“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English.”  (Lewis Carol, Alice in Wonderland)

As I write these lines, the headlines of the newspapers are dominated by the shock announcement that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its allies if they lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range western missiles for the purpose of deep strikes on Russian territory.

The mysterious sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines has all the elements of a Hollywood crime drama: conspiracy, cover-up – and betrayal. A new series of revelations from the German police, published in the American press, purport to blow the case wide open. But when it comes to the Ukraine War, where lies have played an enormous role, we can accept nothing at face value.

“It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.16-27)

“Can a man take fire to his bosom, And his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, And his feet not be seared?”(Proverbs 6:27-29)

A local Marxist in the southern Ukrainian city of Pervomaisk, Bogdan Syrotiuk, was arrested by the SBU on 25 April. He is being held in a high security prison in Mykolaiv under poor conditions under charges of treason and aiding the Russian invasion. Some of our comrades have known Bogdan for a number of years, and it is clear that these are made up charges by Ukrainian state security against a known left activist in the area.

A recent New York Times article, “based on more than 200 interviews, current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe” has laid bare some aspects of US imperialism’s intervention in Ukraine. It details a collaboration between the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence services stretching back to the aftermath of the 2013-4 Euromaidan movement, and continuing up to the present war, including the construction of 12 “forward operating bases constructed along the Russian border.”

The announcement by the Russian Ministry of Defence that its forces had full control of the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka represents a devastating blow to Ukraine and almost certainly a decisive turning point in the war.

As the year comes to a close, the complete failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counter-offensive has opened a chorus of mutual recriminations within Ukraine and between Kyiv and its imperialist puppet masters. Funding for the proxy war against Russia is drying up in Washington, Brussels and Berlin, and so western imperialism is now pushing Zelensky into a course of action which he is resisting as it spells his political (and perhaps physical) death: peace talks with Putin.

The war has come to Poland! However, it has not arrived in the form that the media parrots and paid hacks have been threatening for years: i.e. of Putin’s tanks rolling up to the Vistula to restore the Russian Empire. Instead, the borders of Poland are being guarded against fleets of grain coming from Ukraine, which threaten something at least as precious to every capitalist as independence: the market.

If the meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in India was intended as a show of unity against Russia, it succeeded in producing precisely the opposite result.

A motion is up for discussion at this week’s TUC Congress, calling for ‘solidarity with Ukraine’. Instead of backing the Tories and their imperialist aims, the labour movement must fight for an internationalist, class-based position.

The failure of Ukraine’s counter-offensive has brought to the fore all the contradictions in the Ukrainian war effort. Disaffection is spreading in the army and among civilians, while at the same time Ukraine’s western allies are getting cold feet and starting to talk about negotiations.

When the news of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s demise hit the headlines yesterday, the usual pundits appeared on our television screens with the alacrity of a flock of vultures, anxious to pick over the bones of a dead animal in the African savannah.

NATO’s latest summit in Vilnius is being heralded by its members as a great success and a new step in the process of strengthening the military alliance. But then, they wouldsay that. We need to separate the facts from the press conference statements. If you peek into the goings on behind the scenes, you might get a glimpse of the actual divisions, rifts and challenges facing the imperialist organisation.