wsws

EU powers endorse NATO war threats against Russia as Macron visits Ukraine
Alex Lantier, WSWS, Feb 9 2022

Territorial Defense Forces train in a park in Kyiv, Jan 22 2022. (Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Yesterday, as Macron and Baerbock visited Ukraine, key EU powers endorsed the demands Washington is placing on Russia in the Ukraine crisis. The statements of Macron and Baerbock, and more broadly the entire US-led war drive against Russia over Ukraine, are based on a political lie. Even after Zelensky and Kuleba declared that Russia is not preparing to invade Ukraine, Washington and its European allies claim they are intervening in an urgent and desperate attempt to defend Ukraine from Russian invasion. This absurd pretense was maintained in all Macron’s and Baerbock’s statements in Ukraine. Macron, whose government holds the rotating presidency of the EU, gave a joint press conference with Zelensky in Kiev. After Zelensky briefly greeted Macron and thanked the EU for €1.2b in economic aid, Macron launched into a long tirade, applauding the fascist-led putsch that brought the current Ukrainian regime to power amid the Maidan protests in 2014, and endorsing NATO’s hard-line demands against Russia. He said:

Since the Maidan revolution in 2013-2014, Ukraine has chosen the path of reform and democracy. This choice was made by the Ukrainian people, which mobilized for this goal. This path is one on which there is no turning back. I want to pay homage to the Maidan protesters and the thousands of soldiers who have died on the front since 2014 to defend their homeland. They were fighting for Ukraine. I want to avoid all forms of simplification sometimes used by foreign forces in the interests of destabilization.

Macron built his argument for the lies of the US-led war drive against Russia on a falsification of the politics of the Maidan putsch. The fighters that have died for the Kiev regime in eastern Ukraine were not Ukrainian army soldiers fighting foreign enemies, but members of far-right Ukrainian nationalist militias attacking Russian-speaking Ukrainian civilians. These units, such as the Azov Battalion, emerged from far-right street-fighting groups like the Right Sector that led the 2014 putsch in Kiev. Macron’s statements amounted to a remarkable public endorsement by the French head of state and the EU presidency of far-right racist groups. The Azov Battalion’s fascistic politics and ties to neo-Nazi organizations internationally are so widely documented that in 2019 they were acknowledged even by the FBI. It issued a report detailing the links of the US neo-Nazi Rise Above Movement with the Azov Battalion and one of its leaders, Olena Semenyaka.

A day before meeting Zelensky, Macron had met Putin, who bluntly warned Macron against letting the Ukrainian regime into NATO. Putin noted that if Ukraine joined NATO, an attack by far-right Ukrainian militias on Russian-speaking regions that broke away from Kiev’s authority, such as the Crimean peninsula, could then drag the entire alliance, including America and Europe, into a war with Russia. Macron thrust this aside, endorsing the Kiev regime’s fascistic militias as embodying the will of Ukraine. Calling for “broad, aggressive, innovative dialog” with Russia, he demanded the “return of separatist territory of Donetsk and Lugansk” to Kiev and the “protection of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock toured the Kiev regime’s front lines in eastern Ukraine, wearing a bulletproof vest and a steel helmet. There, this leading member of the Green Party proclaimed her solidarity with the far-right groups on the front lines, declaring:

I want to send a clear signal here. We, all together as Europeans, are not looking the other way. We do not forget the people whose fate is being decided in this conflict. And we stand on the side of Ukraine.

Though she was accompanied by Kuleba, who has stated that there is currently no threat of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Baerbock spoke throughout as if Germany was allying with Ukraine against an urgent danger of Russian invasion. Baerbock claimed:

We cannot solve this aggression by the Russian side militarily. Each further aggression will have massive consequences for the Russian side.

Baerbock’s comments were echoed at a final meeting late yesterday of Scholz, Macron, and Duda in Berlin. While Duda claimed that the military situation was the worst since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, denouncing an “unprecedented concentration of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border,” Scholz claimed:

Russian invasion plans are extremely concerning. Our common goal is to prevent a war in Europe.

This is a pack of lies. The EU powers are not trying to prevent war, but echoing the war propaganda promoted by Washington. The question posed by the fraudulent pretenses of Macron, Baerbock, Duda, and Scholz is: why are the European governments lying? The whipping up of a war hysteria against Russia is closely bound up with internal class tensions. Amid mounting social anger and growing strikes against high costs of living, the NATO powers are working to divert class conflict into war fever. The NATO alliance is also pursuing a vast, global geopolitical agenda in which military tensions in Russian-Ukrainian border areas are only a pretext and play a relatively minor role. By demanding that Ukraine, Georgia and other ex-Soviet republics be incorporated into NATO, the NATO powers are working to ring Russia with troops and missile bases on its borders and constantly threaten it with attack. The NATO powers cover this up behind accusations that turn reality on its head, claiming that it is Russia that is plotting aggression against neighboring states. By placing immense military pressure on Russia, NATO is also seeking to isolate countries across Eurasia that have relied on Russian support against NATO. These include Syria, Iran and China.

In this regard, it is significant that the NYT recently commented favorably on Macron’s call for a “new European security architecture.” It quoted French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire as saying that a key question is, “Do we want a Russia that is totally aligned with China or one that is somewhere between China and Europe?” Macron’s “eventual aim,” the NYT wrote, is “integrating Russia in a new European security system that offsets its lurch toward China.” A NATO policy of placing intense military pressure on Russia to break its relations with China, Iran, or Syria is reactionary and reckless. The danger is mounting that more aggressive factions of the Russian post-Soviet capitalist regime, fearing total encirclement, could decide to use their military to pre-emptively crush the emerging NATO military build-up in Eastern Europe, launching an all-out war between nuclear-armed states. The reckless policies of the European imperialist powers, who long were presented as the more gentle and less militaristic powers inside NATO, also constitute a warning to workers internationally. None of the capitalist powers either can or intend to halt the drive to war, which can only be stopped by an independent, international mobilization of the working class.

Johnson lays out UK military offensive against Russia
Chris Marsden, WSWS, Feb 9 2022

Johnson and Zelensky at the Mariyinsky Palace in Kiev, Feb 2. (Photo: Andrew Parsons)

The Feb 7 Times featured an opinion column by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, laying out Britain’s plans for a military escalation in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, targeting Russia. The Times led with the headline:

Britain will not flinch over Ukraine, says PM. Defiant message to Putin as Marines and Typhoon jets prepared for deployment.

Johnson was cited saying UK support to Europe and NATO will remain “unconditional and immovable.” The Times lists as immediate measures sending 350 Royal Marines to Poland, adding:

Johnson says that he is prepared to go further and is considering sending Typhoon fighter jets and warships to southeastern Europe. Plans have been drawn up to deploy jets to Romania and Bulgaria and send warships to the Black Sea.

The troops bound for Poland from 45 Commando were being diverted from cold weather exercises in Norway. They will join 100 Royal Engineers already in Poland, where they will carry out contingency planning, including “working up responses to threats they could face” and joint exercises. Johnson’s opinion piece, misleadingly titled, “Diplomacy can prevail”, threatens:

British sanctions and other measures will be ready for any renewed Russian attack. NATO allies are agreed that we are willing to send more forces to guarantee the security of our allies on the eastern flank. The foreign ministers of Latvia and Estonia have called for extra support due to the Russian military build-up in Belarus. We stand ready to provide it.

As well as preparing to “reinforce the British-led NATO battlegroup in Estonia,” he lists the possibility of “deploying RAF Typhoon fighters and Royal Navy warships to protect southeastern Europe. And HMS Prince of Wales, our newest aircraft carrier, is now the command ship of NATO’s Maritime High Readiness Force.” Turning directly to Ukraine, Johnson boasts:

Since 2015, the UK’s Operation Orbital has trained 22k Ukrainian troops. Last month we sent 2,000 anti-tank missiles, causing God Save the Queen to trend on Ukrainian twitter, and placing Britain among the handful of countries to have supplied lethal aid. When I met President Zelensky last week, I announced another £88m of UK aid to strengthen Ukraine’s energy independence. If he (Putin) launches another invasion, he will force the West to bring about much of what he seeks to prevent. In fact, this is already happening. Because of his build-up, America, France, Italy and other allies are deploying forces to NATO’s southeastern flank, just as the UK reinforces the northeast.

Johnson fails to list the most provocative move yet carried out during the military build-up against Russia. Last week the UK sent more than 100 special forces (SAS, SBS, SRR and SPSG) to Ukraine to train its armed forces, focusing on counter-insurgency tactics, sniping and sabotage. ‘They have a wide skill set which will no doubt be very useful to the Ukrainian forces,’ a military source told the Sun on Feb 6. The US already has a force of 200 Rangers stationed in Ukraine, which is still not a NATO member. Just how deliberately inflammatory the UK’s moves are was underscored by the Mirror reporting Feb 7 that the planned deployment of troops to Poland is part of a joint operation with the US. It writes:

Defence chiefs are thrashing out plans for a dramatic UK-US parachute jump into Poland as a massive show of force against Moscow. UK military chiefs at Permanent Joint HQ in Middlesex have been going over plans to project British military strength as a gesture of solidarity with Ukrainian forces. One plan under discussion is to parachute members of 2 Para and 82nd Airborne into Poland as a dramatic signal of defiance towards Putin. It is believed members of 2 Para will be asked to join US airborne troops in demonstrating what the Army calls a Joint Forcible Entry, dramatically dropping into Poland. They are part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, the UK’s high readiness troops mostly made up of paratroopers, with signallers, medics and engineers attached. After jointly parachuting into Poland they would then launch a 14-day wargaming exercise, as a huge two-finger gesture to the Kremlin, whose troops are currently exercising in Belarus.

This is not an improvised move. The Mirror reports:

The plan is to jump with the 82nd Airborne who have already arrived, but there is concern and confusion at senior level that any drop will be seen as aggressive and we are waiting for a decision. The Paras are listed as the UK’s Global Response Force, are already part of an operational readiness capability which was formed with US forces in 2015. More than 200 British Paras dropped into Ukraine in Sep 2020, in a joint exercise with local forces and witnessed by the Daily Mirror. More than 120 members of 2 Para’s B Company are already in Estonia on winter warfare exercises with NATO units including soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment.

Johnson’s actions point to the right-wing forces being unleashed by the crisis of British imperialism, with his factional opponents no less committed than he to military aggression and warmongering. One of the first Tory MPs to publicly call for Johnson’s resignation was Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the defence committee and a former captain in the Royal Green Jackets. In a Feb 5 interview with the Times, Ellwood complained that on Ukraine, Johnson could not provide “the statecraft that’s necessary for Britain to make its mark and bring together a very timid, risk-averse West.” His task was to rally “other nations to stand up to Putin, to stand firm in Ukraine and make this our Cuban missile crisis moment.” This would mean emulating Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. The sanctions regime discussed by Johnson with Zelensky “is no threat,” said Ellwood. He wanted NATO to put a division of 15k troops into Ukraine, with a four-star general “put in charge of the Downing Street operation. That would be ample to make Putin think twice.”

For its part Labour is intent on positioning itself to the right of Johnson. Welcoming the dispatch of troops to Poland, it complained again that he “has been preoccupied by protecting himself rather than protecting our national security”. Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey added:

With threats increasing and growing Russian aggression, ministers must halt their plans to cut the Army by another 10,000 troops in the next three years.

The policies of austerity, militarism and war pursued by the ruling elite and all its parties and factions are dictated by an escalating global crisis of the profit system, characterised above all by an unprecedented polarisation between the broad mass of the working class and a super-rich and socially criminal oligarchy. Like the Biden administration, Johnson is responding to a desperate domestic crisis by seeking to channel discontent outwards, against an external threat, with Putin’s regime a convenient scapegoat. Johnson’s diversion has assumed the most dangerous form imaginable: a provocation against a military power with close to 4,500 nuclear warheads. The war drive is fully supported by the Labour Party, which combines declarations of common purpose with the Tories with an attack on Johnson’s ability to lead an anti-Russian offensive. Opposing this drive to war demands the independent political mobilisation of the working class on an anti-capitalist, internationalist, anti-imperialist and socialist perspective.