A war which suits the West's leaders while Ukraine's population pays the ultimate price

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
1 March 2022

It's a week since Putin sent his army into Ukraine.  Bombs and shelling and so-called "targeted" strikes are already killing and maiming the population and pulverising the infrastructure.  Yet Putin's real adversaries, behind this indefensible death and destruction which he has instigated against the Ukrainian people - who're treated as proxy cannon-fodder - are Nato's imperialist leaders, Jens Stoltenberg, Biden and Johnson, first and foremost.

    Today they're actually congratulating themselves for having been "right" all along, about Putin's intentions.  But theirs is a macabre and self-fulfilling prophecy.  All the while they refused to engage in talks over reducing NATO's threat against Russia as Putin demanded - whether deranged or not (and if he's irrational, it's all the more cynical).  They knew, better than anyone else, what the price of their refusal was.  But despite this, Biden cancelled proposed talks, meant to take place last Thursday.

    Biden's excuse? That Putin had already sent soldiers into Donetsk and Luhansk in East Ukraine, recognising them as "independent republics".  But this was also entirely predictable.  For 8 years, there has been fighting in the Donbas, between Russia-supporting rebels and Ukrainian nationalists.  Protocols agreed in Minsk in 2014/15, which were meant to organise referenda on self-government, were never implemented by the Ukrainian parliament.

    Now there is a state of terrible war for everyone in Ukraine.  European leaders, Johnson and Biden, dare to praise the heroism of the Ukrainians who're standing up (with Molotov cocktails and little else!) to Putin's huge, but maybe even reluctant army, as they wait for more so-called "lethal aid" from the West. Across the political board, Western politicians - including Starmer's Labour - raise their own reactionary nationalist fists, like Johnson, saying "glory to Ukraine".  As if there was "glory" in this catastrophe, which they no doubt hope will weaken Putin, one way or another.

    But as Ukraine's refugees pour across Ukraine's borders, they are not even allowed free passage into Britain!  Of course not.  Proof in itself, if needed, of the utter hypocrisy of Johnson's government.

    There is probably a lot worse to come in this war.  But worse is also to come for the working classes here and elsewhere - albeit on a wholly different level - as Johnson and his fellows hide behind war and the post-Covid crisis of their own making, to try to get workers to take the ever-escalating government and bosses' attacks, lying down.