Dimitrios Patelis | Revolutionary Unification (Greece)
It is now three years since the start of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” (SMO) in Ukraine.
On the Russian side, the operation was preceded by the dispatch and publication of two draft agreements on 17 December 2021: a bilateral one with the US and a collective one with NATO. With these ultimatums, the Russian leadership categorically demanded the signing of agreements on mutual security guarantees in Europe in the form of legally binding texts. They drew a “red line” beyond which they stated they had no intention of retreating.
The ultimatums concerned the non-expansion of NATO eastwards, the non-inclusion of post-Soviet countries in NATO, and the non-signing of military cooperation agreements with them, the cessation of exercises near the Russian border involving scenarios of nuclear strikes and of the involvement of forces larger than a brigade, the non-deployment and withdrawal of medium and long-range missiles and launchers from countries close to Russia, as well as the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons deployed in NATO countries (e.g. in Turkey and Germany).
The publication of these ultimatums was indicative of the rising escalation, the climate of open mistrust towards the Euro-Atlantic axis led by the USA on the Russian side.
It was a move aimed at compelling the “collective West” to participate in an international public dialogue on the pivotal issues of global collective security, beyond the well-trodden path of the arrogant unilateral decision-making by the power claiming to be a planetary hegemon (with subservient instruments like the government of Greece) and the creation of faits accomplis against Russia and other countries.
Following the counter-revolution and the dissolution of the USSR and the European countries of early socialism, the USA, NATO, and the EU pursued an openly aggressive policy of dissolution, subjugation, and total control of all these countries. A policy of hostile encirclement of the largest and richest state formation in the post-Soviet space, with the declared intention of complete subjugation and fragmentation of Russia itself. [1]
The Western leaders, intoxicated by their bloodless victory in the Cold War, treated—and in many cases still treat—the post-Soviet space and its people as prey, considering it “normal” to deceive the USSR under Gorbachev and go back on their commitment not to expand NATO. They have proceeded to systematically humiliate the peoples (especially the Russian people under the presidency of the wretched drunkard/clown Yeltsin), carry out successive coup/regime change attempts, plunder their national wealth, etc.
Since then, there have been tectonic shifts in the international balance of power, with the capitalist West in a process of rather irreversible decay and retreat. The disorderly and shameful flight of the USA and its allies from Afghanistan, the failure to impose regime change in Belarus and Kazakhstan, against the background of the steady transformation of the People’s Republic of China into a global superpower and the rapid progress of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in defence technology, were now indicative elements of these changes.
The de facto alliance between the People’s Republic of China and Russia, with the latter having developed technologically new weapons systems of “asymmetric” superiority based on the inherited Soviet military-industrial complex, led the Russian leadership to declare “so far and no further”. Then the weapons would do the talking.
These were ultimatums that the Russian leadership effectively also set for themselves: any retreat from the “red line” would mean another catastrophic self-humiliation with international consequences. The Russian leadership showed that 32 years after the counterrevolution/capitalist restoration in the USSR, they were for the first time publicly and imperatively setting terms for guarantees and collective security that did not concern only themselves as a sovereign state entity. They concerned Europe and the planet, the very preservation of life on earth.
At the end of January 2022, the US sent a reply to the ultimatums, asking the Russians not to publish it. American “leaks” revealed that they rejected Russian demands for no further NATO eastward expansion and security guarantees, while proposing some abstract “measures of mutual arms monitoring and consultation” for discussion. They reiterated their insistence on the “open door policy” for further NATO expansion, considering it “the sovereign right of Ukraine and any country to join NATO”…
The US had over 800 military bases in over 80 countries (about 600 around the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Iran) and over 175,000 military personnel (over 60,000 in Europe). Since World War II, they have fought in more than 84 wars and military interventions, instigated hundreds of coups and “regime change” operations. However, they have orchestrated a propagandistic hysteria about the “aggressiveness of authoritarian Russia” which would attack the poor “democratic Ukraine”, i.e. the fascist junta in Kiev and elsewhere.
Since 1 March 2018, Putin announced the production of superweapons based on new technologies, such as the Burevestnik nuclear powered missile, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, the Peresvet laser weapon and the new Poseidon unmanned underwater vehile, carrier of nuclear warheads. From the end of 2021, successful test launches of Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles (ten times the speed of sound) from surface ships and submarines were carried out. These missiles do not reach the hypersonic speeds of ballistic missiles as they descend from the stratosphere, but follow a variable course at low altitude, making them undetectable to radiolocation.
These weapons systems, which are essentially a continuation of the plans, infrastructure and programmes of the Soviet Union, can hit almost any point on the planet, bypassing the US-NATO missile defence shield.
The dense network of military bases and installations around the world and the floating power projection platforms based on aircraft carriers suddenly become easy targets for technologically superior and unstoppable superweapons! The same applies to their headquarters, decision-making and coordination centres, even on their own soil. All this, provided that automated systems of mass retaliatory nuclear strikes are not activated on both sides.
Similar programmes, some in cooperation with Russia, are being developed by the People’s Republic of China, whose navy is now clearly superior in quantity and quality to that of the US. Hypersonic missile systems and similar weapons are also being developed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran and India.
An alternative pole to the Euro-Atlantic axis is rising steadily, led by the two great countries whose current form was shaped by the two greatest early socialist revolutions of the 20th century: Russia and China. The former, now capitalist, thanks to the heritage of the USSR and acquired speed, has the military power of a superpower capable of obliterating the planet. The latter, under the central scientific planning of its unique form of early socialism, has a complex and extroverted mixed economic system that is steadily transforming its economic-political superiority into military superiority.
The Xi-Putin Joint Declaration (a long-developed text published in early 2022) attempts to define the principles of a post-Euro-Atlantic, alternative pole with global claims.
On 22 February 2022, V. Putin recognised the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (Donbass region), born out of the armed popular uprising against the Kiev junta imposed on 22 February 2014 using fascist nationalists as a strike force, with the full support and guidance of the USA-NATO-EU.
The Kiev junta declared the Nazi collaborators as “national heroes/liberators”, the Soviet period as “Russian occupation” and proceeded with the violent “Ukrainisation” of the multinational population of the country, with the “decommunisation and de-Sovietisation” of society, with systemic anti-Russianism, with the prohibition of any other language (Russian, Hungarian, Greek, etc., since 65% of the population of the country is Russian-speaking) and ideology.
Uprising was the only way for those who did not want to embrace fascism, to renounce their language, culture and history for the sake of the fascist imposition of “belonging to the West”.
The rebels of the Donbass region formed armed partisan militias while raising slogans and demands of anti-fascist to socialist content against the brutal foreign imperialist intervention of the USA-NATO-EU and the predatory oligarchy of capital that established its parasitic action after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
This popular army wrote brilliant pages of heroism, seized the initiative on the battlefields and advanced victoriously towards the strategic port of Mariupol and other directions. The advance was halted by the Russian leadership, which was deeply concerned about an armed workers’ uprising of their compatriots with a socialist orientation and dragged them into the infamous Minsk-2 agreement.[2]
The Kremlin leadership, fearing a Soviet-inspired armed uprising on its doorstep, rushed to trap the People’s Republics in the wretched “Minsk Agreements”, condemning them to eight years of slow death and ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Nazis and the Ukrainian army, newly reorganised by the USA, NATO and the EU.
The “Minsk Agreements”, by the admission of A. Merkel and other EU leaders, were made to give the USA-NATO-EU axis time to arm and prepare the Nazi regime in Kiev for the total extermination of the Donbass people and a blow against Russia. For 8 years, these People’s Republics, with a population of about 4,000,000 (800,000 Russian citizens), despite having decided by referendum with an overwhelming majority to join the Russian Federation like Crimea, have been left in isolation, guarding about 1/3 of their territory, exposed to the bloody blows of fascist death battalions, mercenaries, and the Ukrainian army, while the most radical rebel leaders have been mysteriously eliminated. For 8 years, while the people of Donbass were exposed to genocide, the Russian authorities called the rebels “self-proclaimed” republics…
Their recognition came late and was done in a calculated way, at a moment of escalation of the turmoil caused by the Russian ultimatums (on security architecture), as the first practical, political, and military step of decisive enforcement.
It was preceded by the recognition of the Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after the war with the US-backed government of Georgia (8 August 2008).
However, in the relevant speech, Putin, in a crescendo of extreme anti-Sovietism/anti-communism, promised among other things “to show Ukraine what real decommunisation means,” implying a clear intention to cancel, suppress, and eliminate any trace of revolutionary content in these republics, and in Russia.
On the orders of President Putin, the SMO began in Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
The West, in its effort to avoid the major issue of the global security architecture raised by Russia with the ultimatums of 15 December 2021, with a propaganda campaign of unprecedented scale and intensity, accompanied by provocations (bombing of the two People’s Republics by the Ukrainian army), dragged Russia―as the protector of its compatriots there―into a military operation on the smaller scale in Ukraine, certain that Russia would be defeated, or at least beaten to such an extent that it would lead to internal turmoil and regime change.
The Russian leadership was forced to engage in this escalation because they understood that:
1. they would soon face the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi if they continued giving in
2. the retreat of the Euro-Atlantic axis under the USA in the global balance of power is clear, and
3. the massive rise of a new pole, led by the People’s Republic of China, whose economic power has not yet been matched by corresponding political-military assets (apart from the clear superiority of its navy, etc.).
4. today’s Russia, using the inherited Soviet military arsenal, has for the time being achieved a clear asymmetric superiority in certain super-weapons, while
5. the crude policy of US-Euro-Atlanticism has pushed it into the arms of the People’s Republic of China, giving impetus to the formation of a de facto anti-imperialist pole.
The Russian leadership proceeded with the SMO, with rapid and bold initial deep operations: on the northern front towards Kiev, on the northeastern front towards Chernigov, on the southeastern front towards the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, and on the southern front, from the Crimea.
On 25 February, Russian military units reached the greater Kiev area and captured the strategic Gostomel (or Antonov) airport just outside Kiev.
Within a short time, however, the Russian leadership made it clear that they were not conducting operations with a clear strategic plan, but with other priorities, openly declaring their readiness for contacts, negotiations and compromise with the West. Official negotiations began immediately, on 28 February in Belarus! They escalated in Istanbul on 29 March 2022, with the Russian delegation headed by the former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky and with the provocative presence of the well-known capitalist oligarch Roman Abramovich!
Despite reaching a framework of compromise (“Basic Provisions of the Treaty on Security Guarantees for Ukraine”) which was initialled by the two delegations, on the orders of the then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Ukrainian side refused to negotiate and was ordered to fight to the end!
The war continues with unabated intensity and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The details of the military operations require special research.
This war is radically different from the First and Second World Wars. In the World Anti-imperialist Platform, we have highlighted its socio-economic and ideological-political content and stakes.
Special research is also required at the purely operational, technological and organisational level of the war. It is the most network-centric war in history, with the use of artificial intelligence, telematics, satellite support, elements of electronic warfare, radar and remote-controlled or autonomous robotic applications (airborne, swarm, land, sea and underwater), fibre optics, etc., to an extent that radically changes both the conduct of conventional war and the degree and level of international cooperation of the belligerents.
On the imperialist side, the Ukrainian armed forces have been transformed into the most capable Euro-Atlantic war machine, formally outside NATO. On the other side, there is an unprecedented direct or indirect international cooperation (with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran, the People’s Republic of China, etc.).
It is a fact that since the beginning of the SMO there have been many changes in the global balance of power, not only in the Ukrainian theatre of operations. There has been a series of attacks, counterattacks and retreats.
None of this was a game on paper. They cost tens of thousands of lives. After each retreat of the Russian forces, the USA-NATO-EU fascist forces in Ukraine carried out mass killings of the local population, accusing them of “collaborating with the occupier/invader”, organised provocative actions with the display of transported corpses (as in Bucha), etc.
On 6 August 2024, the Ukrainian armed forces invaded the Kursk region of Russia, part of which they still occupy, and committed atrocities.
In a recent interview, Putin stated that in March 2022 he withdrew the armed forces of the Russian Federation that were outside Kiev, in Kharkov, etc., because the Western partners told him that “Ukraine cannot sign a peace agreement with a gun to its head”! Circles of the political leadership of the newly formed bourgeoisie in Russia seem to be preparing new secret deals with Trump, who, according to Putin in the same interview, “will put things in order”!
As many military analysts have noted, the political leadership of the capitalist class in Russia are dragging themselves into a long war of attrition/genocide for all but operational reasons. What it seems to be prioritising is the acquisition of some new “bargaining chip”…
It is clear that circles of the Russian leadership always have in mind the quickest restoration of the “order of things” inscribed in their DNA: that of the comprador mediator selling off everything that the Soviet people achieved with sweat and blood. In the same interview, Putin declared: “We are not against the use of the dollar in our transactions”!
Meanwhile, the propaganda mechanisms in Moscow are singing new praises to Trump, Orban, the AfD and the entire far right international, spreading illusions that this clique will “find common ground with Russia and put things in order”…
The change of leadership in the USA marks a shift in the priorities of the American financial oligarchy for the further escalation of WWIII. The basic slogan of the “new” leadership “Make America Great Again” does not accidentally resemble Hitler’s “Germany above all!”.
WWIII did not start yesterday and will not end tomorrow. As we have shown through our analyses in the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, the unresolved contradictions that led to its escalation have been left open, while new deeper ones are coming to the surface.
The actors of the axis of aggression, based on their interests and propaganda objectives, want to impose the view that the Great War allegedly started on 24 February 2022 “due to Russian aggression and the invasion of Ukraine”. Others believe that the war in Ukraine started with the events of the 2014 armed imperialist coup in Kiev.
I believe that a more thorough and comprehensive approach makes it clear that the Third Hot World War began with the end of the “Cold War,” with the escalation of bourgeois counterrevolution and capitalist restoration in the USSR and the countries of early socialism in Europe, with the infamous “1st Gulf War,” the imperialist armed campaign of 1990-1991 waged by a military coalition of 39 countries in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It escalated with the imperialist wars for the dissolution of Yugoslavia, with the “War on Terror” & the “2nd Gulf War”, with the USA-NATO-EU invasion of Afghanistan, with the “Arab Springs”, etc. The Russian SMO, the genocide in Palestine, the conquest of Syria “by proxy” by instruments of the USA-NATO-EU, Turkey and Israel, the attack on Hezbollah, Lebanon and Yemen, the strengthening of the positions of the imperialist axis (through Turkey and Israel) in Transcaucasia (Azerbaijan, Armenia), the preparations for an attack and regime change in Iran, the escalation of tensions in the Korean peninsula and Taiwan, the expulsion of the imperialist military presence from the “Sahel zone” in Africa, etc., are elements of the escalation and not of the de-escalation of the war.
The “Trump initiatives” and the consequent strengthening of the “far right international”, despite the illusions, do not aim at peace, but at the escalation of the war for the restoration and imposition of the dominance of the imperialist axis led by the USA. The return of Trump does not signify a “revolution against the deep state”, but a complete authoritarian restructuring/re-establishment of all state, transnational and deep state institutions, that have proved to be too corrupt and ineffective to further escalate WWIII at the behest and need of the oligarchy. If, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is vilified and exposed, this is not to punish its contribution to coups, regime changes, takeovers of parties, politicians, the media, etc., but on the contrary, because it has proved ineffective in this position and role during the new phase of WWIII.
The real reason for this purge and restructuring concerns the violent achievement of an effective state, deep state and transnational machine of the axis led by the USA in WWIII! The bureaucratised machine of this system has dead weights, holdover practices from the “Cold War” era, which make it highly inadequate & ineffective at the new level of escalation of the Axis’ aggressiveness. In other words, what the most aggressive circles of the US axis financial oligarchy need is a truly lethally effective, ruthless mechanism of transnational monopoly imposition, operationally capable of instant initiatives and asymmetric, unpredictable blows!
In general, it seems that the possibilities of waging war mainly “by proxy” have been exhausted. It has also become clear to the Trump leadership that the initial ambitions to defeat and disintegrate Russia have proved fruitless. Thus, the tactic of temptation, bribery and general co-opting of the Russian leadership is coming back to the fore, with the ultimate objective of undermining and dissolving the pole of the forces of socialism and anti-imperialism. At the heart of this approach is a direct attack on the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran.
This option is also supported by the escalation of the economic war, the weakening of the dollar as the international reserve currency, the pursuit of the re-industrialisation of the USA with the cannibalistic de-industrialisation of the EU, the shrinking of the possibilities of parasitism, manipulation and super-exploitation through the dominance of virtual capital.
The state of emergency of the axis led by the USA is also exacerbated by the now evident superiority of the People’s Republic of China in the pioneering fields of scientific research and technology: artificial intelligence, microelectronics, aerospace, robotics, nuclear energy, nuclear fusion, computer architecture, nanotechnology, etc. These trends, which arise as a result of the advantages of socialist scientific planning, undermine the strategic planning on which imperialism is structured and operates to this day: the extraction of surplus value through neo-colonial forms of super-profits based on the combination of the dominance of the financial oligarchy over virtual capital with exclusive rights to strategic technology/knowledge (“technological rent”), the projection and imposition of political and military power, etc.
This progress of early socialism, together with the results of the escalation of WWIII, creates the conditions for accelerating the development of humanity in the direction of anti-imperialism and socialist revolution, bringing closer the possibility and necessity of completing the cycle of the early socialist revolutions and the transition to the late socialist revolutions, to the extent that imperialism will continue to weaken and suffer defeat.
Hence the regressive trend towards annexations (Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, etc.) and direct control of strategic natural resources and arteries.
WWIII makes it increasingly clear that―within the imperialist axis led by the USA―the EU, as the “economic & political limb of NATO Europe”, is breathing its last. Fascisation and a total police/military state is becoming the only way forward for its financial oligarchy, always in a position of subservience to the USA. The EU’s ambitions for autonomous military power are rather unattainable in the near future. Many subordinates of the axis will promote this fascisation as an “existential imperative to transform the EU into the UNITED STATES OF EUROPE”! This is a highly reactionary utopia, as Lenin showed.
It is clear that an escalation and qualitative upgrade of WWIII in scope, depth and intensity is imminent. The war will last long, and the battles will be hard. The tasks of the progressive forces with the communists at the vanguard are of vital importance for humanity.
The position and role of the World Anti-imperialist Platform is irreplaceable in the struggle for:
• the coordination and development of the frontal anti-imperialist movement,
• the dismantling of distracting and disorienting ideologies and practices, and
• the reorganisation and development of the communist forces.
Notes
[1] As evident through the 21 June 2022 briefing of the Helsinki commission, the Forum of the Free Peoples of Russia in 22-24 July 2022 in Prague, and the “Free Nations of PostRussia Forum’s “Declaration for the Decolonization of the so-called Russian Federation.”, stating that Russia is a terrorist country!
[2] See also: 10 years since the heroic Donbass uprising. D. Patelis. Platform № 13, June 2024, p. 3-10