The US has just announced another $8 billion tranche of deadly aid to prolong the war in Ukraine. Even though it has long been clear that Ukraine has lost, a section of the western imperialists are determined to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood. Meanwhile, Zelensky, for his own political reasons, like a gambler doubling down, has opened a new, bloody front in Kursk.
The only result of all this will be further death and destruction. This is a clear demonstration of the correctness of Lenin’s statement that capitalism is “horror without end.”
The West is to blame
In March 2022, at negotiations with Russia in Istanbul, Ukraine proposed “adopting neutral status in exchange for security guarantees”, which would essentially rule out Ukraine’s NATO membership. According to David Arakhamia, a member of Zelensky’s party, Russia was “ready to end the war” on this basis.
However, due to pressure from the West, Ukraine was pushed into abandoning these talks. Victoria Nuland, US Under Secretary of State at the time, explained that, during the negotiations, the Ukrainians came to the US for “consultations”. Here, Nuland explained, they were told in no uncertain terms that the US would not support a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. That is, they sabotaged the talks. They did this, in fact, despite the fact that they had no intention of inducting Ukraine into NATO.
At the same time, as Arakhamia explains, Boris Johnson charged into Kyiv, blustering that “he did not want to sign anything with the Russians” and, instead, “let’s just fight.”
For the US, the Palestinians have to accept demilitarisation, but for Ukraine this is wrong. This is because, ultimately, the Western imperialists do not care one bit for national sovereignty. Having provoked the war and attempting to pull Ukraine into their own sphere of domination, the western imperialists were happy for it to continue in order to weaken Russia, as the US defence secretary himself admitted:
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
Here he did not mean that the US wanted to prevent Russia from causing death and destruction such as that created by the war in Ukraine. Rather he meant that they wanted to weaken Russia to such a degree that it could not challenge US imperialism in the future in the event that it pushed further into Russia’s sphere of influence, and even potentially into Russia itself.
What has it achieved?
Two-and-a-half years later, there have been hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties and far more lives destroyed. The situation at the front is horrific. The Economist recently quoted a soldier who explained how some inexperienced reinforcements were recently sent to the front: “Over three days, 100 became zero. Some ran, some fell.” One officer described how his brigade has lost more soldiers this year than in the eighteen months prior.
Innocent Ukrainian people are being sent to their deaths in a war that can’t be won / Image: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons
The diversion of troops to Kursk means there are not enough soldiers to properly rotate, so soldiers “do not get rest, they are in the trenches for 30-40 days, some even have strokes.” On top of this, the military hierarchy is “not paying attention to the things you really need in war, like medical training.”
Innocent Ukrainian people are being sent to their deaths in a war that can’t be won. Ukraine’s military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, is described even by the right-wing British Telegraph as having “disregard for the lives of his own men; a tendency to issue impossible orders; reluctance to trust officers on the ground. Above all, a refusal to say ‘no’ to political masters demanding unrealistic goals.”
That this individual is head of the armed forces is unsurprising. In fact, one Ukrainian news outlet, Strana, reports, that Syrskyi replaced Valerii Zaluzhnyi at the head of Ukraine’s armed forces after the latter criticised the completely crazy idea of carrying out an offensive on Russian territory.
In fact, the only effect of the Kursk offensive has been to accelerate the Russian advance and to increase support for the war in Russia, which is 10-15 percent higher than the national average in regions bordering Kursk. This offensive is militarily weakening Ukraine, increasing its rate of attrition of troops and materiel, while stretching its front ever thinner, all for a temporary political boost.
Ukrainian victory is impossible
Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ reportedly includes “a withdrawal of all Russian troops, the restoration of Ukraine's post-Soviet borders and a means to bring Russia to account for its invasion.” There is talk of “security guarantees akin to the mutual defence pact of NATO membership”; “specific” advanced weapons; and international aid. In other words, Zelensky proposes total defeat for Russia.
However, these proposals bear no resemblance to the current balance of forces. The situation is described by Julian Repke, a military analyst, in Bild:
“The Ukrainian soldiers I speak to can barely comprehend the catastrophe that is unfolding. Territories are sometimes being lost so quickly it is as if a retreat order had been given.”
At times in August, Ukrainian troops were retreating by more than a mile a day. When Russia took the town of Novohrodivka, it did so in a matter of days without, according to Repke, “losing a single armoured vehicle and leaving the infrastructure largely intact.” Taking settlements of a similar size in the past took Russia months.
A Ukrainian MP, Maryana Bezugla, explains that, beyond the current front line: “There are no fortifications”, brigades of mobilised troops are “fleeing due to fear and lack of training”. Meanwhile, the defence of Pokrovsk, a key logistic hub for the Ukrainian Army in the Donbass, is being conducted merely as a “local initiative”. The lack of fortifications means soldiers are left using shrubbery as cover, leading to “senseless deaths”, according to one deputy commander.
At times in August, Ukrainian troops were retreating by more than a mile a day / Image: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons
In order to deal with the lack of troops, some like Boris Johnson suggest mobilising young people. Not content with sending Ukrainians over the age of 25 to their deaths (the current minimum age of service), Johnson proposes sending youngsters to join them.
Quite apart from the obvious disgust that most people will feel seeing Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson happily sending people to die in a far off war, his ‘solution’ is totally self-defeating. As one soldier explained, morale is at rock bottom:
“[The mobilised troops] don’t even get the most basic level of training that is necessary… Some people don’t want to shoot… That’s why our people die. When they don’t use their weapons they are ineffective. Fear breeds panic and chaos. That’s also the reason for our defeats.”
Others have difficulty “assembling weapons, coordinating basic combat movements” and lack “basic knowledge of topography or simply abandon positions.”
Unsurprisingly, this situation has produced a mood of anger and disgust amongst many of the troops. One soldier, calling himself Saigon, explained that Ukrainian soldiers feel like “powerless serfs”:
“Chaos, corruption, incompetence, irresponsibility, not giving a shit and lawlessness are in full bloom. People see that only pedestrians and public transport passengers are subject to mobilisation… After the Russians, the Ukrainian military hates their own leadership, which is out of touch with reality, the most.”
So, the Ukrainian military has been reduced to snatching people off the streets and off public transport, gives them very little training and then sends them off to the front to die. This is the ‘victory plan’ pursued by Zelensky.
Unsurprisingly, many soldiers are deciding to desert their posts. It has become so common that the abbreviation ‘SOCH’ (meaning AWOL) has become an internet meme in Ukraine. Volodomyr Boyko, a journalist who serves in the Ukrainian army, estimates the total number of desertions to be 200,000. One officer, Dima, reported leaving his position after more than half of the 800 men under his command were killed or seriously injured. He explained he could no longer watch his men die.
There have also been instances of disobedience. One Ukrainian soldier explained to Strana that they arrived at Pokrovsk with a huge “personnel shortage”:
“After a week of fighting, there were even fewer of us left – 10-13 people in a company, including commanders [the normal staffing level of a company is 80-100 people – Ed.]. Having taken up positions… we were faced with the incompetence of the command: there is no communication with neighbouring units… there is no clear understanding of the positions, whose they are… Sometimes these positions are already occupied by the Russians. We simply physically cannot hold the defence at positions with such a shortage of personnel: for every one of ours there are 30 Russians! […]
“Therefore, three of our companies from among those transferred to Pokrovsk refused to carry out combat orders. The authorities arrived and suggested that those who refused… take a step forward. Everyone who remained, led by the commanders, took a step.”
The Ukrainian army appears to be on the verge of total collapse. It has become so bad that even senior NATO figures admit it is “militarily unrealistic” to push Russian troops out of Ukraine.
For this reason, there is talk that the West is now pushing Ukraine to develop a ‘realistic’ and ‘pragmatic’ plan for the war. The Wall Street Journal explains that, to actually bring about victory, “hundreds of billions of dollars of support” would be required, which is “something neither the US or Europe can do.” The western imperialists fund Ukraine enough to maintain the war (but not to win) and Zelensky orders his troops to carry on fighting. With every death there is yet more blood on the hands of these people.
Mood in Ukraine
The mood inside Ukraine has also changed, with one recent poll showing 57 percent of Ukrainians favour negotiations with Russia to achieve peace. However, poll numbers do not give you a feel of the extreme anger on the part of some Ukrainians. A few months ago, Vladislava Rogovenko, a blogger with millions of followers, wrote:
The Ukrainian people have been made to pay for the interests of US imperialism / Image: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Flickr
“Let the clown go and negotiate peace. Enough innocent deaths and this horror. How long will this go on? My anger knows no bounds. I hate power on both sides.”
Along with many others who publicly questioned the war, she was accused of being part of a Russian plot and received visits from the security services.
The Ukrainian people have been made to pay for the interests of US imperialism. The Ukrainian state has the biggest budget deficit in the world, with a “financing gap” of $ 35 billion in 2025. To pay for this, the IMF is pushing austerity, including increasing VAT by 3-4 percent and a devaluation of the currency. The government is happy to oblige, freezing all social payments despite the fact that inflation currently stands at 7.5 percent.
All the declarations of the western imperialists about ‘standing with Ukraine’ are here revealed as the shallow cynicism they really are. The continuation of the war for Ukraine means exorbitant debt and its people slaughtered on a massive scale in a fight that cannot be won. Moreover, even if Ukraine was by some miracle to emerge victorious, it would effectively be left as a vassal of western imperialism – so much for a war to defend ‘national sovereignty’.
Is peace possible?
Despite all of this, Zelensky fights on. The reason is clear. As political analyst Oleksiy Kovzhun points out, ceding Ukrainian territory would mean Zelensky’s “political suicide”. In order to save his political life, Zelensky sends his people to their deaths.
It is claimed that it is impossible to negotiate with Putin, since this ‘Russian Hitler’ will just renege on any agreements that are made in his quest to dominate Europe. However, there is a clear framework which would allow the fighting to stop.
Foreign Policy recently conducted a series of interviews with what they describe as members of the “Russian establishment”. A large majority wanted an early ceasefire roughly along the current front. On top of this, the idea of launching a future attack on NATO was laughed at:
“Look, the whole point of all these warnings to NATO has been to stop NATO from joining the fight against us in Ukraine, because of the horrible dangers involved. Why in the name of God would we ourselves attack NATO and bring these dangers on ourselves? What could we hope to gain? That’s absurd!”
In June, Putin pointed out that the fighting would stop if Ukraine withdrew its forces from the four provinces Russia claims and NATO membership was taken off the table. This view is corroborated by Peter Schroeder, who (being a former CIA analyst) could hardly be accused of being a ‘Putin apologist’. He points out that the reason for this war was precisely because, for Russia, it is a “strategic necessity” to prevent “Ukraine from becoming a bastion that the West can use to threaten” it.
In other words, if the US had not tried to pull Ukraine into its sphere of influence, Russia would have had no reason to launch this war. Consequently, if the West refuses to grant Ukraine NATO membership and stops military support, the war can end.
The real calculations of the Russian ruling class are deliberately obscured by the capitalist press and politicians in the West / Image: kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons
The real calculations of the Russian ruling class are deliberately obscured by the capitalist press and politicians in the West, who instead paint the war as an epic struggle between good and evil. They draw increasingly garish and absurd pictures of Russian expansionism set on dominating the whole of Europe.
To take just one example, The Daily Mail in Britain recently published a hysterical picture of Putin’s next moves, including the invasion of Poland and the Baltic states, with nuclear strikes on Britain, France, Germany and Finland to complete the nightmarish picture. All this is intended to cover up the fact that up to this point, it has been the West which has wilfully been pushing for the continuation of the war at every stage.
The end game
How is this going to end? Zelensky’s proposal, with the support of the most rabid pro-war types in the West. This includes individuals such as Boris Johnson and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, both graduates of the Bullingdon Club, a private club of extraordinarily wealthy toffs at Oxford University.
These individuals, for their own reasons, are desperate to maintain the war. If these disgusting creatures want the fighting to continue, why don’t they do as Boris Johnson recently suggested: form a foreign legion, and go and fight themselves? In the end, they can drag out the conflict, but defeat is now staring them in the face as a certainty.
In the end, it is almost entirely certain that Russia will achieve its main war aims. But the imperialists have no qualms in dragging out the conflict at the cost of millions of Ukrainian lives, sacrificed for the mere purpose of cushioning their own fall. In the end, the price of this war, as with all imperialist wars, will be placed at the foot of the working class and poor. The only way to end this barbaric state of affairs once and for all is to end the capitalist system, which is ultimately the root cause of all war, poverty, oppression and suffering.