WeeklyWorker

31.03.2022

End of phase one

As shown by the talks in Istanbul, Vladimir Putin has already lost what could still be a horrible, grizzly, prolonged war. Jack Conrad gives his assessment

Nato’s March 24 Brussels summit agreed to militarily “enhance” its eastern frontline. Multinational battle groups are to be established in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia. They will all be “combat-ready”. Along with massive new deliveries of shoulder-launched Javelin and NLAW anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine, ramped-up American and European arms spending, B-52 deployments, an ever growing tsunami of sanctions and a yanking turn away from imported Siberian gas and oil - all such measures are designed to cower Russia militarily, pulverise it economically and ultimately bring about regime change.

Joe Biden’s “off the cuff” remarks, made in Warsaw, about how Putin cannot be allowed to “remain in power” might have caused a sharp intake of diplomatic breath in France, Germany and Turkey … and even in Washington DC. Doubtless, but, this is, of course, the truth.

Ominously, addressing the regular Business Roundtable of top American CEOs, Biden talked of instituting a “new world order” - led, naturally enough, by the good old US of A.1 In other words, having sentenced itself to 20 years of relative national decline with neoliberal offshoring, allowing China into the World Trade Organisation and the reliance on finance capital, Biden dreams of renewing - even universalising - US hegemony: first we take Moscow, then we take Beijing. That is American imperialism’s grand strategy for the third decade of the 21st century.

In immediate terms, Biden has good grounds for optimism. Putin has been successfully pushed, prodded and shoved into launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine which has now virtually ground to a halt.

Firstly there was the 2004-05 Orange revolution, then, secondly, the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. CIA fingerprints were all over both operations. All in all, albeit after two attempts, Ukraine was successfully catapulted into the western - ie, US - orbit. Despite proposals in Istanbul to guarantee Ukraine’s neutral status, constitutionally the country is committed to joining the European Union and Nato (that is why there would have to be a referendum). However, the mere offer of Nato membership faced Russia with not only the threat of its sworn enemy establishing itself in its soft underbelly, but the loss of the Sevastopol naval base and therefore access to the Black Sea and thus in turn to the warm waters of the Mediterranean … and Aleppo (where Russia has an important military base).

Russia responded - as Henry Kissinger and a range of other imperialist realists warned - aggressively.2 In 2014 Crimea was annexed and the Luhansk and Donetsk breakaways were sponsored and protected. And that produced the final shove. Neo-fascist elements, semi-integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces, equipped by the US, UK etc (most notably the Azov battalion), kept up a constant campaign of local terrorism, border skirmishes and long-range artillery bombardment. Biden, seeing his opportunity, explicitly threatened Putin, during their December 2021 joint summit, that any further Russian “aggression” - ie, retaliation - on Ukrainian soil, would result in “strong economic measures” from both the US and its European allies.3 Totally boxed in, Putin went for broke.

War aims

We are still in the midst of war and therefore a deluge of absolute lies and half-lies. Only a few truths penetrate through the fog.

That said, I think we can safely say (well, relatively safely say) that Putin and his immediate circle thought that they would achieve a speedy victory. We are told that the “original plan” was to drive an armoured column deep south, straight to Kyiv. The capital city would be encircled and, during a night operation, some 5,000 elite paratroopers would be dropped in. They would storm the Mariinsky presidential palace, detain or kill Volodymyr Zelensky, and take control over key government buildings, including the foreign and defence ministries. Having mopped up resistance, and arrested key figures, Putin would install a “pro-Russian puppet administration”.4 I take it that this is what “deNazification” is code for, not rubbing out the Right Sector, National Corps, the Azov battalion, etc. All - well, for the moment - pretty marginal in terms of electoral politics (though not militarily).

Some western defence (ie, war) experts have claimed that Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s general staff, warned Putin that invading Ukraine might not be so “straightforward”.5 And so it has proved. The ‘special military operation’ has seen a huge exodus of people into Poland, Hungary and Romania, much destruction and the needless death of very large numbers of civilians and soldiers. It has, demonstrably, also floundered and become bogged down. Putin’s forces reached the outer suburbs of Kyiv, but failed to surround the city.

Surely putting a brave face on defeat, Russian negotiators in Istanbul magnanimously pledged to scale back military operations around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv. This will, incidentally, allow the Russian army to concentrate on its supposed “top goal - the liberation of Donbas”. 6 Given that the bulk of Ukraine’s volunteer units, not least the Azov battalion, are concentrated in the east, this theatre of war could prove decisive. An unlikely scenario though: so far, on every front, the Russian army has performed far below expectations.

Despite the Istanbul negotiations we should not expect a quick end to the war. Russia might well have stepped back from imposing regime change in Kyiv through sheer force of arms - a defeat. But, presumably, it is still bent on securing an agreement which sees Ukraine accepting its annexation of Crimea and maybe the whole of Luhansk and Donetsk. Also unlikely. Failing that, there is, eventually, after much more bloodshed, destruction and suffering, the possibility of a ‘permanent ceasefire’, which sees Russia not only holding Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, but joining these disputed territories together with a wide land corridor, reaching along the whole of the north coast of the Azov Sea. This, of course, means taking the south-eastern city of Mariupol. Putin might possibly be able to sell such an armistice to the Russian population as a glorious victory. By equal measure, however, nationalist forces in Ukraine (and not only on the far right) would be doing everything in their power to end the ‘permanent ceasefire’ in the name of Slava Ukraine!

Performance

Why has the Russian invasion fared so badly? There are two obvious explanations.

Firstly, far from the mass of ordinary Ukrainians welcoming - or at the very least being indifferent to - the incoming Russian soldiers, the opposite has proved to be the case. Russia confronts not only a largish and relatively well-equipped regular Ukrainian army, there is determined popular opposition - crucially those organised into militia units (not that we should forget the Russian-Ukrainians and the ‘suspension’ of 11 parties, including the main opposition party, by Zelensky). Nonetheless, with his misjudged Ukraine adventure, Putin has brilliantly managed to trigger a Nato-armed people’s war.

The combination of regular plus militia forces has proved highly effective. Despite dominating the skies with Mig and Sukhoi warplanes and Kamov attack helicopters, thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed - five, six, seven generals included. Hundreds of Russian tanks have been put out of action too. Shoulder-launched missiles have taken a terrible toll. Video after video, photo after photo, show a Russian tank blasted, while crawling along a motorway, smouldering in a field or decapitated, the gun turret lying uselessly a few feet from the main body. NLAWs (next generation of light anti-tank weapons), not least those supplied to Ukraine by the UK, are easy to carry, relatively cheap and can be launched within just five seconds of a target-sighting … and they are programmed to hit weak points. Saab, the designer and original manufacturer, boasts of the “same old story” - “David beats Goliath”.7

Then there are drones. They have turned tanks from being the main conveyors of shock and awe on the battlefield into easy prey. Loitering overhead for hours, drones pinpoint their targets, and either launch their own precision munitions or guide in others. True, most Russian tanks deployed in Ukraine are old T-62s, T-72s and T-80s. Their top amour is thin and therefore vulnerable. New tanks such as the Armata T-14 might fare better. But, clearly, there has been a revolution in warfare. It is definitely not the same old story. Note, in the US, under the provisions of Force design 2030, the Marine Corps has dispensed with the last of its tank units and much of its traditional tube artillery.8

The most effective fighters on the Ukrainian side are reportedly those with minds gripped by Banderite ideology. This will surely raise the prestige of the National Corps, Svoboda and other such far-right parties and blocs. The Banderites hate Russia with a horrible passion and are willing to die for the sake of a Ukraine cleansed of ethnic minorities. Eg, armed with shoulder-launched missiles, these ‘patriotic boys’ have to place themselves some 50-100 metres from a tank before being sure of a kill. The personal risk is, of course, considerable in all such close-quarter and ambush situations.

Secondly, in terms of explaining the striking lack of success for the overwhelmingly superior Russian forces, there is the political economy of Russia itself. The post-1991 Russian Federation is the product of a counterrevolution within the counterrevolution and the emergence of a capitalist class based on the expropriation of what had been public property, by way of fraud, robbery and corruption carried out on a staggering scale.

Living standards and life expectancy of ordinary Russians plummeted. Former state and party officials became billionaires and joined mafiosi and foreign adventurers in grabbing hold of whole (usually extractive) industries. Under Boris Yeltsin, Russia could justifiably be described as an oligarchy: ie, rule by the rich for the rich (Ukraine being an unstable mirror image). Russia was, as a result, impoverished, fragmented and in danger of becoming a mere US neo-colony.

Putin’s elevation, crucially by the FSB, in 1999 put an end to that. Through blood and iron, Russia was re-established as a great, albeit regional, power (soaring oil prises helped too). The oligarchs were warned to stay out of politics - that or suffer the consequences. A few resisted - eg, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, reportedly Russia’s richest man - and were duly punished: imprisonment, confiscation of wealth, foreign exile. Nonetheless, though controlled somewhat, the corruption and robbery continued apace. That is why Putin is probably a billionaire in his own right.

Endemic corruption and robbery at the top goes all the way down to the very base of society itself. The Russian army therefore finds itself suffering not only due to faulty strategy and faulty intelligence. It faces defeat because of logistical detail. There is a lack of fuel, lack of food, lack of ammunition. Fuel has either gone undelivered or has been pilfered. Tanks and trucks run dry. The same goes for food supplies. Ordinary soldiers abandon their vehicles and positions to scavenge. Advances peter out and turn into retreat or digging into defensive positions. Robbery has also denuded replacement tanks. Kept in storage, commanders find that they have been stripped of motors, rare metals and micro-chips. Purportedly 90% of replacement tanks are useless.

There is also poor morale. For rank-and-file troops and officers alike what is this war about? Leave aside the probable widespread repugnance felt about fighting to further the interests of the corrupt autocrat, Putin, and his mega-rich cronies. DeNazification is hardly convincing, given Russia itself. Take Aleksandr Dugin. Having served as an advisor to top members of the ruling United Russia party, this former member of Pamyat and the National Bolshevik Front was named chief editor of Tsargrad TV in 2015. The station espouses Orthodox Christianity and support for Vladimir Putin. National Bolshevism is, needless to say, a red-brown variant of fascism. Similar unsavoury figures can be found dotted throughout the Russian state apparatus, including in Luhansk and Donetsk. And, of course, instead of finding themselves greeted as liberators, Russian troops are targets of abuse, bullets and missiles. Any notion that the invasion is about saving the Russian-Ukrainian population from genocide must have been thoroughly knocked out of their heads by now. All that remains are fantasies of a Novorossiya, a new tsarist empire, with the Great Russians and (unwilling) Little Russians and White Russians at its core. That might motivate some, but surely not many.

Regime change

Putin’s February 24 invasion played directly into US hands. Ukraine is a sacrificial pawn played by the US in its great chess game for total world domination. Fired by patriotism and armed by Nato, Ukrainian forces have already humiliated Putin by surviving for well over a month and even pushing back the Russians here and there. A peace deal might well see Ukraine committing itself to neutrality (with security guarantees being given by countries such as Canada, Poland and Turkey). Nato membership - which was unlikely ever to happen - would have to be dropped as a stated ambition. A loss for the US. But not much of a one, after all the aim is to take a Russian bishop or castle - even its queen.

Ideologically championing Ukraine certainly serves as the equivalent of ‘poor little Belgium’ or ‘plucky little Serbia’ in World War I. Warmongers such as Biden, Kamala Harris and Antony Blinken, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Ben Wallace, have been able to put themselves at the forefront of widespread outrage over Ukraine (part real, part manufactured). They are Zelensky’s heroes and Zelensky is the capitalist media’s hero. Now they meet hardly a squeak of opposition to ramping up arms spending and deploying troops along Russia’s western border.

Naturally, social imperialists - the likes of Paul Mason, Chris Ford, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Anticapitalist Resistance, the Labour Representation Committee and Labour Briefing - have cheered them on over arming Ukraine (including the fascist Azov battalion). The AWL even calls for the labour movement, for all the wrong reasons, to end support for Stop the War Coalition. Taking of which, it and the whole social-pacifist camp have proved particularly useless, given the test of Russia’s invasion. Pious pleas for halting Nato’s eastern expansion and respecting Ukraine’s right to self-determination actually dovetail with US strategy.

What then of US strategy? At a stroke, the US has made Italy, the Netherlands, France and crucially Germany dependent on oil and gas supplies, over which the US exercises ultimate control. Any idea of a Franco-German united Europe vanished with the cancellation of Nord Stream 2. But there is a bigger prize. With Russian forces bogged down in Ukraine and its negotiators in Istanbul offering to scale back operations in the north, it is clear that Putin has badly overextended himself. Even if Russia gets to keep Crimea (on a 15-year basis), and Luhansk and Donetsk are granted some kind of autonomous status, Putin will in fact have been defeated. Russia’s economy will have been crashed, thousands of servicemen killed and whole cities laid to waste for what? Basically for the situation before February 24.

Putin could well find himself ‘retired’ by the FSB-state elite. We could, moreover, conceivably see the disintegration of the entire regime under the impact of economic sanctions, military failure and a CIA-sponsored colour revolution. There are plenty of stories of Russian oligarchs breaking ranks - eg, Roman Abramovich - former ministers scuttling off to the west and artists and media types defying bans on making anti-war statements. Belief that the regime will fall soonish is surely what gives Alexei Navalny his courage. Having returned to Russia after receiving treatment in Germany, he was poisoned by a Novichek nerve agent, which could only have been on Putin’s orders, Navalny was inevitably arrested, tried and found guilty on baseless parole-violation charges. The way he recently handled himself when sentenced to an additional nine years maximum security imprisonment shows that he thinks himself as a future president. With his generously financed political machine, his populist promise to tax the rich and stem migration from central Asia, his foreign policy orientation to the west, his neoliberalism and his commitment to human (ie, property) rights, the US banks on Navalny being their man in the Kremlin. That would amount to checkmate. Then the US focus would shift to decisively dealing with a fully encircled China.

Meanwhile, Russia finds itself diplomatically isolated. Despite its “no limits” alliance, China abstained on the UN security council. Given Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, it can give no ground to any violation of territorial integrity. The only danger, as far as the US is concerned, is that a humiliated Russia will throw itself into the protective embrace of China, becoming its Austria-Hungary.

Either way, as we argued at the beginning of this war, the US project of rebooting its imperial hegemony has been “greatly enhanced”.9

  1. www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/21/remarks-by-president-biden-before-business-roundtables-ceo-quarterly-meeting.↩︎

  2. www.news18.com/news/world/russias-defence-ministry-says-it-hit-military-targets-in-ukraines-lviv-with-cruise-missiles-4914179.html.↩︎

  3. NBC News, December 7 2021.↩︎

  4. The Guardian February 26 2022.↩︎

  5. Ibid.↩︎

  6. The Independent March 28 2022.↩︎

  7. www.saab.com/products/nlaw.↩︎

  8. www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2022/03/28/the_marines_got_rid_of_their_tanks_is_ukraine_making_them_look_smart_or_too_smart_for_their_own_good_823985.html.↩︎

  9. J Conrad, ‘Here we stand’ Weekly Worker March 3 2022: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1385/here-we-stand.↩︎