For Charles Michel, president of the European Council, the citizens of
the European Union must be prepared for war and therefore this
bureaucrat, criminal and irresponsible, has dusted off the Roman brocade
"If you want peace, prepare for war" . The first step in this direction
is to convince the European populations that they must mobilize to
defend themselves from the aggressor, a bloody dictator who attacked a
sincerely democratic country: Ukraine. The aggressor country, Russia, is
animated by imperial aspirations, is governed by a dictatorial
government, which wages war on a democratic and liberal country, which
guarantees its citizens the civil liberties typical of Western democracies.
This narrative is false, because if it is true that Russia is governed
by an autocrat who has just been re-elected by plebiscite by a vote
without opponents, it is rigidly controlled and oriented by regime
propaganda and by the fear of reprisals towards dissenting citizens; if
it is true that the troops of this country, during a conflict already
underway since 2014, invaded the territory of Ukraine on 24 February
2021, it is also true that Ukraine is a country that is anything but
democratic, very similar to Russia, in which linguistic, ethnic and
religious minorities are repressed, where liberal democratic freedoms
are denied, where 11 political parties were outlawed before the start of
the war, where militias and right-wing groups are rampant which fuel
religious, ethnic and political hatred; where martial law is in force,
where the President of the Republic operates under a prorogatio regime,
having postponed the elections, despite the fact that his mandate has
expired. In both these countries a profound social inequality divides
the citizens, while the economy of the two countries is completely
controlled by oligarchs who feast on the remains of what was the
socialist state, dividing its spoils; economic and social inequality is
accompanied by the denial of individual rights and civil liberties.
Faced with these facts, there are those who claim that the degeneration
of the liberal state taking place in Ukraine is the result of the war;
that the country was forced to adopt martial law to deal with the
conflict, to postpone elections indefinitely due to the difficulties in
holding them; that in times of war civil liberties, including religious
freedom, are suspended as are the rights of minorities; that in short,
there is an emergency situation that requires special rules. But this is
not the case because Ukraine, already before February 24, 2021, was
governed by an illiberal regime, characterized by the same violations of
rights that we have reported, as it repressed linguistic and ethnic
minorities; a war between no holds barred religious confessions;
right-wing paramilitary formations proliferated and stood out for their
reprisal actions against minorities within the country, proof of which
is that the civil war in Donbass was already underway.
In the name of defending this regime, which is anything but democratic
and liberal, the political leadership of the European Union is bleeding
the resources of the peoples of the Union, engaging them in a proxy war
against Russia which has the sole result of causing massacres the
Ukrainian and Russian populations on the battlefields and to send
thousands of young men and women to their deaths, with the aggravating
circumstance that on the battlefield the peoples of two once brotherly
countries, which have common traditions and origins and that populations
are targeted by bombing without holds barred.
We should also have the honesty to say that while Ukraine has a
population four times smaller than Russia's, with the result that an
entire generation of Ukrainians aged between 19 and 27 (the age of
conscription) is erased from history or dispersed in what remains of the
country, mutilated by horrible wounds as a result of war on the
battlefields and bombings; Russia, on the other hand, which has 144
million inhabitants, can fuel the massacre with an infinitely greater
number of victims recruited largely from the poorest and most
dispossessed sections of the country.
Taking note of this radical imbalance of forces, we are not so cynical
as to wish for the death by proxy of the people of Ukraine or of the
Russian people and faced with the request to take sides in defense of
the interests of the oligarchs of one or the other party, of one state
or the other, we say no to war and we refuse the game of choosing
between "attacked and aggressors". We are convinced that the only truth
regarding Ukraine is that there are two victims of the war: the people
of both countries.
The people defend themselves as best they can
Dragged into war, both the Ukrainian and Russian people defend
themselves as best they can. The Ukrainians, oppressed by the invader
and the bombings, left the country as many as 8 million. Of course, this
first reaction was the result of the need to save themselves, but for
many of them this choice has become consolidated and it is estimated
that as many as 300,000 Ukrainians, potential enlisted soldiers, today
refuse to return to the country, proof of this is that the Ukrainian
government, short of men and women to send to the front, asked the host
countries to forcefully send them back to their homeland, to no avail.
Nor is things better at home, because the Ukrainian government is unable
to pass a law that extends recruitment beyond the age of 27. In an
attempt to recruit troops to send to the front, the Rada restricted
recruitment to twenty-five-year-olds; while in Parliament we are
discussing the army patrols forcibly recruit men and women, to send them
to the front and there are many who, to escape the forced mobilization,
actually live clandestinely in the country, taking advantage of the
difficulties in controlling the territory by the state authorities ,
hampered by the state of war.
Many are those who, for the same reason, resort to corruption and pay
doctors and recruiters to be exempt from being called to arms. Even if
it is little known, the same thing happens in Russia where those who
were able emigrated before the borders were blocked: Russian draft
dodgers are present in Serbia as in the former Soviet Republics of Asia,
in Georgia as in Armenia or they have refugees in the former Soviet
Turkic Republics of Asia.
The incidence of the phenomenon is certainly numerically lower in Russia
than it is in Ukraine due to the fact that there is a huge disproportion
between the mobilizable population in the two countries, but this does
not mean that the populations are so inclined to war.
Attacked and aggressors
In the West, support for Ukraine is usually justified by claiming that
it is the victim of aggression, the result of a clear violation of
international law. This narrative is misleading and only works if you
start narrating the facts starting from the start date of the so-called
"special operation", implemented by Russia, ignoring the fact that the
conflict between the two countries had already started in 2014, with the
secession of the eastern Ukrainian provinces, affected by the shift of
the country's economy to the West and by the crisis of the industrial
and mining sector located in those areas of Ukraine which lived and
prospered thanks to raw materials supplied at political cost by Russia
and had as outlet the market of that country. The sacrifice of the
economy of those territories has therefore fueled the secessionist
tendencies of the populations, increased by attacks by militias and
right-wing political groups, formed mainly in the western areas of the
country. (see neo-Nazi paramilitary formation Azof and similar). In
fact, an important role in the explosion of the conflict was played by
Ukrainian nationalism, strongly supported by that part of the Orthodox
clergy linked to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the
use that the State Department made of this ecclesiastical structure for
the purpose of assuming the control of the countries with an Orthodox
majority in Eastern Europe, removing them from the hegemony exercised by
the Patriarchate of Moscow.[1]
But the Ukrainian crisis exploded above all when Ukrainian nationalism
and its strategies aimed at bringing the country into the European Union
and NATO combined with the efforts to destabilize the European Union
policy undertaken by Great Britain at the time of planning the Brexit
and accentuated after its implementation. The role of English diplomacy
on the one hand in derailing the Minsk agreements and on the other in
the secret and disguised effort to arm Ukraine, training its secret
services and special troops,
especially after 2014 and consequently of the events following the
clashes in Maidan Square, in the US interest in putting the European
economy into crisis, severing its economic and commercial relations with
Russia.
Britain's goals of destabilizing the Russian Euro axis
The implementation of Brexit definitively separated the destinies of
Great Britain from those of continental Europe. From that moment on,
English foreign policy summarized its historical objective as a
priority: to divide continental Europe, to weaken it, so that it could
never and in any case constitute a danger to England, once
from a military point of view, today on the economic and financial plan.
It therefore became a priority to undermine the continental economy,
based at the time on a low cost of energy - gas and oil - the result of
a partnership with Russia which obtained investments in exchange and
effectively became the area's favorite commercial and political partner
continental Europe. Hence the English (and American) aversion to the
entry into operation of Nord Stream 2 which would have allowed supplies
of oil and gas from Russia at low prices, giving high competitiveness to
the goods produced in Europe. It would have been possible to minimize
production costs and reduce energy import costs by avoiding paying
rights of way for oil and gas pipelines in cross-border countries,
giving the North Atlantic gas pipeline operational autonomy at lower
costs. The opportunity to influence this structure is offered by the end
of the political mandate of Angela Merkel, the great protector and
guarantor of these relationships, proof of which is that the Nord Stream
2 terminal on German soil was located not by chance in the lander of
origin of the former prime minister.
Failure to comply with the Minsk agreements, after the second attempt to
implement them, leads Putin to play the card of a punitive invasion,
relying on insufficient knowledge of the political situation which has
evolved in Ukraine in the meantime, underestimating the deep ties
established by both the United and by Great Britain, in concert with the
Ecumenical Patriarchate to strengthen the social and political stability
of Ukrainian nationalism.[2]
The invasion, which resulted in the attempt to take Kiev, implementing a
sort of coup d'état on the model of those of the USSR towards the
satellite countries, the reprisals, the massacres following the failure
of the operation, such as that of Buca, perpetrated in March 2022. did
nothing but strengthen Ukrainian nationalism in the first phase of the
war and fuel the call to arms in defense of the attacked nation.
The unexpected resistance of the Zelensky government led both NATO and
the United States and Great Britain to try the proxy war card. Hence the
growing support in arms and financing for the Ukrainian war and the
commitment of NATO countries in fueling the conflict, always supplying
new weapons to the Ukrainian army, while a careful war propaganda fueled
the idea that Russia could be defeated by the heroic resistance of a
people and fueled the narrative that the defense of Ukraine was
essential to defend the attacked West.
The retreat of the invasion force that had penetrated the country,
headed towards Kiev, was replaced by Russia by a remodulation of the
intervention, calibrated on the defense of Crimea and the annexation of
the secessionist oblasts, moving on a front more than 1000 km long which
starts from Kharkiv and goes all the way to Odessa, while the continuous
bombings hit the country's infrastructure, reducing it to a pile of
rubble, polluting its soil and waters, undermining its territory and
transforming the war into a clash of positions which in two years it
literally destroyed the connective tissue and highlighted the existing
disproportion between the potential of the two contenders.
From a strategic point of view, Russia managed to occupy the coasts of
the Sea of Azov almost reaching the port of Odessa and the Dnieper
estuary and to acquire almost complete control of 4 eastern oblasts.
(Donnes'k, Lugans 'k, Zaporizzja, Kerson) even if the front line is
uncertain and mobile. Ukrainian troops are experiencing great
difficulties due to the shortage of ammunition, the inferiority of the
troops to be deployed, the lack of air cover.
On the Western side, the only ones to have achieved their objectives are
the British and their allies who, using the Ukrainian secret services,
their own teams of trained saboteurs, managed to blow up Nord Stream 2
and order its abandonment. The sanctions launched against Russia as acts
of retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine have almost eliminated
imports of oil and gas from Russia, redirecting European supplies to
other areas of the world and making US-produced liquefied gas
competitive towards which many European countries have been forced to
orient themselves towards, having to accept the higher cost of the product.
The European economy has had to bear the effects of this restructuring
of production costs and that of support for the Ukrainian war, caused by
the flow of migrants due to the war, the cost of the weapons needed for
the conflict, the maintenance of the Ukrainian state, in fact failed,
with the result of having to give up a large part of the green projects
for its economy, the entry into technical recession of the most
economically advanced country, Germany, the adoption of a general policy
of rearmament and the increase of military spending, a very violent
crisis of the
common agricultural policy which constitutes the sector destined to pay
the price of Ukraine's accession to the European Union.
The internal front
After 26 months of war the situation on the ground now seems to have
reached a turning point. The war cost more than a million dead and
wounded; the civilian victims on both sides are difficult to calculate;
it transformed from a war of movement into trench warfare. However,
while Russia continues to mobilize new troops and pour them onto the
battlefield, Ukraine is now short of human resources and the call to
arms of the population aged 19 to 25 sees a strong resistance to the
draft and a growing refusal to accept the compulsory conscription, the
growth of deserters, the refusal of those who are expatriates to return
to the country to fight.
The state of war, the imposition of martial law, the growth of hatred
and resentment, the intersection with the mobilization against Russia of
the war between the different religious confessions of the country, the
phenomena of corruption, of hoarding of war profits , the growing hatred
between different ethnic groups and linguistic groups which now involves
both Hungarian-speaking and Romanian-speaking and Romanian-speaking
populations, not to mention the persistent presence of Russian-speaking
populations, undermines the Ukrainian resistance from within.[3]
The only results that the Zelensky government can boast of having
achieved concern the promise of accelerated membership, without
conditions and without any respect for the parameters established by the
Treaties of entry into the European community and NATO, the prospect of
being able to burden the costs of rebuilding the country on
international investors and on Europe, considering the fact that it is
unthinkable that Russia would shoulder the war damages; the advantage of
having continuous financing available to support an economy which is
having increasing difficulty in recovery and development, also in
consideration of the destruction of the country's agricultural and
industrial fabric, its pollution, the huge presence of war ordnance
throughout the its territory, also in the face of a growing decrease in
the country's population. One of the sure effects of this war is in fact
a disastrous and unbridgeable demographic crisis of the Ukrainian
population which has seen the fertile classes of its population perish
on the battlefields.
All this happens while the Russian aggressor is strengthening itself,
mobilizing a further 150,000 men, even if partly destined to deal with
the expansion of the borders with NATO countries, while the Russian arms
industry has now come fully into operation, working on three 8-hour
shifts for 24 hours and producing new armaments, to the point that the
arsenal that the country possessed before the start of operations in
Ukraine has been completely or almost completely replaced by new weapons
produced in these two years, the use of which, tested on the
battlefield, has seen its destructive effectiveness grow, as for example
it happened with flying bombs.
Despite the West's decisions to proceed with rearmament and the
conversion of its industries into armaments production, the time
required to implement this reconversion requires prolonging the conflict
for another two years. In Western circles - where there is every
intention of continuing the slaughter - it is thought to achieve this
objective through the supply of a substantial number of F 16 fighter
planes to Ukraine which should enter the line to coincide with the
offensive Russian spring.
The results of a possible air battle, however, will not be able to
change the final outcome of the war and this is not because Russia
ultimately retains the option of being able to use tactical nuclear
weapons, but because the mobilization times and the forces that two
sides are able to put on the battlefield are so proportionate that they
cannot bear comparison in the long run. If nothing else, this is the
main reason that requires the search for peace and the need for
discussion on the basis of a credible negotiation that takes into
account mutual interests in the field and
above all that does not sacrifice the two peoples induced to go to war.
Our position on the Ukrainian war
Our aversion to war does not arise only from the profound conviction
that it serves the dominant classes to push the subordinate classes to
massacre each other in the name of the interests of all those who profit
from the war. Therefore, in analyzing the reasons and causes of
conflicts we are inclined to investigate their economic and social
causes, regardless of an abstract respect for the rules of international
law which should regulate relations between peoples. It is for this
reason that we consider the Ukrainian one one of the 60 conflicts
currently underway in the world, as part of that ongoing war between the
great powers to reach a new structure of economic relations between the
different areas of the planet, and therefore we avoid falling into the
trap of ethical and moral evaluations, before looking at the facts and
interests that this clash implies. We are far from belonging to the
supporters of the West and of the so-called democratic-liberal system as
well as those belonging to autocratic systems, and we have as our
guiding star the interest of the people, their well-being, the
aspiration for freedom and peace and to mutual coexistence, without
destroying the environment and the planet.
For this reason we affirm that the ongoing war between Ukraine and
Russia has deep and complex economic reasons which concern both the
autocrats and oligarchs of the two countries engaged in competing for
control of the economy and raw materials of Ukraine and Russia and
reasons and interests of an international strategic nature concerning
the balance between the different economic areas of the planet. It is
therefore that, moving from the point of view of citizens who live in
the European area, we believe that it is in the interest of the peoples
of the whole of Europe to decide whether to organize their economy
having as a reference development axis a relationship between the
European area and the Russia, as happened before the Ukraine crisis, or
look at a relationship along the north-south axis and maintain an
economic and social partnership with Africa.
We therefore consider the defense of liberal democracy even less than a
fig leaf behind which the West hides to defend economic and power
interests and at the same time we give a severe judgment and we strongly
oppose the ethical and moral reasons of which Both Putin and his state
chaplain Kjrill are the bearers, who - incidentally - are not unlike
those supported by the self-styled Patriarch Epiphanius of the Ukrainian
schismatic Church and by the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew
himself, allies of the West. We have no no preference and no sympathy
for this or that priest whose rapacity and interests aimed at possessing
spiritual and material power we do not want to defend, as the
expropriations, by the State, of ecclesiastical assets currently
underway in Ukraine, demonstrate. A profound contempt pushes us to
forcefully reject the plots of these jackals who feast on the dead of
both sides, cloaking themselves in values that in reality mask material
interests and the exercise of power.
We have no interest in justifying the role and function of the foolish
Stoltenberg, eternal secretary of a criminal military organization which
has studded its inglorious history with repeated interventions in the
most varied countries (Afganistan, Iraq, etc.), having the sole ability
to lose wars and to massacre their own and enemy soldiers, committing
atrocious war crimes, following logic and using methods that are nothing
different from those of Russian mercenary companies such as Wagner.
No moral judgment therefore on the reasons for this war, no surrender
disguised behind the defense of ideal values, be they of the West or of
liberal democracy, but a comparison on the basis of considerations of
mere strategic and economic interest which must be evaluated taking into
account when they are compatible with the maintenance of peace and
respect for other peoples, called to a common struggle for liberation
from the exploitation of man by man and for the construction of a
society of free and equal people that abolishes exploitation and allows
everyone has equal access to the good things in life.
We are firmly convinced that the only war that is right to fight is the
class war against the capitalists and exploiting bosses, whether they
disguise themselves as rich and liberal entrepreneurs or as oligarchs
serving this or that dictator, who claim to act in the name of the
people or of freedom of enterprise, whether they are agents of a state
or of an autocratic regime. We know that a clear understanding of what
is happening in the international political framework is one of the
starting points for a coherent and rational vision of the relationships
between classes and the necessary prerequisite from which to move to
guide our political action.
[1]G. Cimbalo, The evolution of relations between State and Churches in
New Ukraine . In search of Autocephaly in "Law and Religions" 2-2020,
pp. 252-304, https://www.giovannicimbalo.it
[2]G. Cimbalo, ID., The unspoken role of the Churches in the
Russian-Ukrainian conflict , in "Law and religions" n. 2 of 2021, pp.
487-512.
[3]The collapse of the internal front in Ukraine , Newsletter Crescita
Politica, n. 180, 2023; Two considerations on Ukraine , Political Growth
Newsletter, n. 176, 2023; The failures of the Ukrainian war , Newsletter
Crescita Politica, n. 170, 2023; The economic causes of the Ukrainian
war , Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 160, 2023; War in Ukraine: the
British trail , Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 158, 2022; Zelesky's
Ukraine before Putin , Political Growth Newsletter, n. 158, 2022; The
beggar and the dictator , Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 183, 2024.
GL
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/04/25/putin-e-zelensky-per-noi-pari-sono/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
the European Union must be prepared for war and therefore this
bureaucrat, criminal and irresponsible, has dusted off the Roman brocade
"If you want peace, prepare for war" . The first step in this direction
is to convince the European populations that they must mobilize to
defend themselves from the aggressor, a bloody dictator who attacked a
sincerely democratic country: Ukraine. The aggressor country, Russia, is
animated by imperial aspirations, is governed by a dictatorial
government, which wages war on a democratic and liberal country, which
guarantees its citizens the civil liberties typical of Western democracies.
This narrative is false, because if it is true that Russia is governed
by an autocrat who has just been re-elected by plebiscite by a vote
without opponents, it is rigidly controlled and oriented by regime
propaganda and by the fear of reprisals towards dissenting citizens; if
it is true that the troops of this country, during a conflict already
underway since 2014, invaded the territory of Ukraine on 24 February
2021, it is also true that Ukraine is a country that is anything but
democratic, very similar to Russia, in which linguistic, ethnic and
religious minorities are repressed, where liberal democratic freedoms
are denied, where 11 political parties were outlawed before the start of
the war, where militias and right-wing groups are rampant which fuel
religious, ethnic and political hatred; where martial law is in force,
where the President of the Republic operates under a prorogatio regime,
having postponed the elections, despite the fact that his mandate has
expired. In both these countries a profound social inequality divides
the citizens, while the economy of the two countries is completely
controlled by oligarchs who feast on the remains of what was the
socialist state, dividing its spoils; economic and social inequality is
accompanied by the denial of individual rights and civil liberties.
Faced with these facts, there are those who claim that the degeneration
of the liberal state taking place in Ukraine is the result of the war;
that the country was forced to adopt martial law to deal with the
conflict, to postpone elections indefinitely due to the difficulties in
holding them; that in times of war civil liberties, including religious
freedom, are suspended as are the rights of minorities; that in short,
there is an emergency situation that requires special rules. But this is
not the case because Ukraine, already before February 24, 2021, was
governed by an illiberal regime, characterized by the same violations of
rights that we have reported, as it repressed linguistic and ethnic
minorities; a war between no holds barred religious confessions;
right-wing paramilitary formations proliferated and stood out for their
reprisal actions against minorities within the country, proof of which
is that the civil war in Donbass was already underway.
In the name of defending this regime, which is anything but democratic
and liberal, the political leadership of the European Union is bleeding
the resources of the peoples of the Union, engaging them in a proxy war
against Russia which has the sole result of causing massacres the
Ukrainian and Russian populations on the battlefields and to send
thousands of young men and women to their deaths, with the aggravating
circumstance that on the battlefield the peoples of two once brotherly
countries, which have common traditions and origins and that populations
are targeted by bombing without holds barred.
We should also have the honesty to say that while Ukraine has a
population four times smaller than Russia's, with the result that an
entire generation of Ukrainians aged between 19 and 27 (the age of
conscription) is erased from history or dispersed in what remains of the
country, mutilated by horrible wounds as a result of war on the
battlefields and bombings; Russia, on the other hand, which has 144
million inhabitants, can fuel the massacre with an infinitely greater
number of victims recruited largely from the poorest and most
dispossessed sections of the country.
Taking note of this radical imbalance of forces, we are not so cynical
as to wish for the death by proxy of the people of Ukraine or of the
Russian people and faced with the request to take sides in defense of
the interests of the oligarchs of one or the other party, of one state
or the other, we say no to war and we refuse the game of choosing
between "attacked and aggressors". We are convinced that the only truth
regarding Ukraine is that there are two victims of the war: the people
of both countries.
The people defend themselves as best they can
Dragged into war, both the Ukrainian and Russian people defend
themselves as best they can. The Ukrainians, oppressed by the invader
and the bombings, left the country as many as 8 million. Of course, this
first reaction was the result of the need to save themselves, but for
many of them this choice has become consolidated and it is estimated
that as many as 300,000 Ukrainians, potential enlisted soldiers, today
refuse to return to the country, proof of this is that the Ukrainian
government, short of men and women to send to the front, asked the host
countries to forcefully send them back to their homeland, to no avail.
Nor is things better at home, because the Ukrainian government is unable
to pass a law that extends recruitment beyond the age of 27. In an
attempt to recruit troops to send to the front, the Rada restricted
recruitment to twenty-five-year-olds; while in Parliament we are
discussing the army patrols forcibly recruit men and women, to send them
to the front and there are many who, to escape the forced mobilization,
actually live clandestinely in the country, taking advantage of the
difficulties in controlling the territory by the state authorities ,
hampered by the state of war.
Many are those who, for the same reason, resort to corruption and pay
doctors and recruiters to be exempt from being called to arms. Even if
it is little known, the same thing happens in Russia where those who
were able emigrated before the borders were blocked: Russian draft
dodgers are present in Serbia as in the former Soviet Republics of Asia,
in Georgia as in Armenia or they have refugees in the former Soviet
Turkic Republics of Asia.
The incidence of the phenomenon is certainly numerically lower in Russia
than it is in Ukraine due to the fact that there is a huge disproportion
between the mobilizable population in the two countries, but this does
not mean that the populations are so inclined to war.
Attacked and aggressors
In the West, support for Ukraine is usually justified by claiming that
it is the victim of aggression, the result of a clear violation of
international law. This narrative is misleading and only works if you
start narrating the facts starting from the start date of the so-called
"special operation", implemented by Russia, ignoring the fact that the
conflict between the two countries had already started in 2014, with the
secession of the eastern Ukrainian provinces, affected by the shift of
the country's economy to the West and by the crisis of the industrial
and mining sector located in those areas of Ukraine which lived and
prospered thanks to raw materials supplied at political cost by Russia
and had as outlet the market of that country. The sacrifice of the
economy of those territories has therefore fueled the secessionist
tendencies of the populations, increased by attacks by militias and
right-wing political groups, formed mainly in the western areas of the
country. (see neo-Nazi paramilitary formation Azof and similar). In
fact, an important role in the explosion of the conflict was played by
Ukrainian nationalism, strongly supported by that part of the Orthodox
clergy linked to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the
use that the State Department made of this ecclesiastical structure for
the purpose of assuming the control of the countries with an Orthodox
majority in Eastern Europe, removing them from the hegemony exercised by
the Patriarchate of Moscow.[1]
But the Ukrainian crisis exploded above all when Ukrainian nationalism
and its strategies aimed at bringing the country into the European Union
and NATO combined with the efforts to destabilize the European Union
policy undertaken by Great Britain at the time of planning the Brexit
and accentuated after its implementation. The role of English diplomacy
on the one hand in derailing the Minsk agreements and on the other in
the secret and disguised effort to arm Ukraine, training its secret
services and special troops,
especially after 2014 and consequently of the events following the
clashes in Maidan Square, in the US interest in putting the European
economy into crisis, severing its economic and commercial relations with
Russia.
Britain's goals of destabilizing the Russian Euro axis
The implementation of Brexit definitively separated the destinies of
Great Britain from those of continental Europe. From that moment on,
English foreign policy summarized its historical objective as a
priority: to divide continental Europe, to weaken it, so that it could
never and in any case constitute a danger to England, once
from a military point of view, today on the economic and financial plan.
It therefore became a priority to undermine the continental economy,
based at the time on a low cost of energy - gas and oil - the result of
a partnership with Russia which obtained investments in exchange and
effectively became the area's favorite commercial and political partner
continental Europe. Hence the English (and American) aversion to the
entry into operation of Nord Stream 2 which would have allowed supplies
of oil and gas from Russia at low prices, giving high competitiveness to
the goods produced in Europe. It would have been possible to minimize
production costs and reduce energy import costs by avoiding paying
rights of way for oil and gas pipelines in cross-border countries,
giving the North Atlantic gas pipeline operational autonomy at lower
costs. The opportunity to influence this structure is offered by the end
of the political mandate of Angela Merkel, the great protector and
guarantor of these relationships, proof of which is that the Nord Stream
2 terminal on German soil was located not by chance in the lander of
origin of the former prime minister.
Failure to comply with the Minsk agreements, after the second attempt to
implement them, leads Putin to play the card of a punitive invasion,
relying on insufficient knowledge of the political situation which has
evolved in Ukraine in the meantime, underestimating the deep ties
established by both the United and by Great Britain, in concert with the
Ecumenical Patriarchate to strengthen the social and political stability
of Ukrainian nationalism.[2]
The invasion, which resulted in the attempt to take Kiev, implementing a
sort of coup d'état on the model of those of the USSR towards the
satellite countries, the reprisals, the massacres following the failure
of the operation, such as that of Buca, perpetrated in March 2022. did
nothing but strengthen Ukrainian nationalism in the first phase of the
war and fuel the call to arms in defense of the attacked nation.
The unexpected resistance of the Zelensky government led both NATO and
the United States and Great Britain to try the proxy war card. Hence the
growing support in arms and financing for the Ukrainian war and the
commitment of NATO countries in fueling the conflict, always supplying
new weapons to the Ukrainian army, while a careful war propaganda fueled
the idea that Russia could be defeated by the heroic resistance of a
people and fueled the narrative that the defense of Ukraine was
essential to defend the attacked West.
The retreat of the invasion force that had penetrated the country,
headed towards Kiev, was replaced by Russia by a remodulation of the
intervention, calibrated on the defense of Crimea and the annexation of
the secessionist oblasts, moving on a front more than 1000 km long which
starts from Kharkiv and goes all the way to Odessa, while the continuous
bombings hit the country's infrastructure, reducing it to a pile of
rubble, polluting its soil and waters, undermining its territory and
transforming the war into a clash of positions which in two years it
literally destroyed the connective tissue and highlighted the existing
disproportion between the potential of the two contenders.
From a strategic point of view, Russia managed to occupy the coasts of
the Sea of Azov almost reaching the port of Odessa and the Dnieper
estuary and to acquire almost complete control of 4 eastern oblasts.
(Donnes'k, Lugans 'k, Zaporizzja, Kerson) even if the front line is
uncertain and mobile. Ukrainian troops are experiencing great
difficulties due to the shortage of ammunition, the inferiority of the
troops to be deployed, the lack of air cover.
On the Western side, the only ones to have achieved their objectives are
the British and their allies who, using the Ukrainian secret services,
their own teams of trained saboteurs, managed to blow up Nord Stream 2
and order its abandonment. The sanctions launched against Russia as acts
of retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine have almost eliminated
imports of oil and gas from Russia, redirecting European supplies to
other areas of the world and making US-produced liquefied gas
competitive towards which many European countries have been forced to
orient themselves towards, having to accept the higher cost of the product.
The European economy has had to bear the effects of this restructuring
of production costs and that of support for the Ukrainian war, caused by
the flow of migrants due to the war, the cost of the weapons needed for
the conflict, the maintenance of the Ukrainian state, in fact failed,
with the result of having to give up a large part of the green projects
for its economy, the entry into technical recession of the most
economically advanced country, Germany, the adoption of a general policy
of rearmament and the increase of military spending, a very violent
crisis of the
common agricultural policy which constitutes the sector destined to pay
the price of Ukraine's accession to the European Union.
The internal front
After 26 months of war the situation on the ground now seems to have
reached a turning point. The war cost more than a million dead and
wounded; the civilian victims on both sides are difficult to calculate;
it transformed from a war of movement into trench warfare. However,
while Russia continues to mobilize new troops and pour them onto the
battlefield, Ukraine is now short of human resources and the call to
arms of the population aged 19 to 25 sees a strong resistance to the
draft and a growing refusal to accept the compulsory conscription, the
growth of deserters, the refusal of those who are expatriates to return
to the country to fight.
The state of war, the imposition of martial law, the growth of hatred
and resentment, the intersection with the mobilization against Russia of
the war between the different religious confessions of the country, the
phenomena of corruption, of hoarding of war profits , the growing hatred
between different ethnic groups and linguistic groups which now involves
both Hungarian-speaking and Romanian-speaking and Romanian-speaking
populations, not to mention the persistent presence of Russian-speaking
populations, undermines the Ukrainian resistance from within.[3]
The only results that the Zelensky government can boast of having
achieved concern the promise of accelerated membership, without
conditions and without any respect for the parameters established by the
Treaties of entry into the European community and NATO, the prospect of
being able to burden the costs of rebuilding the country on
international investors and on Europe, considering the fact that it is
unthinkable that Russia would shoulder the war damages; the advantage of
having continuous financing available to support an economy which is
having increasing difficulty in recovery and development, also in
consideration of the destruction of the country's agricultural and
industrial fabric, its pollution, the huge presence of war ordnance
throughout the its territory, also in the face of a growing decrease in
the country's population. One of the sure effects of this war is in fact
a disastrous and unbridgeable demographic crisis of the Ukrainian
population which has seen the fertile classes of its population perish
on the battlefields.
All this happens while the Russian aggressor is strengthening itself,
mobilizing a further 150,000 men, even if partly destined to deal with
the expansion of the borders with NATO countries, while the Russian arms
industry has now come fully into operation, working on three 8-hour
shifts for 24 hours and producing new armaments, to the point that the
arsenal that the country possessed before the start of operations in
Ukraine has been completely or almost completely replaced by new weapons
produced in these two years, the use of which, tested on the
battlefield, has seen its destructive effectiveness grow, as for example
it happened with flying bombs.
Despite the West's decisions to proceed with rearmament and the
conversion of its industries into armaments production, the time
required to implement this reconversion requires prolonging the conflict
for another two years. In Western circles - where there is every
intention of continuing the slaughter - it is thought to achieve this
objective through the supply of a substantial number of F 16 fighter
planes to Ukraine which should enter the line to coincide with the
offensive Russian spring.
The results of a possible air battle, however, will not be able to
change the final outcome of the war and this is not because Russia
ultimately retains the option of being able to use tactical nuclear
weapons, but because the mobilization times and the forces that two
sides are able to put on the battlefield are so proportionate that they
cannot bear comparison in the long run. If nothing else, this is the
main reason that requires the search for peace and the need for
discussion on the basis of a credible negotiation that takes into
account mutual interests in the field and
above all that does not sacrifice the two peoples induced to go to war.
Our position on the Ukrainian war
Our aversion to war does not arise only from the profound conviction
that it serves the dominant classes to push the subordinate classes to
massacre each other in the name of the interests of all those who profit
from the war. Therefore, in analyzing the reasons and causes of
conflicts we are inclined to investigate their economic and social
causes, regardless of an abstract respect for the rules of international
law which should regulate relations between peoples. It is for this
reason that we consider the Ukrainian one one of the 60 conflicts
currently underway in the world, as part of that ongoing war between the
great powers to reach a new structure of economic relations between the
different areas of the planet, and therefore we avoid falling into the
trap of ethical and moral evaluations, before looking at the facts and
interests that this clash implies. We are far from belonging to the
supporters of the West and of the so-called democratic-liberal system as
well as those belonging to autocratic systems, and we have as our
guiding star the interest of the people, their well-being, the
aspiration for freedom and peace and to mutual coexistence, without
destroying the environment and the planet.
For this reason we affirm that the ongoing war between Ukraine and
Russia has deep and complex economic reasons which concern both the
autocrats and oligarchs of the two countries engaged in competing for
control of the economy and raw materials of Ukraine and Russia and
reasons and interests of an international strategic nature concerning
the balance between the different economic areas of the planet. It is
therefore that, moving from the point of view of citizens who live in
the European area, we believe that it is in the interest of the peoples
of the whole of Europe to decide whether to organize their economy
having as a reference development axis a relationship between the
European area and the Russia, as happened before the Ukraine crisis, or
look at a relationship along the north-south axis and maintain an
economic and social partnership with Africa.
We therefore consider the defense of liberal democracy even less than a
fig leaf behind which the West hides to defend economic and power
interests and at the same time we give a severe judgment and we strongly
oppose the ethical and moral reasons of which Both Putin and his state
chaplain Kjrill are the bearers, who - incidentally - are not unlike
those supported by the self-styled Patriarch Epiphanius of the Ukrainian
schismatic Church and by the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew
himself, allies of the West. We have no no preference and no sympathy
for this or that priest whose rapacity and interests aimed at possessing
spiritual and material power we do not want to defend, as the
expropriations, by the State, of ecclesiastical assets currently
underway in Ukraine, demonstrate. A profound contempt pushes us to
forcefully reject the plots of these jackals who feast on the dead of
both sides, cloaking themselves in values that in reality mask material
interests and the exercise of power.
We have no interest in justifying the role and function of the foolish
Stoltenberg, eternal secretary of a criminal military organization which
has studded its inglorious history with repeated interventions in the
most varied countries (Afganistan, Iraq, etc.), having the sole ability
to lose wars and to massacre their own and enemy soldiers, committing
atrocious war crimes, following logic and using methods that are nothing
different from those of Russian mercenary companies such as Wagner.
No moral judgment therefore on the reasons for this war, no surrender
disguised behind the defense of ideal values, be they of the West or of
liberal democracy, but a comparison on the basis of considerations of
mere strategic and economic interest which must be evaluated taking into
account when they are compatible with the maintenance of peace and
respect for other peoples, called to a common struggle for liberation
from the exploitation of man by man and for the construction of a
society of free and equal people that abolishes exploitation and allows
everyone has equal access to the good things in life.
We are firmly convinced that the only war that is right to fight is the
class war against the capitalists and exploiting bosses, whether they
disguise themselves as rich and liberal entrepreneurs or as oligarchs
serving this or that dictator, who claim to act in the name of the
people or of freedom of enterprise, whether they are agents of a state
or of an autocratic regime. We know that a clear understanding of what
is happening in the international political framework is one of the
starting points for a coherent and rational vision of the relationships
between classes and the necessary prerequisite from which to move to
guide our political action.
[1]G. Cimbalo, The evolution of relations between State and Churches in
New Ukraine . In search of Autocephaly in "Law and Religions" 2-2020,
pp. 252-304, https://www.giovannicimbalo.it
[2]G. Cimbalo, ID., The unspoken role of the Churches in the
Russian-Ukrainian conflict , in "Law and religions" n. 2 of 2021, pp.
487-512.
[3]The collapse of the internal front in Ukraine , Newsletter Crescita
Politica, n. 180, 2023; Two considerations on Ukraine , Political Growth
Newsletter, n. 176, 2023; The failures of the Ukrainian war , Newsletter
Crescita Politica, n. 170, 2023; The economic causes of the Ukrainian
war , Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 160, 2023; War in Ukraine: the
British trail , Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 158, 2022; Zelesky's
Ukraine before Putin , Political Growth Newsletter, n. 158, 2022; The
beggar and the dictator , Newsletter Crescita Politica, n. 183, 2024.
GL
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/04/25/putin-e-zelensky-per-noi-pari-sono/
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