Russian Tensions
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When are we going to learn that the capitalists are not our friends ?
Britain and other Western powers should provide warplanes to Ukraine, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will say.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61239075
“Heavy weapons, tanks, aeroplanes – digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production. We need to do all of this.”
That’s yet further proof of the malign influence of the British government in the Ukraine. Having succeeded in sabotaging previous peace negotiations, they now want to escalate the war by supplying Ukraine with planes with permission to use them to bomb Russia.
All done, not for any material economic interest of the British capitalist, but simply to advance the political careers of the two main persins involved, Borys and the unspeakable Truss.
But also without any opposition from the Labour opposition, the self-proclaimed “party of NATO”.
Meanwhile even in the US there is some opposition amongst elected representatives. Here is a report of an exchange yesterday in the Senate between the Secretary of State and an isolationist senator, Rand Paul:
“In a heated exchange during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, Paul accused the Biden administration of “beating the drums to admit Ukraine to NATO” even though it was a position Russia “absolutely hated and said was a red line.” (…)
Blinken said the White House would be open to an eventual deal between Russia and Ukraine that results in Ukraine becoming “an unaligned, neutral nation.”
“We, Senator, are not going to be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians. These are decisions for them to make,” Blinken said to Paul.
“Our purpose is to make sure that they have within their hands the ability to repel the Russian aggression and indeed to strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table,” he added.”It is hard to imagine such an exchange taking place in the House of Commons. If any Labour MP were to suggest, like Rand Paul, that NATO might have provoked Russia over Ukraine joining (or at least provided Russia with a pretext to invade) they would be expelled from the parliamentary party. Starmer has stated that one reason why Corbyn won’t be re-admitted is precisely that he has dared to criticise NATO.
This makes Labour complicit in the aggravation of the cost of living crisis (even higher heating and fuel costs) due to the sanctions imposed on Russia.
There have been reports of explosions in Transnistria, Russian state media claiming they originate from Ukrainian agents, it may well spark an attempt to link the Russian invasion to the Transnistria/Moldova situation. Strategically, this would make sense for the Russians, allowing them to have unhindered access to the Black Sea, for trade routes and other reasons.
If the Russians achieve a link up from Transnistria to The Crimea, the next pinch point will be access to the Med through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, no surprise that Erdogan has been quite quiet about the whole situation.
The situation might get worse with regard to confrontation between NATO and the Russians as well, with Moldova being heavily linked to Rumania (a NATO member).
As Kenneth Wolstenholme may once have said “They think it’s Moldova, it is now!”
This article from rt.com explains how a Transnistria came to be inhabited by Russian-speakers:
https://www.rt.com/russia/554330-uprising-transnistria-donbass-ukraine/
This statement above from Blunden about why the US is supplying Ukraine with arms admits that in relations between capitalist states “might is right”:
“Our purpose is to make sure that they have within their hands the ability to repel the Russian aggression and indeed to strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table.”
So it looks as though he is mad enough, even though he has children, and is prepared to take his chances in a nuclear winter.
Moldavia won’t qualify to join any more than Ukraine did — they too have an internal breakaway problem which renders them ineligible.
Maybe he really believes, and is thus ignorant, that he can “get in first” with his hypersonic WMDs. Even were that the case, and he could hit the globe with his entire arsenal before the US could respond (which he seems to believe), he and his would still die in a nuclear winter. Either way, there won’t any longer be any Russia in existence.
Russian army more gung-ho than Putin.
Russia dips into financial reserves
I’m not sure about this, either it is a sign of economic sanctions hitting home, or Russia is bigging up its financial resilience:
“Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Wednesday that the National Wealth Fund (NWF), which accumulates revenue from oil exports, will be the main source of financing for a budget deficit expected to reach 1.6 trillion rubles ($21.6 billion) in 2022.” Calling it a ‘rainy day fund’ doesn’t help distract that they are going into choppy financial waters.
We know they had stockpiled gold over recent years, and with the moves to actually cut off Poland and Bulgaria from gas, they clearly see the gas revenue as the way of funding the state in the near future: so the tug-of-war now is how long Europe can hold off from cutting down purchasing gas from Russia.
Overall, I think this is a bad sign.
Here is another example of Truss’s lack of grasp of realities and general stupidity. She has just declared that Britain’s war aim in (or for) Ukraine is to push all Russian troops out Ukraine, ie from the Crimea and the areas of the Donbas Russia seized in 2014 as well as what they have conquered this year.
“Russian forces must be pushed out of “the whole of Ukraine”, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said.
In a keynote speech in London, Ms Truss said victory for Ukraine was now a “strategic imperative” for the West.
This amounts to the clearest statement yet of Britain’s war aims which have, until now, been limited to stating that President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “must fail and be seen to fail”.
She said Western allies must “double down” in their support for Ukraine.
“We will keep going further and faster,” Ms Truss said, “to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.”
This implies that Russian forces must leave not just the territory occupied in recent weeks since their invasion on 24 February but also those areas they invaded and annexed eight years ago, such as Crimea in the south and parts of the eastern Donbas region.”https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61251698.amp
But also:
“The war in Ukraine is our war – it is everyone’s war… because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us.”
For all of us? What interest have ordinary people in the US and its NATO allies achieving the “strategic imperative” of incorporating the whole of the Ukraine (or what would be left of it to achieve this) into their sphere of influence? None whatsoever. All they are getting out of it is the pain of an increased cost of living crisis.
At least she has cut the crap about this being a war for “democratic values” and admitted that it’s about geopolitics.
YMS, Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced.
Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began. Russia has continued to benefit from Europe’s energy supply.
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