The war in Ukraine is entering its second year. It has led to enormous loss of life on both sides, among civilians and combatants, and to the devastation of the Ukrainian economy. It is the working class of these countries who have borne the cost and who will go on shouldering that burden as the war drags on.
Socialists should judge all wars from a class standpoint and we were right to oppose the invasion that Vladimir Putin announced in the morning of February 24 last year. His “special military operation” was justified to the Russian people as a means of ‘de-nazifying’ Ukraine, but it was in fact a desperate military gamble to shore up the power, prestige and influence of the narrow clique around Putin, itself increasingly far right, undemocratic and authoritarian.
Those Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups active in the fighting in the Donbas before the invasion have since been eclipsed by the war and regular Ukrainian forces. In any case, they were matched in the areas under Russian influence (and ‘annexed’ before the invasion), by Russian neo-Nazi groups. Put simply, there was nothing in the Russian invasion that was remotely in the interests of workers anywhere, and least of all in Russian and Ukraine.
Putin’s real rationale for launching the war was to preserve Russia’s exclusive military-economic influence in Ukraine, a country which has always had its own distinct national consciousness, but which has nevertheless historically fallen in the Russian ‘sphere of influence’. As the Ukrainian people increasingly looked with envy at living standards in EU countries and there were calls for Ukraine to join NATO, like many former USSR states and satellites of Russia, Putin clearly believed that to maintain Russian domination, force was his only alternative. He has only three advisers, according to a senior Kremlin minister quoted in the Financial Times, “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”
A ‘short’ war was predicted, but didn’t happen
Notwithstanding the domination of Ukrainian politics by oligarchs and their kept political parties, Zelensky’s party being one of them, socialists must stand for the right of nations like Ukraine to self-determination. Although it was expected by the big majority of military ‘experts’ – and not least, Putin himself – that Russia would easily win a short war, it soon became apparent that things were not turning out as expected. And the predominant reason for the solid resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces was not western military aid, because that took time to make any impact, but the morale of their forces. The overwhelming mood within the Ukrainian working class, as they enrolled in large numbers in the armed forces, is that they were fighting to defend their homes, families and communities.
We should also note that not only was Putin’s invasion not in the interests of Russian or Ukrainian workers, but it has now become a cause celebre for the political right in all of the main countries of capitalism and it has facilitated a political and economic reaction. The war initially disrupted world oil and gas prices, but it is now clear, with market prices as low as they were a year ago, that the big oil and gas companies have profiteered massively. As energy prices for workers have rocketed and living standards are squeezed, the giant energy companies have racked up record profits. [See article on energy profiteering here].
It is understandable and natural that the sympathies of European workers were extended to Ukrainian families, millions of whom fled the conflict. But what is far more dangerous in the longer term is the way right wing parties have used the issue to wave national flags and bump up expenditure on defence – by €100bn in the case of Germany. It is one thing for local town halls to fly a Ukrainian flag, although we oppose all forms of nationalism, Russian and Ukrainian included, but it is another thing altogether banning all criticism of NATO in the Labour Party, as Keir Starmer is trying to do.
Putin wanted a smaller NATO, but it just got bigger
There is clearly a sense in which this war has now become a proxy conflict between NATO and Russia, and instead of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, it has become a de facto member. Putin wanted a smaller NATO, but instead it is bigger, with Finland and Sweden now set to join.
We can have no illusions about NATO. It is the military arm of the main western capitalist states, dominated by the USA, a country with more military bases than any other around the whole world and a state that has intervened militarily is scores of countries. The USA and NATO see Russia, a huge continental economy with vast potential resources, as a strategic opponent and that would be true whoever was the head of a Russian government.
The USA has used the opportunity presented by the war to strengthen its own position in relation to European energy needs. After covertly blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, it has sold large quantities of liquefied natural gas instead. It has led an embargo of Russian oil, by sanctions and a ‘price-cap’ and it has enforced rigorous economic sanctions.
If it weren’t such a serious situation, it would be laughable to read in western newspapers commentators condemning Russian use of gas supplies as a ‘weapon of war’, whilst supporting wholesale economic sanctions as if it weren’t exactly the same thing. If war is a continuation of policy by other means, then policy is a way of continuing war by other means.
As the most powerful member of NATO, stronger militarily than all of the other members combined, and militarily still the strongest power in the globe, the USA is the main cheerleader for those sending NATO weaponry to Ukraine. It is not that Western leaders like Biden are even remotely concerned with the needs and interests of Russian or Ukrainian workers.
What they want is to grind down Russian economic and military capability so it is seriously weakened for the foreseeable future, even if that means a lengthy war at the expense of Ukrainian lives and the economy. The USA is no friend of democracy or national self-determination as even a cursory glance at modern history will show. Indeed, it is the history of US interference and invasions on several continents that has led to so many African, Asian and Latin American countries to refuse to support NATO and western economic sanctions against Russia.
There will be no peace-dividend when the war does finally end
It is important to make the point that in all of the speech-making, tub-thumping and the writing of newspaper editorials about the war, the voices that are never heard are those of ordinary Ukrainian and Russian workers. For these workers, already paying a heavy price, there will be no peace-time dividend when the war does finally come to an end.
A report by a US think-tank, War and Theft (downloadable as a PDF here) the Oakland Institute, described the way that agricultural land has been taken over by Ukrainian and foreign oligarchs. Before the war, Ukraine was well-known as the ‘breadbasket of Europe’, so rich was its agricultural base. A large part of that rich land is in the central and western part of Ukraine, still outside of Russian control, and western banks and capitalist interests will want to get their hands on it after the war, as payment for arms shipments.
As War and Theft explains, in Ukraine, “The total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals, and large agribusinesses is over nine million hectares — exceeding 28 percent of Ukraine’s arable land. The largest landholders are a mix of Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign interests — mostly European and North American as well as the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia. Prominent US pension funds, foundations, and university endowments are invested through NCH Capital, a US-based private equity fund…”
“Western financing to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment program that has required austerity and privatization measures, including the creation of a land market for the sale of agricultural land. President Zelenskyy put the land reform into law in 2020 against the will of the vast majority of the population who feared it would exacerbate corruption and reinforce control by powerful interests in the agricultural sector”
[See article by Michael Roberts, here, on the economics of the war and the price that will be expected by western states and financial institutions like the IMF for military aid to Ukraine].
In Russia, socialists are opposed to the war, and have demanded that troops be brought home. Russian families, with up to 200,000 soldiers’ deaths, have already suffered enough. Although it does not look at the moment like it is enough to overthrow Putin – he controls the media and is now presenting the war, with some success, as a fight for the life of Russia against NATO incursion – in the longer term, opposition will grow as the economy suffers and casualties mount up. Up to half a million young men have left the country, for Georgia, Turkey and elsewhere, to avoid conscription.
Corruption right at the heart of the Ukrainian government
It is only by clamping down on dissent that Putin has so far been able to avoid a wave of opposition to the war. The workers’ movement, however, is not dead, and we have reported on our website strikes and protests by workers on economic issues [see here]. The greater the economic and human cost of the war, the greater will be the opposition that develops.
In Ukraine, there is little organised opposition to the government of Zelensky, largely because of the overwhelming sentiment among workers that they have a duty to support the defensive war against Russia. They are less concerned about where their weaponry comes from – and have no say in the matter anyway – than they are about an effective defence.
Socialists give no support to and have no trust in the capitalist governments ‘supporting’ Ukraine. The speeches of Western politicians in defence of Ukraine are purely for the cameras. Nothing is given for ‘free’, whatever these politicians say. Ordinary Ukrainian workers, or workers in the West for that matter, will not see the secret clauses in the weapons agreements or the price that Ukrainian workers will have to pay in the future.
In Ukraine, the corruption and war profiteering that has been revealed will inevitably raise concerns among workers about the conduct of the war. In January, extensive corruption was exposed, right to the heart of government. “In a matter of days”, the Financial Times reported, “one of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s deputy chiefs of staff, five governors of frontline provinces, four deputy ministers and two members of the president’s ruling Servant of the People party in parliament would resign or be fired because of scandalous or allegedly corrupt behaviour”.
Advances measured in metres rather than kilometres
Ukrainian workers have completely different interests in defending their communities to those of big capitalists, landowners, and oligarchs. That will be a realisation that will dawn on Ukrainian workers in due course, but in the meantime, it is despite the involvement of NATO, but specifically not because of it, that socialists support the right of Ukrainian workers to fight a defensive war. Were there to be a resurgent workers’ movement in Ukraine and a government that genuinely reflected their interests, it would not conduct even a defensive war from a purely military standpoint, but would appeal, most likely with success, to Russian troops in the language of international solidarity. An independent Ukraine could guarantee, for example, full rights for Russian and other language minorities.
At the moment the war seems to have no clear endpoint in sight. Zelensky has said that Ukrainian war aims are not only for the liberation of Eastern Ukraine, but also the Crimea. Russia has already lost a half of the territory it gained in the first few weeks of the war, but the reconquest of all of the area taken by the Russian army would be a monumental task.
For his part, Putin – or any likely successor to him – will not accept a humiliating retreat to the previous Ukraine-Russian border. Even at the risk of great loss of life, Russian military commanders, reinforced by hundreds of thousands of new troops, will dig in. They are not short of war materiel. The best that could come out of any proposed ‘peace’ terms looks like an armistice that ends the fighting, but provides a stalemate unsatisfactory to both sides.
From this point on, therefore, it looks like a bloody and largely immobile war of attrition is setting in, and unless there is an armistice, advances by either side may be measured in metres rather than kilometres. The war is being reduced to a struggle to see which side has the greatest economic and military resilience, which side can outlast the other, and at great cost to workers everywhere.
