War situation update: Putin's war enters fourth week

Link to the original text of China Labor Forum: https://chinaworker.info/zh-hans/2022/03/21/31843/

Telegram link of China Labor Forum: https://t.me/chinaworkerISA

Twitter link of China Labour Forum: https://twitter.com/OctRevolution1 7

If you are interested in subscribing to "Socialist" magazine, please send an email to: chinaworker.isa@gmail.com

Disruption, Negotiations and Economic Turmoil

Per Olsson Socialist Justice Party (ISA Sweden)

The Putin regime's war on Ukraine has entered its fourth week, with casualties continuing to rise. Despite numerous talks and several attempts at mediation, the fighting continued and continued to expand.

The main victims of the war were the people of Ukraine. In Mariupol alone, surrounded by Russian troops, 2,500 civilians were killed. In Kharkiv alone, 600 buildings were reported to have been bombed.

Three million people have been forced to flee Ukraine, half of them children. In addition, 2-3 million refugees are internally displaced.

Ukrainian cities are in ruins and the economy is collapsing. Even before the war, Ukraine was already the second poorest country in Europe due to the catastrophe of the restoration of capitalism, and the country's population was declining rapidly - about 30 percent a year since the restoration of capitalism in the early 1990s. Ten thousand.

Putin's wishful thinking fails

The Putin regime was amazed that the Ukrainian resistance was strong and that the war of aggression had not progressed as the new tsar had expected. Among the 20 largest cities in Ukraine, the Russian army still claims to have occupied Kherson (Kherson), one of them; in addition, protests against the Russian army have also occurred in Kherson. In most areas, Moscow's military made no progress in the last week. Kyiv, Kharkov and various urban areas have been under heavy bombardment and missile attacks. While the Russian Air Force was barely out, Ukraine's air defenses appear to be still intact.

According to the Ukrainian government, Russian missiles hit the Yavoriv base near the Polish border, killing 35 people and injuring 134 others, leaving more It feels like the war is growing. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was only a matter of time before Putin attacked other countries around him. So far, however, the leaders of Western imperialist countries have rejected his request for a no-fly zone. Biden said the establishment of a no-fly zone would mean the outbreak of World War III.

negotiation?

The progress of the fighting could open up the Kremlin to mediation and a "negotiated solution". Zelensky's adviser, Aleksey Arestovich, predicted on Tuesday March 15 that the war would end in two to three weeks or May at the latest. Zelensky himself was the first to express Ukraine's neutrality (one of Russia's demands). He explained that U.S. imperialism and other Western powers have made it clear that Ukraine "cannot join [NATO]. That's the truth and it needs to be recognized."

Currently, Kyiv will not accept Putin's other demands to recognize Crimea and the Donbas region as Russian territory.

For the ruling class, diplomacy and negotiation are a continuation of war, just another way of doing it. In other words, behind the "willingness to negotiate and compromise" is the new map of geopolitics and power relations created by this war. There can be no lasting peace on this basis. Every possible scenario in the future means a continuation of war policy, more attempts at occupation, and continued fragmentation like Bosnia is today.

It can also happen that the two sides can reach an agreement, but it will be treated as scrap paper like the Minsk Agreement of 2014-2015. The Minsk Accords were meant to ensure peace in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, but none of the signatories actually followed through on their promises, so the region has remained a war zone.

Western imperialism responded to the war by increasing military deployments (mainly in the Baltic and Eastern European countries), undertaking the largest arms escalation in decades, and introducing the harshest set of sanctions ever imposed. Western governments have decided to impose a total of about 5,800 sanctions - unprecedented for a single country.

On top of the government's sanctions, more than 330 companies have decided to stop or suspend their operations in Russia, including McDonald's, Ikea, Visa and MasterCard.

Mainly hit by the sanctions are ordinary people in Russia who will lose their jobs and savings, and the country's economy is now collapsing rapidly. The Kremlin's propaganda will paint the sanctions as a war on all Russians, in line with their overarching attempt to justify the war. This has been combined with an intensified crackdown on any anti-war voices, with the authorities passing new laws targeting anti-war "fake news", punishable by three to 15 years in prison. The crackdown has paid off, with fewer protests last Sunday than the week before, despite widespread discontent under the crackdown.

global turning point

The war in Ukraine was a critical turning point in world development. The world order established after the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-1991 has been blown to smithereens. The Guardian concluded on March 12: “There is no doubt that in the violent, turbulent days after February 24, the established international order has been shaken, and in some respects, in an extraordinary, Unexpected and often unpopular ways are subverted."

The Ukraine war was the first war of a new Cold War era in which imperialist and increasingly militarized powers and blocs—Russia, China versus the United States, NATO, and the European Union—came directly against each other.

For China's Xi Jinping dictatorship, the war adds another huge crisis. During Putin's visit to the Beijing Winter Olympics, China announced an "unlimited" partnership with Russia, and now Beijing is pretending to be "neutral". For Western imperialism, sanctions and actions against Russia are also a clear warning to Xi Jinping.

Stagflation

Under the influence of the war, the inflationary shock to the world economy continued to deepen, and global capitalism fell back into stagflation—inflation and growth stagnation. There are similarities to the situation in the 1970s and 1980s, but today it is in the context of a more tense and dangerous world situation. In addition to energy, food prices are also skyrocketing, hitting the neo-colonial countries and the poor hardest.

Ukraine is rich in resources that have been plundered and plundered by corrupt domestic elites, pro-Russian or neo-Western, in recent decades.

The European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, commented in June 2021 that when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized some of the country's super-rich last year, "it was part of an effort to build his own power base and to build bridges with Washington", And added that his actions did not constitute a "real movement" to break the oligarchs' control of the state.

civil defense

Ukrainian workers and poor people have the right to protect themselves. We have seen some scattered reports of bottom-up mass action (partially armed) in Ukraine, which suggests that there are conditions on the ground to form a mass organization independent of the Ukrainian elite, all bourgeois groups and Western The imperialist people's defense forces.

The Ukrainian people have the right to decide their own future, and the prerequisite is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops. But not replaced by NATO forces, nor can Ukraine become a country swallowed by Western imperialism.

The war in Ukraine is a chilling warning that unless the world's workers and poor can unite and fight for a socialist world free from any kind of oppression and violence, all of humanity is at risk.

Only the independent organization and struggle of the workers and the poor can ensure peace and end the imperialist power struggles that have plunged the world into war.

We stand for:

Build working-class anti-war resistance in Ukraine, Russia, and around the world.

Stop the war - Russian troops withdraw immediately.

Against NATO militarism and imperialism.

Support the socialist global struggle - join us as a member of the ISA.