16.10.2025

Notes on the war

Donald Trump threatens to supply Tomahawk missiles - a clear escalation, when it comes to war in the rear, says Jack Conrad. Meanwhile, on the front line the stalemate continues and the rainy season has arrived

This winter is set be a real trial for Ukraine, not least its civilian population. Russia has considerably upped its air war against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Thousands of drone and missiles have been targeted on power stations, electricity grid sub-stations and storage facilities. While a good percentage are intercepted, enough get through to cause considerable damage.

In a country where winter temperatures regularly stay below zero - and in the east and north-east they can go down to as much as -20°C - demand on what is already a strained power grid will be substantial. Even during the summer months shops and restaurants regularly have to resort to diesel generators. So the expectation is that this winter will see prolonged power cuts, perhaps lasting days … for the infirm, the elderly and the sick, killer conditions.

The fear is that with insufficient air-defences Ukraine will gradually be ground down to the point where its fighting capacity and civilian morale collapses and it is forced to surrender. Unlikely, in my opinion. After all, Ukrainian nationalism has deep roots, which will not be destroyed, no matter how many drones and missiles Moscow launches. And, of course, behind Ukraine stands Nato, the EU and, albeit now at one remove, the US global hegemon. Nonetheless energy supply is what the Brooking Institute calls a “key battleground in the war with Russia”.¹

Not that the weakness of Ukraine’s energy sector should be exaggerated. During Soviet times it was deliberately grown oversized to help cope with the system’s inefficiency, low productivity and chronic shortages. Before the Russian invasion around 50% of its energy requirements were met by four nuclear power plants. With the air war and Donbass coal and Russian gas and oil cut off, or greatly diminished, that has risen to some 70% - one of the highest levels in the world, ahead even of France’s with its 65%.

Fears of triggering a nuclear disaster has meant that so far those NPPs have largely been left untouched - though not their substations and electricity switch yards, which feed power into the grid. Since the beginning of the war electricity generation in Ukraine has dropped by around a third - a figure in no small measure accounted for by the loss of the Zaporizhzhia NPP to the Russian army (Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest NPP, is now in ‘cold shutdown’).

Moreover, there has been a drive towards decentralisation and diversification: solar panels, wind turbines, small gas modular turbines, old coal plants recommissioned, etc. That and massive electricity imports from the EU saved Ukraine from a winter shutdown in 2024-25. Using the ENSO-E system, 4.4 million MWh were transmitted from Europe - a 5.5-fold increase from the previous year.² After one or two more attacks Volodymyr Zelensky says it will probably be the same this winter.³

Ukrainian swarms

Meanwhile, Ukraine is conducting its own energy war. On October 11 Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, reported that its elite Alpha unit’s long-range drones had successfully hit the Bashneft-UNPZ oil refinery in Ufa, some 870 miles from Ukraine. The plant is one of the biggest refineries in Russia, supplying fuel and lubricants to the army. At least 16 of the country’s 38 oil refineries have been struck so far, some repeatedly. Domestic petrol prices have, as a result, risen and diesel exports have been cut. Estimates are that Russia has suffered a “20% loss of fuel production capacity”.⁴

Ukrainian officials boast of turning out more and better drones and missiles. Reportedly, Ukraine’s Fire Point and Liutyi long-range drones are being used in swarm attacks - sometimes up to 300 in a single operation. Ukrainian-produced Neptune and Flamingo missiles have also been used to hit Russian targets.

But, no surprise: according to the FT, it has been the US which has been providing the vital intelligence since midsummer on “long-range energy infrastructure targets”.⁵ When it comes to Ukraine’s allies, it alone has the necessary global satellite network and America wants Russia to “feel the pain”. Not only are targets located: the timing, the best route, the altitude needed to evade Russian air defences are provided by US intelligence and technical personnel. Kyiv’s drone force is, therefore, rightly described as the “instrument” for Washington to undermine Russia’s economy and push Putin towards negotiating a settlement.⁶

The Alaska summit with Putin left Trump frustrated, disappointed and threatening crippling sanctions. Well, talk of crippling sanctions remains talk, but Donald Trump is seriously considering beefing up Ukraine’s air defences and supplying it with Tomahawk missiles (Zelensky is due in Washington this Friday). Trump describes Tomahawks as “very offensive”.⁷ It is easy to see why.

Tomahawks are long-range cruise missiles with a range of 1,550 miles (that puts Moscow within reach). Launched from air, sea or ground, they fly fast, manoeuvring and hugging the contours; they are hard to detect and even harder to shoot down. Thanks to military-grade GPS and prestored data, they can also hit targets with very considerable accuracy. That would enable Ukraine to take out hardened or buried sites, such as command-and-control centres and missile silos. Costing around £1 million apiece, the presumption will be that America’s Nato allies will foot the bill.

To be a game changer, however, Tomahawks would have to be supplied in large numbers. A token battery or two and coordinated package launches would overwhelm air defences and allow for a propaganda spectacular, but little more. We have seen it with Storm Shadow - the British-French-Italian jointly manufactured cruise missile. Potent weapons, deliveries have, though, been at a drip-feed level. Therefore they could not, despite the hype, turn the tide of what is a war of attrition that will ultimately be decided by GDP, arms production capabilities, manpower resources … and popular morale.

Nonetheless, given European missiles, American satellites and military and technical personnel, claims that Nato is conducting a proxy war against Russia are more than well founded. While the ‘western community’ disputes Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhiya and Kherson, it accepts Russia’s sovereignty over the rest of its territory. Therefore, Russia has a right to treat attacks on its sovereign territory differently from attacks on territory over which its sovereignty is disputed. Under circumstances where Nato weapons navigate through sovereign Russian airspace, using guidance signals beamed by US military satellites, to strike a target in sovereign Russian territory, this could indeed be deemed an act of war against Russia, according to international law. US-Nato are co-belligerents.

Russia finds itself facing a dilemma. Any expectation of America abandoning Ukraine under Trump has proved illusory. Europe is ramping up war spending and seems prepared to pay for US arms deliveries. China insists on maintaining its distance. Meanwhile, Russia’s economic and financial situation has markedly deteriorated. All such factors spur Russia on and compel it to take greater risks. Hence the MiG 31s over Estonia and drones over Poland, Romania and Finland: part warning against phasing into World War III, part phasing into World War III. Russia seems to be testing both political will and the limits of Nato’s air defences. A dangerous game. On September 21 Trump warned that the US will “help” Poland and the Baltic States if Russia “keeps accelerating”.⁸

Front line

One reason why the war in the rear has assumed such importance is that the war on the front continues to be stalemated. There was, true, the much vaunted Russian summer offensive. In the early months of 2025 there was widespread commentary to the effect that Ukraine stood on the edge of defeat and that Russian victory was all but inevitable. Resistance to conscription in Ukraine, army desertions, superior Russian numbers were all cited as clinchers.

However, with the arrival of autumn, it is all too clear that Russia’s summer offensive failed according to almost every metric. The Russian army, of course, successfully regained the Kursk enclave during the winter of 2024-25.⁹ Since then, however, it has proved incapable of securing the aimed for “security buffer zone” deep inside Ukraine’s Sumy oblast, let alone capturing the regional capital. Kharkiv in the north-east certainly remains firmly in Ukrainian hands. Crucially, key strategic objectives such as Pokrovsk remain untaken. Indeed Russian troops find themselves pinned down in various villages, having been forced into a series of battlefield retreats.

Over the three months of its summer offensive Russia captured some 0.3% of Ukrainian territory. At that pace it would take another 90 years to secure the whole country. And the slivers of land have been gained at a huge cost. Ukraine’s general staff claim roughly 32,000 to 48,000 Russian casualties per month between January and July 2025 - that is, of course, ‘killed in action’ and ‘wounded in action’. The estimate for August was 29,000 and up to the middle of September 13,000.¹⁰ Obviously neither Russia nor Ukraine publish their own casualty figures. Even if they did, there would be no reason to trust them … and that certainly goes for enemy losses.

Either way, the claims provide some sort of snapshot. In this case a declining rate of casualties. Perhaps a surprising phenomenon, but one credibly explained by the hawkish Institute for the Study of War: Russia’s high command has abandoned human wave tactics and turned to unmanned ground vehicles (UMVs) … and small infantry units which operate with some considerable degree of autonomy.¹¹ Their task is to find and exploit weaknesses and holes in Ukraine’s undermanned defence lines. Having advanced they try to establish a holdable position in the expectation of additional units joining them and readying for the next move.

Nonetheless, the death toll is staggering. In the name of ‘glory to Ukraine’ on the one side and ‘all glory to Russia’ on the other, some 1.2 million already lie dead.¹² Interestingly, in this ghoulish respect, the ISW puts what it considers an “abnormally high” KIA to WIA ratio down to the ‘kill zones’ established by the ubiquity of drone warfare over the frontline. Instead of the usual 1:3 ratio, it is more like 1:1.¹³ Failure to provide enough medics and soldiers with training in first aid and triage might also be a factor. But the main cause of the high ratio is almost certainly drones. Injured soldiers make easy targets and commanders are unwilling to risk the loss of further men in rescue missions. In other words, movement on the battlefield is severely restricted.

It is still possible that Russia could still make frontline gains. Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad and Siversk are vulnerable to a determined assault. But a strategic advance on either side is highly unlikely. The rainy season, the rasputitsa, has now begun in earnest.

This makes offensive land warfare extraordinarily difficult. The ground, including the unpaved roads and dirt tracks - which Ukrainian forces used to evacuate their Kursk enclave - turns to mud. Infantry slips, slides and quickly becomes exhausted. Lorries - vital for supplying the front line with rations, munitions, fuel and reinforcements - get bogged down too. Wheels uselessly spin, axles sink into the sticky mire. Nor can tanks easily move. It almost goes without saying that the rasputitsa is well known in military circles to confer a great defensive advantage. Common nicknames are ‘General Mud’ or ‘Marshal Mud’.

Life in the trenches becomes hellish - read Erich Remarque’s All quiet on the western front (1928). Cold, filthy, rat-infested, water-clogged, poorly supplied and mentally draining. Such is the cess of war. And now there are the drones constantly buzzing overhead - inventively, Ukrainian troops have resorted to using shotguns as a “last resort”.¹⁴ The pellets are effective against low-flying drones. Along with trench warfare and anti-drone nets, shotguns are an example of what David Edgerton calls the ‘shock of the old.’¹⁵

Shock of new

Especially with drones, there is, though, the shock of the new. Russia continues to develop its drone technology, recently fibre optic, first-person view (FPV) repeater drones have been deployed. They significantly increase the range of frontline drones from about 15-18 miles to 30-40 miles. The kill zone is thereby stretched back to the near rear and Ukraine’s logistical operations become ever more hazardous. Lorry convoys, storage depots and transport hubs are all being hit. And, as with other fibre-optic drones, FPVs are resistant to Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW). Jamming stations cannot stop them.

Only with the winter freeze does full-scale offensive fighting become feasible once again. Tanks, howitzers, armoured personnel carriers, infantry and, crucially, lorries can move swiftly over solidly frozen ground and this allows for attack and manoeuvre. However, while the rain lasts, we should not expect any significant Russian breakthrough - unless, that is, Ukrainian morale completely collapses and its troops go AWOL from their bunkers and trenches (by any serious account, not something to be expected, especially if Trump supplies Tomahawks and finally embraces Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’). Nonetheless, it is clear that Ukraine is still on the back foot and the momentum lies, just about, with Russia.

We might, conceivably, expect a renewed Russian offensive towards the end of 2025. Reports suggest that Russia is creating a strategic reserve - made possible because of the decreased casualty rate and the increased recruitment rate. This indicates that Putin is content with the current, albeit painfully slow, advances on the battlefield, and expects, at some point, a Ukrainian collapse. There is also the possibility of direct conflict with Nato forces.

Putin’s generals doubtless hanker after giving him Pokrovsk as a new year’s gift. If captured, it would be the most important settlement to fall into Russian hands since Bakhmut in 2023 (which, at the time, the pro-Kremlin, Z left heralded as the beginning of Ukraine’s end). Due to its strategic location Pokrovsk would supposedly open the way to Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. Russia’s generals will certainly have detailed plans for taking the whole of the Donetsk oblast and then a concerted Russian push towards Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, in the north-east - that and/or Odessa in the south-west. Taking Odessa would all but landlock Ukraine and give Russia effective control over the entire northern Black Sea coastline.

However, what can be achieved on the battlefield is a lot harder than what can be achieved on paper. At the present rate of Russian advance, getting to Kharkiv or Odessa would take not a few short months of winter fighting, but years upon years. Meantime, even ruling out large-scale deliveries of Tomahawks and direct Nato involvement in intercepting Russian drones and missiles, the economic and social strains within Russia grow and grow in what is a war of attrition. Frankly, a Russian collapse is just as likely as a Ukrainian collapse … though neither scenario should be expected in the short term.

Imperialism

Writing in this paper, comrade Jaques de Fouw, a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party in the Netherlands, takes it for granted that we in the CPGB consider the Ukraine-Russia war as an “an inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and the west”.¹⁶ The RSP left majority might well take this mistaken position, I don’t know. But I do know that the RSP rightwing Mandelite minority, Socialistische Alternatieve Politiek, does not. Indeed they staged a split from the RSP on the basis of defending Ukraine’s “right to self-determination” (thereby lining up with Nato and their own ruling class in the Netherlands).

Comrade de Fouw takes the view that this SAP Mandelite spit was some sort of tragedy (rather than a blessing). His reasoning is strange. Very strange. He blames not the Mandelites for their unprincipled, pro-imperialist stance: no, it is those in the RSP who tabled and won their anti-imperialist motion that triggered the Mandelite split.

The comrade argues that to move any such motion is not determined by the class struggle and the need to draw sharp lines of demarcation against our main enemy (which is at home). No, instead of that urgent political necessity, he insists on unanimity and absolute certainty:

[C]an it be said that all communists have been able to see, without a shadow of a doubt, that the war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist war? Has there been definitive, thorough statistical proof of the imperialist nature of Russia, by Lenin’s definitions and others? And has this information been shown to all communists, especially those in our own organisations, in a comprehensive manner? Has it been shown, in a comprehensive manner, irrefutably, that support for Ukraine by the west is a proxy for imperialist goals? Has the nature of the Ukrainian state been demonstrated well enough? Do the people in our organisations even know what Lenin wrote on imperialism? I do not think so.

Well, we prefer straightforward democracy. Members of left organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, etc should be able to vote on issues big and small as a matter of routine. What they vote for need not be, and seldom is, based on irrefutable, beyond-dispute facts. Eg, the Norman invasion of England happened in 1066, the earth orbits the sun, there are a hundred pennies to the pound. Political opinions, assessments and requirements will do. Insisting on absolute certainty is, in fact, to turn one’s back on elementary democracy and perhaps serves as an excuse for appeasement and conciliation.

Have we, that is the CPGB, “irrefutably” shown that “support for Ukraine by the west is a proxy for imperialist goals”? No, but over very many articles, not least my own ‘Notes on the war’, we have comprehensively proved that proposition beyond any reasonable doubt (one of the good principles of English jurisprudence).

What about Russia being imperialist? Again, I think we have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that it is not an imperialist power (of course, it wants to join the imperialist club, but at the moment it cannot manage anything more than a subordinate alliance with China).

Let us, not least for the benefit of comrade de Fouw, revisit our argument.

If one wants to define imperialism as nothing more than intervening in another country and expanding territory, then, yes, no problem, Russia is imperialist. Athens and its Delian League, the Roman republic and Tudor England were by the same measure imperialist too. Imperialism, stating the obvious, existed well before capitalism took command over the state. But Marxism has done us the great service of locating modern imperialism in the context of a capitalism dominated by finance, giant monopolies and a system of global domination and exploitation with a definite, but never fixed, pecking order.

Hence in the 17th century England successfully challenged the Dutch for global hegemony, Britain saw off the French challenge in the 19th century and the German in the 20th century, but finally succumbed to the US in the 1940s.

True, the more sophisticated tell us that monopolies are the essence of imperialism and Russia, irrefutably, has its share of monopolies: eg, Gazprom, Rosneft, Lukoil and Sberbank. That, however, would make countries such as India, Brazil, South Africa and even Ukraine imperialist too. After all, each has its own batch of home-grown monopolies (ie, oligopolies, to use standard bourgeois economic jargon).

Without in any way treating Lenin’s Imperialism as a bible - it contains some clearly mistaken arguments - it is definitely worth citing in this context. For Lenin, imperialism is not only about monopoly and finance capital: it is the scale, proportion and dominance of overseas interest payments, dividends, rent and such. Hence Lenin emphasises parasitism and the fact that in Britain the “income of the rentiers is five times greater than the income obtained from the foreign trade”. This, he declares, is “the essence of imperialism and imperialist parasitism”.¹⁷

America, it should be added, pulls off exactly the same trick - and then one. Possessing uniquely powerful armed forces and with the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency, the US government can run a $1.97 trillion deficit through recourse to the simple device of what used to be called the printing press. Other countries thereby pay for Uncle Sam’s profligacy.

Moreover, what Ellen Meiksins Wood calls the “new imperialism” no longer involves territorial expansion and colonial possessions.¹⁸ Leave aside Trump’s ‘manifest destiny’ claims on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal zone, old-style colonialism does not belong in the American century - as the British and French found to their cost with the 1956 Suez crisis. Undoubtedly there is Israel, a US-backed ongoing colonial project … and a few surviving genuine micro-colonies; mostly tax havens, which, especially in the case of Britain, serve as a means for the City of London to skim off profits from high-level state and business corruption, criminal operations such as the drugs trade and perfectly legal tax-avoidance dodges.

No, the essence of post-World War II imperialism is unequal exchange, the export of capital, and a global pecking order which sees the US exploiting other, more or less independent, states through a system of capital, which is now “structured in a complex relation of domination and subordination”.¹⁹

What Russia’s so-called oligarchs typically exported - ‘so-called’ because they do not rule - was money, not capital: ie, self-expanding value. Their wealth - well, till they were sanctioned - generally took the form of swollen offshore bank accounts, top-end London, Paris and New York properties, English football clubs and luxury yachts.

China

China is, of course, another matter. It is no match for the US and its allies. Nonetheless, it is a full-spectrum rival and can perhaps be classified as fully imperialist, because it not only exports commodities, but also capital. In 2022 Chinese outbound direct investments amounted to $2.75 trillion in 47,000 enterprises, which span 190 countries. This puts the People’s Republic amongst the “world’s top three”.²⁰ Clearly the drivers here are internal laws and dynamics. Post-Mao, wage labour has become ubiquitous, including in the state sector. China now counts second only to America in terms of its number of billionaires.²¹ Though the party-state dominates politically, capital accumulation imposes an economic logic. The result is, however, incredibly complex and needs proper - ie, a thorough-going scientific - investigation … say something like Evgeny Preobrazhensky’s New economics (1926). Trite labels, lazy assumptions and prostituted apologetics are worse than useless.

Obviously, Russia does not parasitically exploit the world, or even its near abroad, in any meaningful way that can seriously be described as imperialist. Despite its 150 million population, it has a GDP that ranks far behind Japan, Germany, the UK and France. No, it is in the third league, down with countries like Brazil and Mexico.²² Even taking into account oil and gas, geographic size and nuclear weapons, Russia is most decidedly not a serious rival to the US.

By contrast, though it maintains no colonial bureaucracy, the US empire of the dollar, bases, alliances, institutions and treaties - the G7, World Bank and IMF, Nato, the Five Eyes and Aukus - robs and exploits the entire world with a callous ruthlessness unequalled in human history. US banks and corporations suck in wealth from other countries like a never quenched vampiric monster. Britain is the junior partner, which benefits through the City and plays the role of yapdog, when it comes to wars such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Gaza and Ukraine.

So Ukraine cannot be seen in isolation. Behind it there stands the unmatched might of the dominant US-led imperialist bloc. The US violently pulled Ukraine out of the Russian orbit with the 2014 Maidan coup and then, step by step, set it up as a pawn in the great game to dominate Halford Mackinder’s Eurasian ‘world island’. America would then, if it were successful, have the ability to reboot its domination of the entire globe - a scenario that both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will surely resist, using whatever means they have at their disposal.

Sympathising with ordinary Ukrainians who have been killed, injured, lost loved ones, fled abroad, etc, is perfectly natural. War is unimaginably cruel. But the Mandelite wish for Ukraine’s victory, support for its war aims (not least imposing Banderite rule over the Russian-speaking majority in Donbas and Crimea), demanding that Nato ‘Arm, arm, arm Ukraine’ and calling ‘Putin, Putin, Putin, out, out, out’ is to act in the direct interests of US imperialism. In Russia it might well be the case that principled communists would say that they ‘prefer to see a Russian defeat than its victory’. But, to state the obvious, we are not in Russia.

September’s Brighton TUC congress, thoroughly discombobulated the social-imperialists. Why? It reversed its nakedly pro-imperialist 2022 position and, narrowly, voted for the University and College Union ‘wages, not weapons’ motion (ie, butter not guns).²³ Our Mandelites, in the form of Anticapitalist Resistance, along with the Matgamnaite Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the much diminished Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign, continue, by contrast, to demand “full sanctions” against Russian “imperialist aggression” (ie, siege warfare), claim that the Putin regime is “attacking democracy globally” and that Ukraine should get all the “arms necessary to liberate the country, from wherever possible and without conditions”.²⁴

Here the internationalisation of ruling class ideology is unashamed and unmistakable. It is “Putin’s dictatorship” which is “linked to neo-fascist and authoritarian forces around the world”, not Zelensky and his Banderite Azov chums. It is Nato which is democratic and under threat. Despite that, moans the USC, “most western countries have been slow in providing arms”. Therefore the demand for supplying Ukraine with massively increased supplies of the most up-to-date fighter aircraft, tanks and missiles.

A recipe for yet more slaughter and, yes … phasing into World War III.

1. www.brookings.edu/articles/ukraines-energy-sector-is-a-key-battleground-in-the-war-with-russia.↩︎

2. energy.ec.europa.eu/news/2-years-ukraine-and-moldova-synchronised-electricity-grids-eu-2024-03-15_en.↩︎

3. www.ukrinform.net/rubric-economy/4046973-zelensky-after-one-or-two-more-attacks-ukraine-may-need-to-import-electricity.html.↩︎

4. Financial Times October 12 2025.↩︎

5. Ibid.↩︎

6. Ibid.↩︎

7. united24media.com/latest-news/tomahawks-have-already-beaten-russian-air-defenses-ukraine-warns-more-could-be-coming-12423.↩︎

8. understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-21-2025.↩︎

9. Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Kursk was a bold move militarily and saw much (over)excitement in establishment outlets. Foreign Policy announced that Kursk marks a “turning point” (August 14 2024). The Daily Express seriously reported that the Russian army stands “on the brink, as discipline crumbles” (August 12 2024). The Daily Telegraph too: Putin’s regime is “on notice” (August 12 2024). My own expectation, for what it is worth, was that the Russo-Ukrainian war “has a long way to run” (‘Notes on the war’ Weekly Worker August 22 2024: www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1503/notes-on-the-war.↩︎

10. understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-21-2025.↩︎

11. Ibid.↩︎

12. www.russiamatters.org/news/russia-ukraine-war-report-card/russia-ukraine-war-report-card-sept-24-2025.↩︎

13. understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-7-2025.↩︎

14. defence-blog.com/shotguns-return-to-relevance-in-drone-warfare.↩︎

15. See D Edgerton The shock of the old: technology and global history since 1900 London 2019.↩︎

16. J de Fouw ‘Paved with good intentions’ Weekly Worker September 25: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1554/paved-with-good-intentions.↩︎

17. VI Lenin CW Vol 22, Moscow 1977, p277 (my emphasis).↩︎

18. E Meiksins Wood Empire of capital London 2003, p7.↩︎

19. Ibid p141.↩︎

20. www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-outbound-investment-odi-recent-developments-opportunities-and-challenges.↩︎

21. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires.↩︎

22. www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country.↩︎

23. www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-09-15/tuc-calls-taxing-top-wealth.↩︎

24. ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2024/09/11/ukraine-solidarity-conference-declaration.↩︎