Articles

Posted by: John Phoenix 2016 As the torchlight parades and flaunting of nazi insignia proceed with impunity on the streets of Kiev, a group calling itself the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (USC) has emerged in Britain to warn workers against ‘taking sides’ in the conflict. Its argument is that there are oligarchs and nationalists on both sides in the conflict, with one side backed by western imperialism and the other by ‘Russian imperialism’. Its conclusion is that workers have nothing to gain by affiliation with either side, and that they should concentrate instead upon advancing their own class interests – that’s how the argument runs. ‘Not taking sides’ against fascism in the Ukraine should be a hard proposition to sell to trade unions, even though it is backed up to the hi...

Posted by: John Phoenix 2015 With Kiev’s continuing failure to break the military stalemate on the eastern front by a renewed offensive, compounded by its failure to paper over the significance of its default on eurobond debt, and now with the added pressure from Germany and France for Ukraine to fulfil its obligations under the Russian-brokered Minsk peace process, Poroshenko is in danger of painting himself into a corner from which his patrons in Washington and London may find it hard to extricate him. Up until the Paris meeting, the People’s Republics had planned to run local elections, Donetsk on 18 October and Lugansk on 1 November. The junta huffed and puffed a good deal over this, happy to find some excuse for its continuing failure to implement the Minsk agreements t...

Posted by: John Phoenix 2015 To all appearances imperialism is nerving itself up for a third major offensive against the Donbass, drawing still closer to an overt, ‘hot’ confrontation with Russia. But even as war preparations are stepped up, Poroshenko is struggling just to control his own fascist backyard. Imperialist brinksmanship Defence Minister Michael Fallon recently flew into Ukraine to pay a visit to the British military training teams outside Kiev. Whilst there he took the opportunity to announce plans to double the number of Ukrainian troops Britain is training by Christmas, and to pledge more trainers if Kiev requested them (at the moment the official number of trainers in place totals 75). Fallon claimed that they have trained a thousand men so far, with anoth...

Posted by: John Phoenix 2015 The first week in June saw intensified military action in the Ukraine, as Kiev stepped up its violations of the Minsk ceasefire, simultaneously shelling Donetsk whilst accusing the resistance militias of posing a “colossal threat“. Yet so far from serving to damp down social unrest in crisis-stricken Ukraine, hard on the heels of this latest gratuitous act of state terror came a massive anti-Junta protest in Kiev, sparked initially by the draconian cuts in pensions. The West’s real target: Russia The sudden belated interest being shown by Washington in the Minsk process, with the State Department’s Kerry and Nuland dispatched respectively to Sochi and Moscow to put a foot in the door, has for its sole motivation the sabotage of any peace proce...

Posted by: John Phoenix 2015 Despite the entry into the Ukraine of British and US “tactical advisors” and weaponry, aimed at shoring up the demoralised forces commanded (more or less) by the fascist junta in Kiev, there seems little immediate prospect of a decisive resumption of last winter’s stalled offensive against the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. However, the ultimate goal of NATO’s aggression, the destabilisation of Russia herself through border provocations and economic sanctions, has most certainly not been abandoned, and it is more important than ever for workers to stand in solidarity with Russia and the Donbass resistance. Military stalemate The hammering received by both the Ukraine Army and the fascist volunteer battalions at the hands of the...

Posted by: John Phoenix 2015 One month on from the junta’s ill-fated winter offensive, the relief When the illegal junta in Kiev began its winter offensive on 18 January, Poroshenko and his NATO masters had high hopes that the breathing space that had been afforded by last September’s Minsk “ceasefire” accords would have given them long enough to replenish their forces and crush the resistance forces of the Donbass. Instead, the spectacular collapse of the new offensive has driven the junta to sue for peace, signing the Minsk II accords that agreed a new ceasefire from 15 February. Needless to say, the junta is no more sincere in its adherence to the ceasefire provisions of Minsk II than it proved itself to be in the case of Minsk I, still dreaming that a future third or ...