#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #WAR #UKRAINE #RUSSIAN #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, UCL AL #326 - Spotlight, Russia-Ukraine: the murderous logic of the imperialist "blocs "(ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Aggressor and invader, it is crucial that Russian imperialism breaks its teeth on

the Ukrainian resistance. And may Putin fall victim to his delusions of grandeur.
But that should not prevent us from recalling that there is a genealogy to this
war, and that the mechanics of inter-imperialist rivalries and capitalist
competition have largely contributed to generating it. ---- Putin was therefore
not bluffing. To the amazement of the whole world, on February 24, he unleashed a
devastating war against Ukraine, the first in Europe since the Kosovo war of
1999. Beyond the necessary solidarity with the Ukrainian people who are enduring
the bombardments, the question arises of the origins of the conflict.

To sum them up, let's go back to Ukraine in November 2004. In this largely
bilingual country, the pro-Russian party won the elections. But the suspicions of
ballot stuffing are such - in Donbass, which voted massively for him, the
participation rate is close to 99% - that the people of kyiv take to the streets.
After several weeks of crisis, a new ballot, under international supervision, is
organized and gives victory to the pro-Europeans. We will speak of this episode
as the "Orange revolution", the color displayed in the huge peaceful
demonstrations that reversed the situation.

Euromaidan: a street victory with a bitter taste
Six years later, new alternation. The pro-European liberals were disappointed:
corruption has not diminished, they have torn among themselves and, above all...
Russia has greatly increased the price of gas. The 2010 election brings the
pro-Russians back to power. This will lead kyiv to abandon a project of
association with the European Union, in favor of a partnership with Russia. This
triggered, in February 2014, a huge wave of protest: "Euromaidan", named after
Maidan Square in Kiev, occupied by the crowd. The clashes with the police last
several days and leave 82 dead and hundreds injured. Under pressure from the
European Union, the president resigns and the pro-Russian party collapses.

Victory of the street then, but victory with a bitter taste for three reasons.
First, it brings back to power very unpopular pro-European liberals ten years
after the Orange revolution. Secondly, the extreme right made a very worrying
breakthrough during Euromaidan, marginalizing extreme left, left and even liberal
forces in the streets. Third, this time, Moscow does not tolerate kyiv's switch
to the EU and goes to war in the pro-Russian regions of Ukraine: in Crimea
(annexed in March 2014) and in Donbass (where two protectorates have been
created, in Donetsk and in Lugansk). The Ukrainian army will try unsuccessfully
to retake Donbass, the fighting with pro-Russian separatists supported by the
Kremlin resulting in more than 13,000 deaths in six years.

Ukrainian soldiers during clashes with pro-Russian separatists over control of
Donetsk airport in 2014
Photo: Sergei Loiko
Peace agreements, signed in Minsk in 2014-2015, will not be respected by any of
the parties and the conflict will continue at low intensity. But Putin's
imperialism exploded anti-Russian sentiment and led to a policy of
"Ukrainization" of the country: the old Soviet statues were torn down, the
streets were renamed, the PC was banned, Ukrainian became the only language of
education. . A memorial law also rehabilitates all the separatists of the past...
including the pro-Nazi supporters of Stepan Bandera in 1941-1944. The far right
then seemed stronger than ever, and the Svoboda party even took part in the
provisional government for a few months.

The 2019 Cleanup Wave Brings Zelensky to Power
Five years later, the economic and political slump is causing a wave of
"clearance". In the 2019 presidential election, pro-Russians and pro-Europeans
are swept away, the far right falls to 1.62%, and it is an outsider, actor
Volodymyr Zelenski, who wins by 73.22% of the vote in the 2 ndround, on an
anti-corruption and appeasement program with Russia. But finally, Zelensky
formalizes Ukraine's candidacy for the EU and NATO. The rest of the story is
known: in the fall of 2021, Vladimir Putin demands that the EU, NATO and kyiv
promise that these memberships will never take place. And mass troops at the
borders. After four months of talks, Moscow declares war.

The whole file on Ukraine

Editorial: Ukraine, mass grave
Russia-Ukraine: The murderous logic of the imperialist "blocks "
Ukraine's libertarian movement in turmoil
Against the war: Iraq 2003-Ukraine 2022: from one invasion to another
Not against the war: campists with their feet in the carpet (of bombs)
Immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops !
War is irreconcilable with feminist values
The original fault of NATO
To justify itself, the Kremlin speaks of a "defensive war" in the face of NATO
expansion. Even if it is a pretext for its own imperialism, there is indeed an
original fault on the part of NATO, which must be underlined: when the Warsaw
Pact was dissolved in 1991, NATO, which had become irrelevant was nevertheless
maintained, giving the impression that the Cold War was continuing. Between 1999
and 2004, 10 Eastern European countries that suffered from Soviet imperialism
joined the alliance, jostling to place themselves under the American umbrella.

The great powers dispute "zones of influence", carry out transactions whose first
victims are the small countries and, in each camp, the peoples. Ukrainian soldier
in the Donbass, in 2015.
Photo: Roman Nikolaev
Russian aggression
In 2002, Moscow refounded a military alliance - the CSTO - with five other states
of the former USSR, to "sanctuarize" what remains of the Russian zone of
influence. This also happened through military interventions: occupation of
Moldova since 1991; two abominable colonial wars in Chechnya (1994-1996, then
1999-2005); protectorate over two regions of Georgia (hence a war in 2008)...

In 2007, at the Munich International Security Conference, Putin publicly
clarified his objective: for the Russian state, it is a question of returning to
a multipolar world, where there would no longer be "a single master, a single
sovereign". The autocrat sees himself as the restorer of "Great Russia" whose
borders correspond to those of the tsars and the USSR. This nostalgia for
"Empire" is ideologically impregnated with a "neo-eurasism"[1]exalting
"traditional values" - religion, patriotism, militarism, patriarchy... - in the
face of a West described as morally decadent.

The imperialist gear
The logic of the "blocks" therefore continues. Admittedly, these blocs are now
all capitalist and of unequal size, with planetary US imperialism and
"neighbourhood" Russian imperialism, but the consequences are the same. The great
powers dispute "zones of influence", "preserves", carry out transactions whose
first victims are the small countries and, in each camp, the peoples. Today it is
the 3 million refugees from Ukraine, the thousands of dead - Ukrainians and
Russians - on the battlefield, the thousands of imprisoned Russian pacifists, the
economic sanctions that hit the poor first , which have repercussions all over
the world.

Since the early 2000s, Ukraine has been a space of inter-imperialist rivalries,
where Russia and the European Union have encouraged and funded their supporters.
It must be said, even if this should not lead to considering that everything that
happens in Ukraine is "fomented from outside", which would amount to denying the
self-activity of Ukrainian political forces. With his war, Putin will undoubtedly
revive NATO. However, the best peace policy would be the joint dissolution of
these military alliances, disarmament and respect for the self-determination of
peoples.

Gabriel (UCL Amiens), with the newspaper commission

To validate

[1] "Eurasia, the "clash of civilizations" Russian version", Le Monde
diplomatique, May 2014.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Russie-Ukraine-la-logique-meurtriere-des-blocs-imperialistes
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