On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, which is separated from Russian-aligned Belarus by the Suwałki Hole, which runs alongside the Polish-Lithuanian border.
Amidst the imperialist proxy conflict towards Russia in Ukraine, the Suwałki Hole has been the focus of rising tensions between NATO and Russia. The stretch of land passes by way of NATO territory, and Lithuania and Poland have each systematically sought to impress a battle with Russia over it by first trying to ban freight deliveries from Russia to Kaliningrad, and, most not too long ago, ceasing to concern visas to nearly all Russian residents. Commentators have lengthy warned that if a direct army battle between NATO and Russia have been to happen in Europe, it will possible begin over the Suwałki Hole.
Tensions between the EU and Russia have additionally soared this week over the transfer by the EU to make the issuing of visas to Russian residents much more tough amid the continuing conflicts over Russian fuel provides to Europe, above all, through the Russian-German Nord Stream pipeline.
Putin’s go to on Thursday was clearly designed to strengthen Russia’s declare to Kaliningrad. It was additionally one of many uncommon events during which Putin brazenly spoke on the continuing conflict in Ukraine. In a dialogue with highschool college students, he said that an “anti-Russian enclave” had been created in Ukraine after the 2014 US-backed coup, posing a risk to Russia. The liquidation of this “enclave,” Putin mentioned, was the primary objective of what’s formally known as the “Russian particular operation” in Ukraine. “Subsequently, our guys who’re combating there are defending each the residents of the Donbass and Russia itself,” mentioned Putin.
His look in Kaliningrad got here amid indicators that the Kremlin is getting ready for a protracted battle with the imperialist powers which could effectively transcend the borders of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive to retake Kherson, a strategic metropolis in southern Ukraine, although introduced with grand fanfare on Monday, already appears to be faltering.
In an unusually blunt commentary for the Washington Submit, David Ignatius all however acknowledged that the imperialist backers of Ukraine don’t even depend on its success. The Biden administration has spent over $50 billion since February alone on arming Ukraine, together with a bundle that may present for weapons deliveries for at the least one other three years.
Ignatius wrote:
As Ukraine mounts a brand new counteroffensive within the southern a part of the nation, Zelensky’s bravado dangers setting expectations too excessive. In reality, Ukraine in all probability gained’t liberate its territory this 12 months, and even subsequent. Nonetheless, as Ukrainian forces push towards the Black Beach, Zelensky is delivering a defiant response to President Vladimir Putin’s declare that Ukraine shouldn’t be an actual nation. Not solely can Ukraine survive, it can also regain a few of its occupied land.
Ignatius then went on to reward Ukraine’s potential to make use of US-delivered Excessive Mobility Artillery Rocket Methods (HIMARS) and different precision weapons to hit Russian army headquarters, ammunition depots and different army infrastructure. Above all, nevertheless, he harassed the Ukrainian insurgency as a key part of this conflict, proudly acknowledging that it had been ready for by Washington over a interval of just about eight years. He wrote:
This partisan marketing campaign, just like the HIMARS precision hearth, is a product of U.S. planning and coaching of Ukrainian forces. Since 2014, U.S. Particular Operations forces have been educating the Ukrainians the right way to combat an occupying military—utilizing particular items like those that have been so efficient towards al-Qaeda and Islamic State fighters.
Ignatius then quoted from an interview with Gen. Richard Clarke, who’s about to retire as head of the U.S. Particular Operations Command: “What we did, beginning in 2014, was set the situations. When the Russians invaded in February, we’d been working with Ukrainian SOF for seven years. With our help, they constructed the capability, so that they grew and so they grew in numbers, however extra importantly, they constructed functionality,” in each fight assaults and data operations.
In keeping with Clarke, the SOF brigades have been developed systematically in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and the Donbass, particularly, all areas that at the moment are on the middle of the combating. Ignatius boasted:
This guerrilla conflict has produced a grim physique depend amongst pro-Russian officers within the occupied areas. Up to now few weeks, pro-Russian officers have been killed or injured by automobile bombs, roadside bombs, poison and shotguns.
In different phrases, the US shouldn’t be involved with any precise army “victory” of Ukraine in both this counteroffensive or the conflict as an entire. Reasonably, the calculation is that an extremely excessive demise toll from a protracted conflict and a US-armed and US-trained insurgency will contribute to the destabilization of Russia, facilitating a long-planned regime change operation and the carve-up of the nation itself.
The Putin regime, which emerged out of the Soviet paperwork’s restoration of capitalism, is totally incapable of responding to the risk posed by imperialism aside from by way of a promotion of nationalism, militarism and sophistication conflict at dwelling towards the working class. The invasion itself on February 24, whereas provoked by imperialism, was a bankrupt and determined effort to extend its leverage in negotiations with the imperialist powers. However the reverse occurred. The invasion was seized upon by the imperialist powers as a a lot wanted pretext to implement their long-held conflict plans towards Russia and escalate their army build-up for a brand new imperialist redivision of the world.
In a exceptional essay for the think-tank journal Russia in World Affairs, Sergei Karaganov, who has lengthy functioned as a overseas coverage mouthpiece of the Kremlin, successfully admitted that Moscow had no actual plan for the conflict however now needed to put together for a protracted battle with NATO. He wrote that the final word targets of Russia’s “particular army operation” in Ukraine “remained to be decided.”
In the identical breath, he insisted that the formally declared targets of “demilitarizing” Ukraine and turning it right into a “impartial state” within the battle between Russia and NATO have been nonetheless “realizable.” Nevertheless, with a purpose to obtain them, “Russia should be politically, morally and economically ready for a protracted army operation, continuously teetering getting ready to an escalation with the West, together with and as much as a restricted nuclear conflict.”
Karaganov then went on to debate at size the hazard that such a protracted conflict might finish, just like the First World Struggle, in a revolutionary motion among the many lots, or, as he put it “the disaster of 1917.” He famous the devastating affect that the “financial conflict” waged by NATO had on the working inhabitants, warning that this might finally flip public sentiment towards the conflict.
In an effort to stop a repetition of the “disaster of 1917,” Karaganov insisted that there needed to be a purge inside Russia’s political and financial elite. He known as for a “full nationalization of the Russian elites, a pushing out of all comprador and pro-Western parts and sentiments,” in addition to the institution of most financial autarky. Russia, he insisted, needed to be became a “fortress.”
In a show of the identical semi-delusional Nice Russian chauvinism that now permeates the Russian state propaganda, Karaganov offered the conflict because the spearhead of Russia’s supposed mission to save lots of civilization in an anti-Western campaign. He wrote, “We’re the civilization of civilizations, the prop of the opposition to neo-colonialism, and the free improvement of civilizations and cultures.”
Employees in Russia and internationally should reject this reactionary promotion of Russian nationalism and the bankrupt coverage of “nationwide protection” by the Russian oligarchy. The imperialist proxy conflict in Ukraine is finally the results of the Stalinist response towards the October Revolution of 1917, during which the working class, led by the Bolshevik Occasion, for the primary time in historical past seized state energy. The revolution put an an finish to the First World Struggle and opened up the epoch of world socialist revolution.
The decades-long Stalinist betrayal of the Marxist program of October finally resulted within the 1991 destruction of the Soviet Union, which paved the way in which for the rule of a legal oligarchy in each Russia and Ukraine and a long time of imperialist conflict which have now culminated at first of a brand new world conflict. The one path to place an finish to the unfolding catastrophe lies in a return to the socialist and internationalist traditions within the worldwide working class that shaped the premise for the 1917 revolution. This requires, above all, the constructing of the Worldwide Committee of the Fourth Worldwide, together with in each Russia and Ukraine.
