ruling class in Ukraine is criminal and corrupt and, since the 2014 Maidan coup, has been in the pocket of the imperialist countries. Zelensky – who campaigned for President on an anti-corruption ticket – has been shown through the leaked Pandora Papers to have cash stuffed in companies registered in offshore tax havens.
On 31 March 2020 Ukraine passed a law lifting the country’s prohibition on land transactions. Ending the moratorium was part of a series of policy reforms imposed by the IMF as conditions for a $5bn loan package, enabling multinational agribusinesses access to Ukraine’s 32 million hectares of fertile land. Despite being rich in resources, according to GDP per capita, Ukraine is the second poorest country in Europe. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union its population has declined by around eight million primarily due to emigration.
Sanctions as a form of warfare
Alongside the military confrontation with Russia, through the intensified build-up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe and the piling of arms and military equipment into Ukraine, unprecedented economic sanctions have been imposed on Russia. These sanctions are designed to wreck the Russian economy, weaken the strength of the Russian ruling class and force Putin either out of office or into withdrawing his forces and conceding defeat.
The brunt of the sanctions will be felt by the working class and poor, not just in Russia but across the world, in the form of big rises in the cost of living and attacks on living standards. Between them Russia and Ukraine account for 27% of world trade in wheat and 53% of world trade in sunflower oil and seeds. Fifteen of the poorest countries in Africa import at least half their grain from the two countries, with 26 importing more than a third. Russia is the largest exporter of wheat in the world; Africa, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries are among its main customers.
British media coverage of sanctions has concentrated on the so-called Russian oligarchs living in London, such as Roman Abramovich – apparently now a citizen of both Israel and Portugal. British company laws are so lax that the government has had to pass new legislation in order to place economic sanctions against some of these criminal characters. The high profile targeting of Abramovich, who has been forced to relinquish his ownership of Chelsea Football Club, is in stark contrast to the lack of any censure whatsoever by the British authorities of multi-billionaire Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who chairs the Saudi investment fund that owns Newcastle United FC. The Saudi state is directly responsible for the bloody conflict in Yemen, which has taken the lives of 377,000 people, including 10,000 children (see page 10), and Bin Salman is said by both Amnesty International and US intelligence to have personally ordered the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The main focus of the economic sanctions, however, is Russia’s gas, oil and agricultural sector, industries that it depends on for trade and foreign currency. Russia is the world’s third largest oil exporter and second largest natural gas producer. It also produces a significant proportion of the global pig iron, steel, nickel, aluminium and copper exports that are a key input to many production processes in Europe, such as car manufacture.
To hit this trade, major Russian banks have been sanctioned. Seven Russian banks were disconnected from the SWIFT international banking system, making it virtually impossible for them to carry out international financial transactions. Russia’s Central Bank has also been sanctioned rendering it unable to access foreign currency reserves it holds in banks in other countries.
Two of Russia’s biggest banks, Sberbank and Gazprombank remain part of the SWIFT system, however, because they are the main payment channels for the Russia’s oil and gas which Europe depends on. Although the US has said it will ban the import of any Russian oil or gas and Britain that it will phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of 2022 and consider banning its natural gas, the EU is in a different position. Britain only imports 4% of its oil and 3% of its gas from Russia, whilst the EU imports around 25% of its oil and 45% of its gas from Russia. This economic reality is reflected in the differing positions oil companies have taken, with BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil announcing they are leaving Russia completely, while French oil giant TotalEnergies is only suspending investment. During Biden’s visit to Brussels on 25 March, a deal was announced increasing the amount of liquified natural gas supplied by the US to the EU.
Labour leader Keir Starmer was quick to ‘volunteer’ the working class to make the ‘economic sacrifices’ needed by British capitalism: ‘We will see economic pain… But the British public have always been willing to make sacrifice [sic] to defend democracy on our continent and we will again’. The Conservative government and the Labour Party are united in their defence of British imperialist interests in pursuing the confrontation with Russia. It is the working class and poor who will pay the price. The conflict in Ukraine will only serve to add to the cost of living crisis. In its 17 March statement, the Bank of England predicted inflation will rise by at least 8% by the end of 2022. In April the price cap on energy bills will be raised and it is expected that bills will go up by 54%, with more rises to come as the price cap is lifted again in October.
This is a reactionary war in which imperialist blocs are fighting for supremacy, as the global capitalist crisis forces their backs against the wall. For communists in Britain, our main enemy is at home and our main struggle is against the militarism and drive to war of our own imperialist ruling class.
British troops out of Eastern Europe!
Disband NATO!
No imperialist sanctions!
