
by Marco Pondrelli
Those who wanted to delve deeper into the real causes of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict without stopping at the truths of the mainstream media could draw on many sources, ignored by those who continue to live in the belief that the only responsibility for this war is attributable to Putin. It is useless to suggest to these people to read Angela Merkel’s biography, from which all the American responsibilities emerge. For Merkel, the decision taken in Bucharest in 2008 to open the doors of NATO to Georgia and Ukraine was a declaration of war on Russia. We have no doubt that Merkel will soon end up on the list of ‘Putin supporters’, after all ‘there is none so deaf as he who will not hear’.
As for the war front, the further escalation imposed by Biden does not seem to have led to a decisive turning point. The ATACMS missiles have not given much proof of themselves so far and have been shot down by Russian defenses, in any case the damage that these weapons can inflict on Russia does not have the possibility of strategically modifying the conflict. The Russian bases that have a relevant role in directing the special operation are outside the range of these missiles, the move seems more designed to slow down the Russian advance (also resorting to the use of mines) rather than to change the inertia of the conflict.
The political factor in this case is more important than the military one. The personnel that allows the use of these weapons are American and British. As always, the West lives on its double truths: if the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea intervenes alongside Moscow, it is widening the conflict; if the West intervenes, everything is fine. The new type of missile launched by the Russian army, of which the United States was unaware, is a political message that Russia is sending to the West. Putin went so far as to say that in the future the enemy will be warned of the use of these missiles in order to save civilians, this is because the missile is considered uninterceptable. This act by Russia is a clear warning to the West: whoever decides to go to war becomes a legitimate target.
In this context of Russian advance and great Ukrainian weakness whose internal front is increasingly weak, Zelensky declared that the return of Crimea could be obtained through diplomatic means. Without going into the merits of a meaningless statement, the impression one gets is that the Ukrainian President understands that the war is lost and that the Ukrainians no longer want to die.
Trump will hardly be able to keep his promise to end the conflict before taking office in January. The US strategy in the coming years will see a strategic relocation in the Indo-Pacific area, as written in official US documents the strategic danger for Washington is China, because it is Beijing that is threatening the economic and political primacy of the US. This will probably, but only reality will validate or deny this hypothesis, lead the new US President to try to ‘outsource’ the conflict to European states. In his report Mario Draghi talks about the need to consider energy alternatives to Russian ones, because in the long term he sees a prolonged conflict with Moscow. A prolonged conflict, not necessarily high intensity, would allow the US to consolidate the strategic objective of this war, detaching Russia from Europe.
If these considerations are correct, we must expect a period of permanent war, which will be paid for by the working class. Those who, even from the opposition, babble about public health, schools and other such amenities must understand that you cannot pay to fight a war and at the same time relaunch the welfare state. Class struggle and the fight against US imperialism must be the battle that communists and the left must fight at this time.
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