#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, UCADI #157: THE #RUSSIAN #UKRAINE #WAR (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 At first came Biden: things in his country were not going very well . The

pandemic had economically grounded the country and was still raging. The economic
recovery plan was struggling to be approved, rising inflation became more and
more worrying, control over Congress was wavering. The Midterm elections were
approaching and he was in danger of losing them. ---- The international
competitors of the USA seemed in better conditions: Europe seemed to have emerged
better from the pandemic and the outbreaks of infection seemed destined to die
out. The economy was on the way to a possible recovery, thanks to the Ricovery
Fund and seemed on the point of starting a global green transformation of the
European economy that would launch the Union towards a new model of economic
development.
China appeared to be in economic recovery after the pandemic. The USA, withdrew
from Afghanistan, created the Aukus in the Indo-Pacific area, with Great Britain
and Australia, a sort of NATO of the Pacific, in an attempt to contain the
expansion of the Chinese presence, but China seemed to march indomitable towards
the creation of its silk routes, benefiting from globalization to which it had
managed to impose convenient rules and to associate ads with an international
division of labor which was very favorable to its economy.
Latin America was boiling as usual, like a pressure cooker: Venezuela in
stalemate, but with a government hostile to the US, Chile launched towards the
experience of a newfound democracy, Colombia starting its experiment of Campesino
government, while in Brazil, at the starting blocks, Lula was preparing for a
race probably winning the presidency. Meanwhile, China penetrated ever more
deeply into the continent's economy, controlling raw materials and absorbing
agricultural and livestock production, replicating the development cooperation
policy already successfully tested in Africa. India and Japan seemed to emerge,
the first slowly, the second with the usual efficiency, from the pandemic, as did
South Korea and Taiwan, and to relaunch their economies.
The Middle East continued to produce refugees, while a creeping war devoured the
area on the borders of Turkey, a growing military power, engaged in the dream of
rebuilding the Ottoman Empire, from the coasts of North Africa to Central Asia,
while Israel continued to lead. his eternal fight against the Palestinians and
the eternal negotiations on the Iranian nuclear power continued. Silent Russia
went about its business in the Middle East and Africa, offering itself as a
stabilizing guardian of more or less dictatorial regimes. In her shadow, the
oligarchs, integrated into the capitalist system, profited from her enormous wealth.
Then President Biden wondered what his predecessors, naturally democratic, would
have done, and he immediately found an answer: they would have exported the
crisis abroad, perhaps to Europe, which appeared to be the most dangerous
competitor for the USA: from the old continent not there were only signs of a
possible economic revival. but also that of a reinforced internal cohesion. His
economy was based on a low cost of energy, ensured by relations with Russia. Yes,
a dangerous combination: energy and raw materials at an affordable price in
exchange for transformation and placing on the market of consumer products and
gigantic profits for the controllers of the Russian economy which generously
supplied raw materials and energy. A perfect integration, fruit of the thirty
years of peace in Europe (but of wars all over the world) that followed the end
of the Cold War.
Yes, it is true, NATO had taken advantage of it and had placed its missiles
everywhere, in a crown around the Russian military power, which, weak in
economics, however, possessed a military deterrent worthy of opposing that of the
US. For some time now, every attempt by the US has been made to destabilize
Belarus and Ukraine, which together represented the soft underbelly of the
NATO-Russia border. He had tried with Belarus, focusing on the presence of an
unpresentable and decocted dictator, but the holding capacity of his regime had
not been calculated, thanks to the anchoring to the Russian Orthodox Church,
which through its local branch, had retained the institutions and broad strata of
Belarusian society, establishing iron control over a significant part of the
country. All that remained was Ukraine.

Ukraine

Russia had built for Ukraine a model of control similar to the Belarusian one of
control and anchoring in Moscow that hinged on the stabilizing political role of
the Metropolitan of the Moscow Patriarchate in the country, as a majority church,
but had not reckoned with the turbulent world of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, with its
adherence to the West, with the evil arts of the USA, which had been operating in
the country since 1994 to destabilize it, with the possible role of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, financed by the USA, which could balance the
influence of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow giving life to a new pro-Western
Church. And finally, Moscow did not have in Kiev a man in government of the
temperament of the Belarusian dictator, but only frightened homunculi, ready to
flee at every rustle of branches, worried only about getting rich.
Ukraine was therefore considered by Moscow to be a weak state, a non-state.
Proof of this is the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014, which left a real
and bloody war in its wake. The disputed region was that of Donbass, a once
heavily industrialized area that mainly produced coal and steel and equipped with
a significant industrial apparatus of goods destined for the Russian market, but
through industries that are not competitive on the European market. Hence the
deindustrialization and dismantling of a productive apparatus, the result of
investments in the Soviet period and the need of local oligarchs to promote in
Kiev a treaty of association with the Russian market in order to continue selling
their products. This request was rejected by choosing relations with the EU In
other words, Russian interests were linked to those of the wealthy classes of the
area who lived in trade and economic relations with the Russian Federation and
who could not have cultivated the same interests in the EU; to the European
market they preferred a customs union with Russia and the contiguous
Russian-speaking regions.
The mass of maneuver of these interests were the Russian-speaking populations who
feared and fear the loss of their linguistic identity and the industrial workers
of the area who had been able to verify that the loss of the partnership with the
Russians had led to the non-convertibility of the productions of their own
factories and mines, resulting in the closure and loss of jobs. Therefore, the
interests of the people of the Donbass were and are oriented towards the Russian
territory behind them. Those populations then waged a battle for their
independence which cost them 14,000 dead. Always, when nationalistic struggles
develop, the national bourgeoisies take advantage of them, while the bill is paid
by the lower classes.
For 8 years - to everyone's disinterest - the war in the Donbass dragged on,
blocked in trench fighting, conducted more than by the regular Ukrainian army, by
battalions of volunteers, which in the last year has been replaced by the
national guard, in which the battalions of volunteers were absorbed and placed.
But the loss of Crimea and the war in the Donbass have profoundly transformed
Ukraine. The country underwent a profound change during Poroshenko's rule. The
process of unification of the Orthodox Churches asking for autocephaly was
completed, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was formed which obtained the
autocephaly requested by the President of the Republic, as well as by the
prelates of the new Church, sponsored by the United States and the then Secretary
of State Pompeo.
The activities of the International Republican Institute (IRI) created in Kiev in
1994 were thus successful. Almost all of the Institute's funds (estimated at $
50-100 million) come from the US State Department through the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
IRI, despite having its main office in Kiev, also operated outside the capital,
in regions whose communities would not otherwise have been reached by the message
of the West, such as the eastern ones. IRI staff included the most diverse
religious and geographical backgrounds, representing as many as 10 regions of
Ukraine: from Lviv in the west to Luhansk in the east. Until 2015, it had its own
offices in Odessa and Simferopol. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the
opening of the first IRI headquarters in Ukraine,
a special blessing to the Institute, confirming the links between his Church and
the circles of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States and Canada, where the
Patriarch went every year to raise funds.
The IRI, which was no stranger to the events in Maidan Square, so much so that it
was considered the inspirer, subsequently took care of the reorganization and
training of the Ukrainian army with British support, which took place, starting
from 1995, in the base of Yavoriv, near the Polish border. This process of
strengthening the army continued and intensified with the election of the new
President Zelens'kyj, a figure raised by Ivan Bakanov, now head of the "Servant
of the People" party. Executive director since 2013 of "Kvartal 95" and "Studio
Kvartal 95", television production company owned by Igor Kolomojskij, an Israeli
and Cypriot entrepreneur and politician, billionaire, President of the European
Jewish Parliament, co-owner of PrivatBank, owner of FC Dinipro and Jewish News
One, Bakanov since March
2014 to March 2015 he was governor of Dinipropetrov oblast, one of the 24 oblasts
of Ukraine He is considered among the richest people in Ukraine, with an
estimated net worth of 1.8 billion dollars in 2022, he is the financier and main
beneficiary of Zelenskyi's election.

War

To understand the precipitate of the crisis it is necessary to put forward some
considerations, albeit summary, on its class composition of the country, starting
once again from the effects of the Orange Revolution. It should be borne in mind
that in the USSR the economic and social policies to support employment had given
rise to a middle class holding a low middle income, which in the new nation
suffered from growing uncertainty, resulting from the liberalization of the labor
market. In Ukraine these strata of society ended up being represented by a noisy
minority, made up of neo-Nazis and Slavic supremacists, supporters of the idea
that ancient Ukraine was "the cradle of the Aryans". Therefore they have created
paramilitary formations to support the western location of the country.
spontaneous, because it was accompanied by the assistance of NATO, financed by
the US, which they used as sub-agents British military instructors, with the
obvious consent of the Government of that country to militarily train the
nationalist militias.
In January 2019, the operation of granting autocephaly to the Orthodox
denominations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, antagonist of the Moscow
Metropolia, which went on the attack, claiming buildings property and assets of
the pro-Russian Church was successful. Thus, one of the main levers for
influencing government policy in Ukraine from within was missing. In December,
the Ukrainian government passed the law on military chaplains which assigned a
chaplain not only to the units of the regular army, but also to the corps of
volunteers absorbed in the meantime within the national guard as a "motivator".
In this situation, Russia, which in the meantime had organized military maneuvers
on the borders, increasingly alarmed, decided to wage a war of aggression and
invaded Ukraine.

http://www.ucadi.org/2022/03/22/la-guerra-russo-ucraina/
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