Christopher Ford says Ukraine must still win no matter who becomes American President
The Cost of War
After one-thousand days of Russia’s full-scale invasion the costs are mounting. Every day the population of Ukraine is under attack and more than 15 million Ukrainians need humanitarian assistance – over half of whom are women and children. According to the Pentagon the Armed Forces of Ukraine have lost over 57,500 killed and 250,000 wounded in their efforts to the resist the invasion.
According to estimates by the Government of Ukraine, the damage caused amounts to $500-750 billion, and rising daily. Russia has been seeking to cripple the economy and cause a crisis over winter by attacking the energy sector.
There has already been over $56.2 billion of damage, all thermal power plants in Ukraine are destroyed with facilities critical to the operation of nuclear power plants also being targeted.
In the Donetsk region which has seen war since 2014, the Russian offensive is targeting the coal-mining towns – bombing mines and communities so entire cities are in ruins.
Russia has systematically bombed civilian infrastructure; 1,642 medical facilities have been damaged and 214 destroyed, killing over 100 civilian healthcare workers. Education has also been a target – over 3,798 educational institutions have been damaged and 365 destroyed. The new academic year began with a large attack on an educational facility in Poltava killing 58 people and injuring more than 300.
Emergency workers are themselves being targeted by the Russian tactic of “double tap” – bombing again when rescue workers arrive, as a result 97 emergency workers have been killed, 395 injured, and four are currently held captive by Russia.
Ukraine has now recorded over 122,000 suspected war crimes; even amidst the known massacres and the terror in the occupied area, the abduction of 20,000 children taken to be forcibly Russified stands as horrific testimony to the barbaric nature of the war being waged on Ukraine by the regime in Moscow.
In considering such suffering we should not lose sight of the reasons why we must still help Ukraine win this war.
It is a fact that without the popular resistance that has stopped Russia conquering all of Ukraine, there would be an even worse bloodbath of unfathomable proportions. Whilst the invasion is a continuation of Russia’s efforts as a counter-revolutionary Gendarme, it is also genocidal in its ambition to abolish Ukraine entirely, returning it to the colonial status it held in the Tsarist empire – “Little Russia”.
Stopping that alone is sufficient grounds to support this just war of an historically oppressed people, but there is also a wider context.
The New Authoritarians
Our era has been described by terms such as “de-globalization” or “national populism”, characterised by increasing inter-state competition and new forms of authoritarianism. This vortex of global retrogression has accelerated since the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, with frightening similarities to the reaction that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash.
Putin’s war on Ukraine is a part of this wider attack on democracy happening globally, with an evolving new form of fascism inside Russia itself. The war has helped cohere an alliance of autocracies and is supported by far-right “populists” and neo-fascist forces in Europe and the USA.
To use the hypocrisy of the western powers, the tiny numbers of far-right and conservative nationalists in Ukraine as justifications to refrain from siding with Ukraine is to ignore entirely how the war on Ukraine is deepening today’s neo-fascist threat. Aid to Ukraine was blocked for nearly nine months by Orban and Trump. The delay assisted Russia’s war effort and sends a clear signal of the alignment of these forces in what is the frontline of the battle for democracy.
Ukraine Must Win
The threat of a Trump victory is obvious; however, even if we see an unhindered transition to a Harris Presidency this poses a different problem: a continuation of the failed strategy of key western powers – providing just enough weapons to resist Russia but not to win. The war could have ended in 2023 if Ukraine had been provided the weapons requested for the counter-offensive, instead it was delayed, allowing Russia time to prepare defences.
As a war of attrition has set in we have seen a growing mood music in Europe and USA towards seeking a deal, a headline in the New York Times claimed “As War Gets Bleaker, More Ukrainians Appear Open to a Peace Deal.” The reality however is that whether by efforts of Trump to impose a deal or the appeasement of some European politicians, there is no guarantee such efforts will result in anything other than a protracted war.
Whatever happens in the USA, the European social democratic and labour movement especially must mobilise to defend Ukraine from Moscow and Washington if necessary.
Ukraine must win this key battle for democracy; a defeat would be a catastrophe that would embolden forces of reaction globally. What is the alternative? We need clear commitments for victory, to arm Ukraine with the weapons it needs to win as soon as possible. What is victory? Whether by agreement or force, it’s an end to the Russian occupation of Ukraine.
Chris Ford’s tragic account of an avoidable conflict taken at face value appears reasonable. But it omits so much that makes what he writes read more like a call to arms and further bloodshed when what is urgently required is a lasting peace deal. Especially since Ukraine has effectively been defeated and prolonging this war can only result in further loss of life and loss of Ukrainian territory.
Contrary to Ford’s analysis that would have us believe this is a war to defend democracy in Ukraine, this war began when democracy was overthrown in the 2014 coup with EU and US connivance against a democratically elected government that ignited a civil war between Ukrainian nationalists heavily influenced by fascists and Nazis and the increasingly fearful Russian speaking minority in the east of Ukraine who represented the electoral base of the deposed president.
The reluctant Russian leadership was prevailed upon to intervene to defend the Russian speaking breakaway areas of the Donbas who were being mercilessly attacked by the Ukrainian army. As a way out of this bloodbath the Minsk accords, underwritten by Germany and France were agreed and sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Russia waited eight years for Ukraine to implement these accords. We now learn from the then German Chancellor, Merkel, French President, Hollande and Ukrainian President, Poroshenko that the Ukrainian side had no intention of implementing Minsk and merely used it as a means for buying time to rearm and train with Nato in order to impose its will on its breakaway Russian speaking citizens by military force.
With the increasing buildup of Nato armaments on the territory of Ukraine as well as joint military exercises between the Ukrainian military and Nato, Russia was becoming increasingly alarmed and in the latter part of 2021 informed Nato and the US that unless they were prepared to enter serious negotiations on a new security architectrue for Europe that respected Russia’s reasonable cocerns about Nato, an aggressive military alliance, right on its border, Russia will be forced to take technical military steps to neutralise the threat it perceives from US led western imperialism. The US, Nato and EU put two fingers up to Russia and the rest as they say is history.
If you set up shop next to your neighbour with all sorts of offensive military hardware from people who are not very fond of your neighbour, aimed at your neighbour, you would have a very stupid neighbour who just waited all the while you were building up your offensive capability towards him and his family. If your neighbour had half a brain, he would warn you that unless you stopped threatening him and his family, by hosting hostile personnel who are arming and training you and your family to fight him and his family, instead of
trying to live as good neighbours should, then he will take action against you to stop you from your hostile activities. And if you simply put two fingers up at him and tell him you intend carrying on with your hostile activity regardless, then you should not be surprised if your neighbour decides to render you harmless by whatever means necessary.
The war in Ukraine is a US led western imperialist proxy war against Russia, using the Ukrainian army as canon fodder. It has nothing whatsoever to do with defending democracy. The politics of Ukraine under its current administration is a corrupt and repressive regime that has cancelled elections, banned all opposition, imprisoned, tortured and murdered its critics. When it comes to fascism, Ukraine has few equals, other than perhaps the Baltic states that accounts for their unstinting support, in lionising and commemorating as national heroes the likes of Nazi collaborators such as Bandera and Shukhevych involved in the persecution and murder of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles and other minorities.
The destabilisation and dismemberment of the multiethnic state of Yugoslavia at the hands of the EU/Nato alliance of states, remains fresh in the memory of Russians as one would hope anti imperialists. Ukraine cannot be allowed to become a forward base for delivering another Western imperialist campaign to undermine and dismember the multi ethnic Russian Federation.