23.02.2023

Notes on the war

One year on, the talk is of a wider conflict, even a World War III. Jack Conrad looks at the geo-politics, the military situation and the inadequacies of the existing left

There was nothing inevitable about Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Frankly, despite US intelligence warnings, I never thought it would happen, because any such military adventure would risk getting bogged down in an unwinnable war and even the collapse of the regime. Not least after Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction only a fool would trust the CIA, MI6 and other such professional peddlers of misinformation.¹

No less to the point, Putin simply did not have enough troops ready and waiting in Belarus, Donetsk and southern Russia to do the job.² Moreover, the mass of Ukrainian Ukrainians were bound to put up stiff resistance - people do not take kindly to attempts to conquer them. When the full-scale invasion finally came, I thought Russian forces would reach and maybe even take Kyiv. But that would be the beginning of a war that was always going to be bitter, bloody and long.

There were those in Russia who feared just such an outcome. Amongst the military, political and business elite, most kept their counsel to small circles of trusted friends and colleagues. But 150 prominent individuals, including Leonid Ivashov, a retired senior Russian general, did put their names to an open letter, issued shortly before the invasion, warning that an attack would be “pointless and extremely dangerous” and would even threaten Russia’s existence.³

And, as things turned out, the special military operation began, yes, as a pointless failure. The plan was clear: decapitate the Kyiv regime. The Ukrainian capital was to be encircled within days and quickly occupied (Russian commanders were reportedly told to “pack dress uniforms and medals” in anticipation of a victory parade⁴). Hostomel airport, on Kyiv’s ring road, was successfully taken in a heliborne assault and Russian special forces infiltrated their way to the city centre. Presumably Volodymyr Zelensky was either to die, machine gun in hand, defending in his Bankovaya bunker, be forced into exile or be persuaded, under arrest, to sue for peace and settle for a deal that would see Ukraine “demilitarised and deNazified”. Code for renouncing moves towards Nato membership and clamping down on the Banderite - ie, anti-Russian - fascist right. If that had happened, Putin would have gone on to establish some kind of Slavic Eurasian confederation, a greater Russia, along with Ukraine and Belarus, and, as a result, notched one or two pegs up in the global pecking order.

From what can be gleaned from captured documents, POW interviews and electronic intercepts, Russia’s forces invaded with a grossly unrealistic timetable - they even had to rely on old, 1960s maps. Troops, including top generals, fatally gave away their positions through using open mobile phones. Lacking food, suitable clothing and basic medical supplies - and craving the solace of vodka - rank-and-file grunts looted the surrounding countryside. Inevitably there was raping and killing. Corruption certainly ensured that lorries, troop carriers and tanks were badly maintained, badly equipped and badly supplied. Mechanical breakdown and running out of fuel were commonplace. Instead of a lightening victory, Putin’s army found itself crawling into a meat grinder.

As should have been expected, Ukraine’s ground forces proved to be no pushover. Continuous artillery bombardment had a devastating effect on the stalled Russian invasion column. NLAWs, Javelins and drones proved to be a game-changer. Wrecked T72 and T80 tanks clogged the road to Kyiv. By late March Ukraine was on the counteroffensive and Russian forces were hightailing it back to the border. On April 2 Zelensky’s government announced that the entire Kyiv oblast had been retaken.

Phase two

True, Putin and his generals launched their phase two almost immediately afterwards. On the eastern front Russian forces pushed towards Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv. On the southern front Russian forces moved out from Crimea - west toward Odessa, north toward Zaporizhzhia, and east toward Mariupol. According to the Russian ministry of defence, there were four main objectives: 1 securing the whole of the Donbas; 2 creating a land corridor from there to Crimea; 3 blockading Ukrainian Black Sea ports; 4 taking control of southern Ukraine all the way to Transnistria (the breakaway territory in Moldova).

Phase two went far better for Russia than phase one. Not that this is saying much: advances were slow, grinding and costly in terms of men and material. Most of the Donbas was taken (‘liberated’ if you like) - only a little rump of Donetsk remained in the hands of Ukraine’s eastern army. With the fall of Mariupol on May 20, the land corridor joining Russia and the Crimea was finally secured. A largely undamaged Kherson was taken and Ukraine’s remaining Black Sea ports were successfully blockaded (though there has been the subsequent agreement to allow outgoing grain shipments). However, Russian forces failed to get further west to Odessa, let alone beyond to Transnistria (and thereby leave Ukraine landlocked).

But then, in September 2022, came the twin-front Ukrainian counteroffensive which opened what I have called phrase three of the war - for the first time things were being actively shaped by Ukraine.

So what has Putin got to show for a year of war? Given the generous budget, the size and once awesome reputation of Russia’s armed forces, the answer has to be, in terms of territory, precious little. True, with much Kremlin fanfare, four Ukrainian oblasts - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - were, on September 30 2022, “forever” incorporated into the Russian Federation. However, about half of these supposed Russian lands were either held, or regained, by Ukrainian forces - not least Kharkiv in the east and Kherson in the south. Humiliating reversals for Putin.

What about the cost in lives, suffering, equipment and infrastructure? Well, to date, one hundred thousand Ukrainians dead and wounded, between 40,000 and 60,000 Russians troops killed and 160,000 wounded,⁵ eight million internally displaced Ukrainians, 7.8 million Ukrainians and 500,000 Russians fleeing abroad, Mariupol, Volnovakha, Rubizhne, Popasna, Lyman and Sievierodonetsk turned into rubble, a third of Ukraine’s energy network damaged or out of action, 2,000 Russian tanks destroyed or abandoned⁶ and, in scenes reminiscent of World War I, fighting in and around Bakhmut descending into the hell of dugouts and trench warfare.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has reportedly been hurling human waves - including many former prisoners - at Ukrainian fixed positions.⁷ The death toll has been horrendous. Such tactics require, of course, either fanaticism or terror to drive troops forward.⁸ Doubtless in this case it is terror.

Sanctions

Then there are western sanctions, the EU, G7+Australia oil price cap, the ousting of Russian banks from the Swift system and the confiscation of assets owned by so-called oligarchs. The initial expectation was that sanctions would break Russia - Joe Biden predicted, back in March 2022, that its economy was “on track to be cut in half”, while Annalena Baerbock, German foreign minister, boasted that sanctions were “hitting the Putin system … at its core of power” and Ursula von der Leyen promised that the EU was “working to cripple Putin’s ability to finance his war machine”.⁹

Their model is unmistakably Germany and its defeat in two world wars. Rubber, iron ore, nickel, manganese, aluminium, oil, cotton, tea and food were all put in short supply, as a blockaded Germany was cut off from the world market. It was not just the unmatched power of the Royal Navy, but control over global shipping, insurance and money markets. Of course, for woolly-minded liberals, sanctions are often regarded as a civilised alternative to war. Famously, American president Woodrow Wilson credited them with being “something more tremendous than war”. But, in fact, sanctions are the modern version of medieval siege warfare: they are the very essence of total war.¹⁰

Not that sanctions alone should be expected to bring about the “dissolution of the Russian empire” (George Soros).¹¹ Russia is no Germany. It is a continent in its own right and behind it there lies the “no-limits partnership” with the world’s second largest economy. Note, Anthony Blinken’s ominous threat, made at the Munich Security Conference, about the serious “consequences” if China provides “lethal support”.¹² And, interviewed by Die Welt, Zelensky warned that, “if China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war, and I do think that China is aware of that”.¹³

Predictably, Russia’s electronic and car industries have tanked and there is an acute shortage of high-tech chips, castings and connectors - vital in modern weapons systems.¹⁴ However, after an initial plunge the rouble has been successfully stabilised and all manner of loopholes in the sanctions regime found and exploited. Crucially Russia has plenty of oil and gas to trade: not only is China quite willing to get Russian oil and gas on the cheap, but so are India and Turkey. As a result, Russian GDP is reported to have shrunk only by between 2.2% and 3.9% in 2022 - and is expected to grow by 0.3% in 2023 (IMF figures).¹⁵

Hence US and Nato strategy is to combine economic war with a carefully calibrated proxy war. Ukraine is to be gifted enough military equipment and financial support to ensure that it does not lose - but not enough to trigger a desperate Russia into widening the conflict or going nuclear. In other words, America is willing to pay for Ukrainians and Russians to die in a war that was, from the start, an elephant trap designed to bring about regime change in Moscow.

By giving covert approval to Kyiv’s dramatic upping of its artillery bombardment and military preparations to retake the ‘people’s republics’ in the Donbas, by demanding the return of Crimea, by supplying military hardware, training and advisors, by holding out the distant prospect of Nato and EU membership for Ukraine, Putin was lured into ordering a full-scale invasion. A staggeringly stupid miscalculation.

Interestingly, there are more than a few voices who also reckon that Russia had fallen into a trap. Eg, in March 2022, LSE academic Robert Wade wrote that a sustained Ukrainian “quagmire” would see “middle class” living standards contract and thereby “create the conditions needed for the Russian people to rise up to overthrow Putin and install a Yeltsin-like president more sympathetic to the west.”¹⁶ Leave aside the supposed revolutionary potential of the middle classes, the salient point is the set-up. Joe Lauria, editor in chief of Consortium News, has been saying the same sort of thing too: “The US got its war in Ukraine” in what was a “trap” readied by the Democrat war party, beginning with the Russiagate scandal of 2016.¹⁷ On February 4 2022 - ie, two weeks before the special military operation began - Lauria wrote an article, ‘What a US trap in Ukraine might look like’, in which he argued that the US wanted to “force” Russia into a choice between “abandoning” their people in Donbass or “intervening to save them”.¹⁸

Others could be quoted (strangely enough, including Donald Trump¹⁹), but the point has been made.

Toxic

Russia seems to have banked on General Winter to deflate Ukrainian nationalism. That surely explains the thousands of drone and missile strikes on power stations, transmitters and energy infrastructure. Doubtless, especially in remote areas, people shiver, suffer frostbite and many - in particular the elderly and infirm - will have already died from hypothermia, as temperatures dropped to freezing point and below. But in most towns and cities - not least in the repeatedly hit Kyiv - visitors report shops, offices and tower blocks whirring with the sound of generators (all sent from abroad).²⁰

Meanwhile, after furious lobbying, particularly of the Americans, Ukraine has been radically upgrading its air defences. NASAMS batteries - jointly produced by the US and Norway - have been delivered and Ukrainians are undergoing instruction in America about how to maintain, deploy and use Patriots - the world’s most advanced surface-to-air missile system. But, even without the generators and a Ukrainian version of Israel’s Iron Dome, the morale of the civilian population was never going to collapse. Once again Giulio Douhet, the Italian general and airpower theorist, has been proved wrong. In his hugely influential study, The command of the air (1921), he prophesised that aerial bombing would see people clamouring for surrender.²¹

In fact, Ukrainian nationalism grows ever more compact, vengeful and toxic. Not only is Putin and the invading Russian army hated: so too is Ukraine’s 18% ethnic Russian population - ‘Hang the Muscovites! Hang the commies! Put a Russian to the stake’ runs a popular Ukrainian chant. Already mistrusted, spied upon and politically neutered, they are treated as enemies within. Ethnic Russians are all too likely to be arrested, subjected to punishment beatings - that or be summarily executed as traitors in territories regained by the Kyiv regime. All barely reported by the western media.

So far it has been a mild winter in Ukraine: good news for civilians without mains electricity, but not so good for generals keen to keep the fighting going. They want ground that is frozen solid. Mild winters mean mud, mired supply vehicles and therefore shortages of fuel and ammunition and the impossibility of sustaining significant forward momentum.

Russia has built massive defence works, especially alongside the Dnipro river. Perhaps that explains why the southern front has been eerily quiet. However, on the eastern front Russia has been using battle-hardened veterans, plus newly mobilised reservists and conscripts, to tighten the noose around Bakhmut - after six months of ferocious fighting it is surrounded on three sides.

Both Putin and Zelensky seem determined to give this strategically insignificant town a symbolic importance that almost defies rational explanation. ‘Bakhmut holds’ has become a rallying cry for Ukrainians. For its part, Russia will doubtless compare taking Bakhmut with the fall of Berlin in 1945.

As already mentioned, the battle of Bakhmut is reminiscent of the horrors of World War I - but with the addition of cruise missiles and cheap drones. Tanks and manned aircraft barely feature - massively expensive, viewed as white elephants by many military thinkers, they are easily destroyed nowadays. Instead it is trenches, house-to-house combat, relentless shelling, human waves and huge losses of life to gain mere yards. According to a former US marine fighting on the Ukrainian side, the average lifespan on the frontline is “four hours”.²² That, at least in the Ukrainian theatre, is what the much vaunted revolution in warfare has resolved into.

Will the expected Russian spring offensive result in a sensational breakthrough? Unlikely, even with its hundreds of thousands of newly mobilised conscripts. What about Ukraine with its Challenger 2, Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks eventually arriving? Again, unlikely. Even if Ukraine was to be supplied with 300, instead of 100, top-grade western battle tanks, if it was to get a whole airforce of F-16s, everything still points to a stalemate.

There is a chance of Russia reopening its northern front. There have been recent “joint military training exercises” by Russian and Belarusian forces and the formation of combined units.²³ Satellite pictures show the build-up of Russian forces about 160 kilometres from the Ukraine-Belarusian border. Intelligence sources put numbers at 20,000, which would, conceivably, be just enough to stage an incursion. Even if only bluff, as some experts say, the threat draws Ukrainian forces away from the southern and eastern fronts and pins them down on the northern border.²⁴

The likelihood of the Belarusian military being directly involved is though very remote. Yes, ‘Strongman’ Aleksandr Lukashenko has recently warned that Belarus will join the war “if attacked”.²⁵ True, that leaves open the possibility of faking a Ukrainian provocation of some kind. But, surely, Lukashenko’s regime is far too weak to take a chance on such an adventure. He owes his very survival to Russian support. But, precisely because of that, he is malleable. There were - doubtless scurrilous - reports a few months ago of Moscow arranging a failed assassination attempt, with a view to “intimidating” him into ordering his troops to join the special military operation.²⁶ For what it is worth, I would expect Lukashenko to do his utmost to stay out of the conflict.

Either way, another attempted push on Kyiv looks altogether improbable: Russia is already overextended and, as shown by Bakhmut, urban warfare is a force multiplier for defenders. However, a south-western thrust from Belarus to sever the weapons supply routes that lead from Poland - that is a realistic option available for Russia.

Nonetheless, strategically Russia is in a bad position. Far from the eastward march of Nato being halted, Putin - the man who oversaw the defeat of Georgia in a mere five days, who reunited Crimea with mother Russia and who faced down the US over Syria - has seen France, Italy and above all Germany thoroughly subordinated to US strategic plans, Finland and Sweden apply for Nato membership and Ukraine act as a militarily effective proxy in what is a (Nato-armed) people’s war.

That is why Zelensky has not been pleading for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. Quite the reverse, in fact. Zelensky speaks of wanting “everything back”. This means the whole of Donbas and Crimea too: in other words, total Russian defeat. An uncompromising stance, which owes as much to geo-strategic calculations being made in Washington, London and Brussels as it does to Ukrainian military prowess.

It is not hard to imagine the thinking of imperialist policy-makers. In another year or four, with an exhausted Russia still bogged down in an unwinnable war, the proxy war will trigger regime change in Moscow: through the siloviki retiring Putin to a sanatorium; a colour revolution; launching anti-Russian ‘national liberation wars’ in Belarus, Moldova and Georgia; promoting separatist movements within the Russia Federation itself - in particular amongst the Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis, Crimean Tatars, Yakuts and Volga Tatars (options all surely under active consideration).

If the US state department could get its man into the Kremlin - say, the already presidential Alexei Navalny - there could well be a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. But that would be Russia’s Versailles. The defeated country would face war crimes tribunals, crippling reparations, termination of its high-end arms industry and being reduced to an oil- and gas-supplying neo-colony.

There is already excited talk of demilitarising, denuclearising and decentralising a post-Putin Russia, so as to “remove” it as a threat to world peace and make it safe for neighbours.²⁷ More sober voices warn of a Pax Sinica: that is, a post-Putin Russia throwing itself into the arms of China and becoming its Austria-Hungary. Either way, America’s main strategic target remains China itself. Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang are already set up for such purposes.

It is certainly worth recalling Joe Biden addressing the Business Roundtable of top American CEOs back in March 2022. He talked of instituting a “new world order” - led, of course, by god’s blessed US of A.²⁸ In his brave new world the US would be able to “manage” at last the Eurasian world island - as envisaged by Zbigniew Brzezinski.²⁹

In reality, however, the result would not be a new age of democracy, peace and prosperity, as he promised: rather the imposition of breakdown, warlordism and social regression. The declining US hegemon is the bringer, nowadays, not of new heights of (capitalist) civilisation: eg, the post-World War II social democratic settlement (in western Europe, Japan and, with a final flourish, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore). Instead it brings barbarism (eg, the contras in Nicaragua, the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, sectarian fragmentation in Iraq, civil war in Libya). Fear of the pending US new world order, surely, at least in part, explains why a whole raft of countries - and not only the ‘usual suspects’ (eg, Belarus, North Korea, Iran and China), but Turkey, India, South Africa … even Saudi Arabia - have refused to join its anti-Russia crusade.

Diversions

There is more than a whiff of pre-World War I about the present-day situation - ie, a great power conflict seems all too possible - but with the added danger of nuclear and other such weapons of mass destruction. However, tragically, what is lacking is a viable socialist alternative.

Here, we can, naturally enough, categorically discount the far right of the far left. Eg, Chris Ford’s ghastly blue and yellow Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (USC) and its ‘socialist’ affiliates, such as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Anticapitalist Resistance, Republican Socialist Platform and the Real Democracy Movement. Along with prime minister Rishi Sunak, its operative slogan is: ‘Arm, arm, arm Ukraine’. The USC brags of taking the “initiative” to draw up the January 23 “cross party” early-day motion in the House of Commons which called upon Sunak to donate “all 79 surplus Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, along with 179 Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles and as many as possible of the Warrior fighting vehicles that are due to be replaced this year”.³⁰ The motion attracted a revealing rag bag of signatures: Clive Lewis (Labour), Dawn Bulter (Labour), Mick Whitley (Labour), David Wayne (Labour), Nadia Whittome (Labour), John McDonnell (Labour), Rachael Maskell (Labour), Sir Stephen Timms (Labour), Stewart Hosie (SNP), Stewart Malcom McDonald (SNP), Jim Shannon (DUP).³¹ By your friends …

Naturally, with its “murky origins” in shadow and mirror CIA operations during the cold war,³² USC statements are couched in bogus internationalist, socialist and anti-imperialist language. But what we unmistakably have is a social-imperialist outfit, which has betrayed the most elementary working class principle: the main enemy is at home.

The pro-Kremlin left, the social-Putinists, are marginally better. George Galloway’s Workers Party, the Brarite CPGB (ML), the New Communist Party, Socialist Action and (unofficially, using devious language) the CPB’s Young Communist League, oppose the main enemy … which, yes, is at home. Morally brave, albeit in a crass, amazingly stupid way.

The pro-Kremlin left take Putin at his word. When this capitalist gangster says he is committed to the “noble cause” of deNazifiying Ukraine, they believe him. Gullible, moronic even. Indisputably, there is the state cult of Stepan Bandera and fascist bands, including those incorporated into Ukraine’s armed forces: eg, the Azov regiment. But the fascist tail does not wag the Ukrainian dog. And, of course, Putin himself is politically of the far-right: essentially his regime is an alliance of the FSB, the army, the Orthodox church and business interests - in that order - and there are plenty of Russian fascists who are well rewarded for services rendered as intellectuals, rabble-rousers or goons.

Classically, social-pacifists make the plea for peace, not by wishing for the defeat of one combatant and the victory for another, but in the name of an altogether vague, ‘socialist’ future. Today, in that spirit, the Stop the War Coalition, the Morning Star’s CPB, Counterfire, the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, Peace and Justice, Momentum, etc champion diplomacy, the Minsk accords, international law and the lie that there can be peace, while capitalism survives. Plaintive calls for a Nato reset combine with plaintive calls for Ukrainian self-determination and territorial integrity.

Such nonsense engenders weakness. The abject surrender of the Socialist Campaign Group’s 11 MPs should never be forgotten. Having signed the StWC’s ‘Self-determination for the Ukrainian people’ plus respect for Russia’s ‘legitimate security concerns’ statement,³³ they immediately withdrew their names after being threatened with nothing more than the loss of the Labour whip by Sir Keir Starmer.

Putting their silly little careers above the principles they claim to hold so dear, instead of defying Sir Keir, organising a long overdue fightback in Labour’s ranks and pledging, if necessary, to stand in the next general election as unofficial Labour candidates, they pathetically caved in.

Actually, taken in its own right, StWC hardly deserves to be called social-pacifist. In word and deed it is simply a pacifist organisation. Eg, sounding like some canting C of E vicar, StWC made the call, in the name of “peace-loving people”, for the “British government” to “set aside all belligerent language and encourage … an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and a full and lasting peace”.³⁴

What makes the StWC a social-pacifist organisation is its Counterfire leadership of John Rees, Lindsey German and Chris Nineham - that plus their allies in the CPB, Left Unity, SWP, etc. They are ‘peace-loving socialist people’. But the fact of the matter is that most people favour a “full and lasting peace” - it is a nice idea, a worthy goal - including, of course, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. Each of them wants an eventual end to the bloody carnage in Ukraine. The trouble is that each of them advocates a reactionary “full and lasting peace”. The US, Nato, the EU all want a “full and lasting peace” that sees regime change in Moscow … and from there on to regime change in Beijing. Zelensky wants Ukraine to find a “full and lasting peace” within Nato and the EU and deny national rights to Ukrainian Russians. Putin wants “full and lasting peace” that sees Ukraine incorporated in a greater Russia.

Socialism

Our perspectives - in contrast to the social-imperialists, the social-Putinists and the social-pacifists - are based on highlighting the gulf that separates socialism and capitalism, overcoming the existing division of the left into countless confessional sects and uniting the working class under the banner of a mass Communist Party. If significant sections of the existing left were to make such a commitment, there is every chance of a rapid breakthrough.

Towards that end, should we scorn, sneer at calls for peace that come from so-called ordinary people? No, not at all. The slogans of the organised left are one thing, but popular sentiments are something else entirely. Indeed, yearnings for peace are one of the most important symptoms revealing the beginnings of a more profound disenchantment with capitalism and its lies.

That is why Lenin urged socialists to utilise the “desire for peace”. But, asks Lenin. “how is it to be utilised?” To “recognise the peace slogan and repeat it” would be mere phrase-mongering, would “mean deceiving the people” with the illusion that “existing governments”, the “present-day master classes”, are capable of granting a “peace in any way satisfactory to democracy and the working class”. No, they will have to be “eliminated” by a series of revolutions in all the advanced countries.³⁵

Today, therefore, nothing is more harmful to our cause than the lie peddled by StWC that Biden, Sunak, Zelensky and Putin are capable of delivering “a full and lasting peace”. Nothing fosters more illusions amongst the advanced part of the working class, nothing misleads more, nothing blurs over the profound difference between capitalism and socialism, nothing obscures the warmongering bestiality of capitalism more than does this lie.

The peace, health and security that the mass of the world’s population longs for cannot be achieved under capitalism. No, we must expose the lies of social-imperialism and social-pacifism, build mass communist parties and popularise demands for the popular militia and the abolition of all standing armies. In short we must take forward the struggle for extreme democracy and socialist revolution.

1. My line in numerous Online Communist Forums, but corrected with my first Weekly Worker article on the war: ‘Here we stand’, March 3 2022 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1385/here-we-stand).↩︎

2. Russia lacked the overwhelming, 3:1 manpower advantage recommended by military theorists, when it comes to war of the offensive, as opposed to defensive. The name of Frederick Lanchester (1868-1946) ought to be mentioned in this context: he produced a whole series of neat mathematical formulas. See PK Davies Aggregation, disaggregation and the 3:1 rule in ground warfare: www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR638.pdf.↩︎

3. www.politico.eu/article/anti-war-russia-open-letter-to-president-vladimir-putin.↩︎

4. M Schwirtz et al ‘Putin’s war’ The New York Times December 16 2022.↩︎

5. Evening Standard February 17 2023.↩︎

6. Wall Street Journal February 15 2023.↩︎

7. The Washington Post February 14 2023.↩︎

8. N Phifer A handbook of military strategy and tactics New Delhi 2012, p158ff.↩︎

9. Quoted in The Guardian February 20 2023.↩︎

10. See N Mulder The economic weapon: the rise of sanctions as a tool of modern war New Haven CT 2022.↩︎

11. Voice of America February 16 2023.↩︎

12. The Washington Post February 19 2023.↩︎

13. The Jerusalem Post February 20 2023.↩︎

14. www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hunts-western-parts-to-run-its-war-machines.↩︎

15. www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/impact-sanctions-russian-economy.↩︎

16. blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/03/30/why-the-us-and-nato-have-long-wanted-russia-to-attack-ukraine.↩︎

17. consortiumnews.com/2022/03/27/can-russia-escape-the-us-trap.↩︎

18. consortiumnews.com/2022/02/04/what-a-us-trap-for-russia-in-ukraine-might-look-like.↩︎

19. Speaking on Real America’s Voice, Donald Trump, former (and would-be next) president of the United States, attacked the Biden administration for having “taunted Putin” and “almost forcing him to go in with what they’re saying. The rhetoric was so dumb.” (Newsweek October 8 2022).↩︎

20. emerging-europe.com/voices/how-generators-became-ukraines-hottest-commodity.↩︎

21. G Douhet The command of the air Maxwell AFB, 2019.↩︎

22. ABC News, February 20 2023.↩︎

23. The Guardian January 8 2023.↩︎

24. See www.rferl.org/a/satellite-images-russia-buildup-belarus/32121143.html.↩︎

25. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64664560.↩︎

26. Daily Express December 5 2022.↩︎

27. neweasterneurope.eu/2022/03/17/the-7d-plan-for-a-post-putin-russia-to-ensure-global-security.↩︎

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

29. Z Brzezinski The grand chessboard New York 1997, p30.↩︎

30. ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2023/02/01/british-mps-demand-bigger-tank-donations-to-ukraine.↩︎

31. edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/60530/tanks-and-military-aid-for-ukraine.↩︎

32. P Houston, ‘A toxic operation’ Weekly Worker March 24 2022 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1388/a-toxic-operation).↩︎

33. www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine.↩︎

34. www.peaceinukraine.org/ukraine_040922.↩︎

35. Ibid.↩︎