After almost two full years of war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused staggering losses to Ukraine’s people and economy. Ukraine’s GDP fell by 40% in 2022. There was a small recovery in 2023, but an additional 7.1 million Ukrainians now live in poverty.
There are various estimates of the number of Ukrainian civilians and military casualties after two years of war. The UN estimates about 10,400 civilian deaths with another 19,000 wounded. The military casualties are even more difficult to estimate – but probably about 70,000 soldiers killed and another 100,000 wounded. Russian military casualties are about the same. Millions have fled abroad and many more millions have been displaced from their homes within Ukraine.
When I reviewed the economic and social state of Ukraine and Russia one year into war in 2023, I concluded that both sides would be able to continue this war for years, if necessary. For Ukraine, that depended on getting aid (civil and military) from the West. For Russia, it meant continuing to obtain sufficient export revenues from its energy and resources commodities.
Russia could not rely on foreign financing to fund the war, but I reckoned that it could carry on in the face of economic sanctions from the West, as long as its energy revenues and its FX reserves were not depleted too much; or its domestic economy did not contract so much that it caused social unrest within Russia. And so it has proved. The Russian economy is stable, the war effort is being sustained and Putin will win a new presidential term next month (and would probably could do so even without killing off all potential opponents).
Ukraine is still totally dependent on support from the West. This year it needs at least $40bn in order to sustain government services, support its population and maintain production. It is relying on the EU for such civil funding, while relying on the US for all its military funding – a straight ‘division of labour’.
In addition, the IMF and World Bank have offered monetary assistance but, in this case, Ukraine has to show it has ‘sustainability’, ie it is able at some point to pay back any loans. So if the bilateral loans from the US and EU countries (and it is mainly loans, not outright aid) do not materialise, then the IMF cannot extend its lending programme.
Moreover, Ukraine also needs to find a way to restructure about $20 billion in international debt this year with sovereign bondholders whose agreed two-year payment freeze made in August 2022 will be up soon.
And it is a struggle. Despite some recovery in exports, Ukraine’s balance of trade deficit continues to worsen.
That means that the foreign exchange coffers to buy imports disappear nearly as fast as they are supplemented by Western aid.
Ukraine Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said the government hoped to secure foreign financing in full in 2024, but if the war lasted longer, he added ominously that “the scenario will include the need to adapt to new conditions.”
Presumably that would mean either cuts in services or getting Ukraine’s central bank to just ‘print’ money. The former would mean more poverty and a further contraction in living standards; the latter would mean a renewal of an inflationary spiral into double-digits (inflation had fallen back in 2023). It seems that the Ukrainian government expects either the loans to come through or the war to end in 2024. The former may happen, the latter is unlikely.
But will the aid to drip feed Ukraine’s economy in 2024 come through? Europe is delivering funds for civilian activities, but it’s up to the US to deliver funds for military activities. The last remaining funds for US military assistance were depleted by end-2023. In total the US has allocated around €43 billion in military aid since February 2022, which is about €2 billion per month.
US funding for the Ukraine military remains unclear as the US Congress is divided over providing further military aid. The upcoming presidential election, with the possibility of the return of Trump in 2025, poses the major uncertainty.
That brings us back to what will happen to Ukraine’s economy, if and when the war with Russia comes to an end. According to the latest estimate of the World Bank, Ukraine will need $486bn over the next ten years to recover and rebuild – assuming the war ends this year. That’s nearly three times its current GDP.
Direct damages from the war have now reached almost $152 billion, with about 2 million housing units – about 10% of the total housing stock of Ukraine – either damaged or destroyed, as well as 8,400 km (5,220 miles) of motorways, highways, and other national roads, and nearly 300 bridges. As of December 2023, about 5.9 million Ukrainians remained displaced outside of the country and internally displaced persons were around 3.7 million.
And as I explained in a previous post back in mid-2022, already what is left of Ukraine’s resources (those not annexed by Russia) are being sold off to Western companies. For example, the sale of land to foreigners was approved in 2021 under IMF pressure and now the food monopolies Cargill, Monsanto and Dupont own 40% of Ukraine’s arable land. GMA-Monsanto Corporation owns 78% of the land fund of Sumy region, 56% of Chernihiv, 59% of Kherson and 47% of Mykolaiv region.
Overall, 28% of Ukraine’s arable land is owned by a mixture of Ukrainian oligarchs, European and North American corporations, as well as the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Nestle has invested $46 million in a new facility in western Volyn region while German drugs-to-pesticides giant Bayer plans to invest 60 million euros in corn seed production in central Zhytomyr region.
MHP, Ukraine’s biggest poultry company, is owned by a former adviser to Ukrainian president Poroshenko. MHP has received more than one-fifth of all the lending from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in the past two years. MHP employs 28,000 people and controls about 360,000 hectares of land in Ukraine — an area bigger than EU member Luxembourg. It had $2.64bn in revenues in 2022.
The Ukrainian government is committed to a ‘free market’ solution for the post-war economy that would include further rounds of labour-market deregulation below even EU minimum labour standards i.e sweat shop conditions; and cuts in corporate and income taxes to the bone; along with full privatisation of remaining state assets. However, the pressures of a war economy have forced the government to put these policies on the back burner for now, with military demands dominating.
What about Russia? After two years since the invasion, it is clear that the sanctions introduced by Western governments to weaken Russia’s ability to continue the invasion have failed. Russia’s economy is growing, even if that growth is mainly based on production for the military sector. Energy prices and export revenues have remained strong with sales to third parties like China and India comfortably replacing export losses to Europe. According to official figures, 49 percent of European exports to Russia and 58 percent of Russian imports are under sanctions, but the Russian economy still grew 5% in 2023 and will grow further this year.
Yes, $330bn of Russia’s FX reserves have been seized by the West, but Russia’s FX coffers remain more than sufficient. The cost of pursuing the war remains huge, with 40% of the government budget, but funding is still sufficient without resorting to money printing or to cutting civilian services.
In many areas, Russia is self-sufficient in critical commodities like oil, natural gas, and wheat, which has helped it weather the years of sanctions. Russia can also supply itself with most of its defence needs, even for sophisticated weapons. So it can continue this war for many more years, even if that damages the long-term potential of the economy.
In contrast to Ukraine, the Putin regime aims for a more state-controlled economy, where the big companies work in close coordination with Putin’s cronies. But similar to Ukraine, corruption between oligarchs and government will continue. Meanwhile the war grinds on.
Michael Roberts Blog 
What a nasty, snidy piece!
“Putin will win a new presidential term next month (and would probably could have done so even without killing off all potential opponents).”
Navalny, a potential opponent? A creature of the West, funded by the West, with virtually no support from within Russia and by all accounts murdered by MI6. What kind of Marxist are you Roberts?
My guess is many Westerners are still fascinated by the figure of Yeltsin, who was an exceptionally pro-Western figure in the USSR/Russian Federation.
Yeltsin seems to have been elevated to the status of the archetype of modern Russia by the West — specially those who are 50 years + of age, those who we already adults during the Gorbachev era and still have fond memories of the 1980s-1990s, when the West dominated absolutely in the ideological arena. They saw Gorbachev essentially capitulate to liberalism, and then saw Yeltsin unconditionally following its really existing version, neoliberalism, without major step-backs right after him, so they saw a linear progression, a pattern in the development of the then founded Russian Federation; by that logic, no wonder they think Putin represents a breaking point of this theoretical peaceful, gradual transition. But we can easily invert this idealist logic: that Gorbachev-Yeltsin actually represented a break point or a rupture that disrupted the USSR/Russian Federation, and that Putin represents the “return to normal/order”.
Only Marx’s theory can solve this idealist dead end. If History is the development of the productive forces and its relations, then we can see the productive forces in the USSR-RF regressed and not progressed during Gorbachev-Yeltsin. In order for History to “continue” in the RF, the process initiated (whatever you want to call it) had to be first stopped and then reversed; Putin did the first during his first mandate and the second during the rest. Geographically, this is best illustrated by the huge tectonic shift in the RF’s economic and diplomatic priorities: from Germany (in general) and the USA (Yeltsin exclusively) to China, from Europe to Asia, from West to East. Culturally, this is best illustrated by the triumph of Eurasianism over Occidentalism in the RF: the RF renounced its status as “European” and embraced its status as “Eurasian”. Economically, this is best illustrated by the timid but real process of “re-sovietization” of the RF during Putin’s last mandate with a clear inspiration on the Chinese “market socialism” reforms of the late 1970s, with the huge difference that the point zero is the reverse: the RF is going from a complete neoliberal capitalism in direction of market socialism.
If this tendency holds in the RF for the next 50 years or so, then this will confirm socialism was founded in Russia to stay (the Postmodern Anarchism of the 1990s-2010s being just an interregnum between two Cold Wars, like the 1930s was for the two World Wars), thus confirming Marx’s theory of History.
You say that the West is “Fascinated by Yeltsin”? The man who sold off the USSR’s hard-earned assets for a song, the man who presided over the catastrophe that saw millions die due to the imposition of neoliberal policies? I really wonder about the credentials of the so-called Marxists who pontificate at great length here about Russia/USSR and make such profound statements about a country that has transformed the way we interpret the world and its peoples, that has had and continues to have the most far-reaching effects on every country on the planet. Perhaps a little humility is due here for a country that sacrificed 27 million of its citizens, that once again has been forced to confront imperialism, whilst we citizens, the ‘Golden Billion’ sit on our fat arses and make glib pronouncements about Putin. Frankly, I’m really pissed off with some of the crap I read here, maybe its time for me to move on.
I’m sorry I think there is a powerful tendency for all war economies to be “socialist.” The re-sovietization is I think imaginary and whatever looks like it, is meant to be reversed as soon as possible.
And I think Putin is sober Yeltsin, always has been. The interview with Carlson was a plea for a deal. The emphasis on taking Adiivka was I suspect about at least limiting further bombardment of Donetsk if the deal is, borders drawn by the military status quo of the day.
“I really wonder about the credentials of the so-called Marxists who pontificate at great length here about Russia/USSR and make such profound statements about a country that has transformed the way we interpret the world and its peoples, that has had and continues to have the most far-reaching effects on every country on the planet.”
–says Barovsky demonstrating how pontificating at shorter lengths is the better way to make profound statements about the former Soviet Union and then apply that profundity to the current Russia, ignoring the historical fact that current Russia is not, slash-dash-colon, the former USSR; that Putin is not Stalin, or Khrushchev, or Brezhnev; that the United Russia party is not the CPSU; that the class structure of current Russia is not what was the structure of the former Soviet Union; that the collapse of the fSU and the horrific destruction wreaked and imposed by wrecker capitalism yielded not just Yeltsin, but also Yeltsin’s successor– Putin
And for decorum’s sake I shouldn’t bring up, but I will, the very same person questions MR’s Marxism for not accepting the gospel of Putin as relayed by Tucker Carlson. (That’s not an interrogative)
Meet the “true Marxism”– shorn of history and class.
So first stipulation: The Russian Revolution of 1917 is the most significant event in the historical struggle for human emancipation, which can only be secured through the emancipation of social labor.
Next stipulation (and this brought gasps from my ultra-left council communist friends when I argued–and still argue it): Despite the fSU’s record of disorganizing and sacrificing prospects for proletarian revolution under the guise of “socialism in one country,” the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the establishment of wrecker and wreckers’ capitalism was a great, one of the greatest, defeats the working class has endured in that miserable history of defeats.
But the defeat has occurred and it has not been reversed by the ascendancy of Putin. The social relations of production have not reverted to pre 1991 forms. Russia is a capitalist country– of less depth and expanse than the US, and certainly does not qualify as “imperialist” as ill-defined as that term is.
Ukraine is capitalist. In fact, my limited investigation into the “economic” organization of Russia and Ukraine indicates that there is very little substantive difference between the modes of appropriation dominant in both. Whatever differences in quantity do not automatically become a qualitative distinction.
Ukraine is most certainly not engaged in a struggle for “national self-determination.” No such struggle can exist separate and apart from a class struggle against the mode of appropriation and that mode in the Ukraine is not colonial, imperial etc etc. It is the mode of capital. Now the bourgeoisie, oligarchs, and would be bourgeoisie of Ukraine are engaged in a struggle for their survival, but lining up on the side preserving a national boundary that veils class exploitation is not a revolutionary strategy.
No doubt, Ukraine’s regime acts as a client of “Western” capitalism, which threatens the very existence of the Russian capitalists, but same-same, lining up on the side of preserving a national boundary or a “sphere of influence” is not a revolutionary strategy.
Does Russia represent a point of “alternative polarity” to Western capitalism? Does the victory of Russian capitalism represent a defeat for the US and its allies? The critical question is does the triumph of a capitalist economy over another capitalist economy represent a victory or a defeat for international revolution?
FWIW, I think this conflict, which was made manifest in 2014, is a conflict triggered by overproduction since 2009, declining rates of profitability since the “recovery” from 2009. and an attempt by the US to expel Russia from markets for natural gas. This amounts to the onset of WW3 and makes a “left Zimmerwald” response the only response that contains a shred of hope for the future.
I don’t envy anyone in either Ukraine or Russia advancing a “Zimmerwaldist” position– it seems to be an opportunity for instant and lethal retaliation, but it can at least be advanced by those not subject to such retaliation. And among the first steps is opposing any support, military, economic, political to Ukraine’s government.
I think Anti-Capital is kinda, sorta agreeing with me, even though he ascribes views to me that I didn’t make eg, I didn’t compare Putin to Stalin, Brezhnev, or any other Russian leader and certainly didn’t hold up Russian capitalism as an alternative to Western, ie US capitalism or compare United Russia to the CPSU. I think he misses my point entirely, that this struggle is not about socialism (unfortunately), it’s about IMPERIALISM, that Russia is effectively, like China part of the Global South, what we used to call the Third World, that Russian capitalism has aligned itself with the neo-colonial world, that this is a struggle about national autonomy, independence if you will and IMPERIALISM and as such echoes Lenin’s views on imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. Perhaps, I hope that the struggle against imperialism will be transformed into a fight for a socialist world but who knows, I’m not soothsayer and at this point in time, it’s not about socialism but the working classes are definitely involved in a national struggle but not yet a class struggle, else why are the Russian working class willingly laying down their lives fighting USNATO or are you claiming they’ve been forced to?
Fuirthemore, I think Russia, like China were forced into confronting imperialism, they had no choice, and that the confrontation is just as much economic as it is military. Russia and China are now doing what 75 years of the Soviet Union couldn’t do and that’s confront imperialism, ironically, on its terms and win!
I think he misses my point entirely, that this struggle is not about socialism (unfortunately), it’s about IMPERIALISM, that Russia is effectively, like China part of the Global South, what we used to call the Third World, that Russian capitalism has aligned itself with the neo-colonial world, that this is a struggle about national autonomy, independence if you will and IMPERIALISM and as such echoes Lenin’s views on imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism.
Unfortunately, I haven’t missed that point at all. See answer below to UCBP re bifurcation and stage-ism. I’m not a fan of Lenin’s theory of imperialism, but I’ve gone back and reread his writings and note that his attack on imperialism does not posit a successful end or defeat of imperialism that doesn’t include, lead to, require the advance of proletarian revolution. In fact, IIRC, part of his battle against Kautsky is against Kautsky’s “ultra imperialism” where supposedly the conflicts immanent to capitalism are mitigated. I cannot imagine tha Lenin excluded class struggle from his list of conflicts. Nor did I find Lenin substituting anti-imperialism for class struggle.
If we’re going o fix the reason/cause/resolve of this struggle in the categories of “national autonomy” and “self-determination” rather than in Marx’s categories of commodity production, surplus value, profitability, overproduction, then we haven’t established that “imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism,” we’ve regressed, reduced, retreated to pre-Marxist anti-materialist diversions.
@ barovsky#1
For those saying the Western peoples are not fascinated by Yeltsin and Gorbachev, this just came out:
To Seek Peace in Ukraine, Remember the End of the Cold War, by Anatol Lieven
Anatol Lieven is a journalist now turned into a thinktanker (for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft). He is an eyewitness of the pro-Gorbachev and pro-Yeltsin fever in the West, and a living proof of how the Westerners miss both of them (he even mentions there was a term to designate how much the Americans loved Gorbachev: “Gorbimania”).
Hmmm… quoting Anatol Lieven proves nothing. The so-called fascination is nothing more than rueful memories of a lost opportunity, nostalgia if you like for the imperialist dream of those lost Russian riches, riches they still hanker after, riches that Putin has denied them, hopefully forever. And who is Anatol Lieven? He tells us in a Guardian piece from Feb 24 2023:
“Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and try to capture Kyiv in February 2022, and not years earlier? Moscow has always wanted to dominate Ukraine, and Putin has given the reasons for this in his speeches and writings. Why then did he not try to take all or most of the country after the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, rather than only annexing Crimea, and giving limited, semi-covert help to separatists in the Donbas?
/../
“The reason for Putin’s past restraint lies in what was a core part of Russian strategy dating back to the 1990s: trying to wedge more distance between Europe and the United States, and ultimately to create a new security order in Europe with Russia as a full partner and respected power. It was always clear thata full-scale invasion of Ukraine would destroy any hope of rapprochement with the western Europeans, driving them for the foreseeable future into the arms of the US. Simultaneously, such a move would leave Russia diplomatically isolated and dangerously dependent on China.”
Not exactly a brilliant or original thinker, just another servant of Western capital.”
Very well stated. As Ritter coins it, President Putin is on the right (correct) side of history
Caught my attention as well
“by all accounts murdered by MI6.”
Not according to his death certificate: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/navalnys-team-says-death-certificate-says-he-died-natural-causes-2024-02-22/
But yeah, Roberts. What kind of Marxist are you to write some 1500 words examining the economics of the opposing countries and then ruin the entire effort by a single phrase suggesting Putin might have had a hand in the death of an opponent favored by the same forces backing the Ukraine?
Probably a Western Marxist.
If you were in New York, I’d call you a cynical jaded New Yorker.
What’s next? An analysis of the Soviet industrialization in the 30s that snidely suggests Stalin exterminated the old Bolshevik leadership even though they weren’t fascists?
A Marxist who believes the labor theory of value is correct, that planning is both possible and desirable and that socialism=democracy. Most socialists not only reject Marxism in any of its revolutionary variants but they also reject the labor theory of value and planning. So in that sense our host is highly dissident. His commitment to democracy is an absolutely central principle from everything I’ve seen in these posts and that will not change. But I do not understand why anyone would look for Michael Roberts’ political analysis *when Michael Roberts does not off any.* Personally I think his expertise in economics is what he has to offer that no one else does better. Do you really think what David North lets Nick Beams publish in WSWS is enough? Or, bless his heart, Sam Williams?
I would advise to accept and value what Michael Roberts really has to offer us, an invaluable theoretical and empirical expertise. For one thing, this post offers not one shred of evidence for Russian imperialism in the Marxist (or as I think, scientific) sense. Would that some of the other commenters quit using “imperialist” so carelessly! But I confess, I do not think Russia is imperialist in the Marxist sense, so perhaps my prejudices misled me into putting too much weight on this reading?
Yet I do have to complain: There is a major empirical error, the war in Ukraine began in 2014. And there is a highly dubious empirical omission, the civilian casualties after 2014. Others have noted the unlikeliness of equal casualties between Ukraine and Russia and I have to agree.
But I have to confess, I think Ukraine is fascist because I hold to a Leninist approach to the theory of the state. And even more objectionable I suppose I believe the bourgeois democratic right of nations to self determination includes the right to national unity, which means that right favors Russia, not Ukraine. I am wondering if the right of nations to self-determination means the sovereign right to an army for conquest and a sovereign currency and a sovereign central bank, considering the possibility that the right of nations to self determination means the right to the dictatorship of the proletariat. So obviously, my head is entirely wrong, so far as lots and lots of self-proclaimed Marxists declare. I suppose the inescapable conclusion is that I can’t say I’m a Marxist.
and by all accounts murdered by MI6.
Again, Not by all accounts:
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/28630
One of many political prisoners. https://anticapitalistresistance.org/support-russian-political-prisoners-free-boris-kagarlitsky/
The bloody partition of Ukraine between NATO and Russia continues it seems. Western communists must oppose their government’s involvement in the war, making clear its imperialist motivation/practice. The same goes for all our “interventions”. Many “left” communists/anarchists have failed on this point.
Leninist types have had our own failures. We must do the above without carrying water for the weaker Russian capitalist imperialism, which discredits us in the eyes of many workers, while encouraging others to fall under the Russian government’s reactionary leadership.
This is a real danger, in Britain the network Russia Today has fanned hatred for immigrants alongside its British counterparts, and the chauvinist (anti-trans and anti-immigrant) Worker’s Party of Britian receives support from the Russian state: in the form of the provision of a media platform for their equally chauvinist leader George Galloway.
Movements of workers and oppressed must be independent!
Alex,
Clearly you think the lessons of WW1 have relevance today and the Zimmerwaldist approach to WW1 still has meaning in today’s conflicts, geo-political-bloviation to the contrary not withstanding. because, after all, Russia is capitalist, Ukraine is capitalist and no matter how you dress the capitalist pig, it’s always a capitalist pig.
I can only say such a position has nothing to do with real socialism and is upheld only by such irrelevant and isolated renegades as…myself
SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM.
In 1914 the socialist parties of virtually every Western capitalist state chose barbarism. The same socialist parties still do today. They are hysterically united, not necessarily against Russia and China, but to defend their 500 year old rapacious, racist, genocial world system.
But the capitalist mode of production is dying (as even Putin knows) and nothing can stop its demise, except the nuclear extinction that the United States has been threatening since Hiroshima and Nagaski. The degenerate, demented capitalist elite would “rather [we all] be dead than red”, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater.
Marxists should not neuter themselves into social democrats.
The incorporation of fascist forces into the armed services is not the elimination of fascism, it is putting fascism at the core of the armed bodies of men that constitute, well, maybe the core but maybe instead the cutting edge? The fascists proper don’t dominate totally but that is not a valid objection: The fascists proper didn’t dominate Franco Spain totally either, but only a fool would deny Spain was fascist. Similarly, you can only deny Ukraine is fascist by rejecting Leninist-style approaches to the theory of the state. Supporting Ukraine is supporting fascism, even if somebody pretends it’s Anti-Capital.
Further, imperialism is monopoly capitalism in the epoch of capitalist decline, a genuine material social, political and economic phenomenon. It is not an overbearing national character and one nation bullying another nation. Such reification of whole nations into imaginary entities, then analyzed as if they were children quarreling on a playground is nonsense, much less Marxism. Restorationist Russia is capitalist but it is not imperialist in any scientifically meaningful sense. It would be absurd to talk about Hungarian imperialism or Polish imperialism or Romanian imperialism. But despite the relative absence of high handedness, it is not just sensible but necessary to speak of Swiss imperialism.
Many socialists totally rejected Lenin and people in that vein as non-Marxist and claimed to be the true Marxists. Many of them were the Eberts, Noskes and Scheidemanns, others were less bloody handed types like Hilferding, Bauer, Adler, Renner. But if they were Marxists, I’m not.
What probably happened in the Ukraine is that, after Maidan, the loss of Crimea and the Donbass and the proscription of the Russian part of the population, the original Ukrainian Army disintegrated, mainly deserting.
With the end of the original Ukrainian Army, somebody had to fill the vacuum, and the only armed militia left was the neonazis (Azov, Kraken, P-Sektor etc. etc.). Since they were the only source of violence put to the service of the State, they became, by default, the new high command of the new Ukrainian Army. Neonazism (which is not banned in the Ukraine, even before the Maidan) then gained a lot of space in the Government and formed the new Ukrainian aristocracy.
So yes, albeit one could argue the majority of the population of the New Ukraine is not neonazi, fact is its elite is neonazi. And a nation-State goes culturally and ideologically where its elites goes (in a non-revolutionary situation, the dominant ideology is always the ideology of the dominant class).
Steven, neither myself or Anti-Capital have advocated “supporting Ukraine” whatever that means. You might ask what “supporting” Russia, or for that matter Britain, means in relation to fascism, given that both have been and are willing to build up and use fascist forces and narratives.
The rest of your statement is totally empty, you invoke people and names like a priest without making any actual argument. I don’t even know what you really stand for or advocate from what you’ve said. Do better if you want any further response.
Alex wrote “We must do the above without carrying water for the weaker Russian capitalist imperialism…” My comment, dismissed out of hand as merely religious claptrap, was necessary because nonsense about Russian imperialism is merely one form of support for Ukraine, a fascist regime, supported by US imperialism and its NATO murder machine. And, though I am not a believer in the Global South rhetoric, it is Russia that has the bourgeois democratic right to unify the Russian nation against fascism. The false equation of Russian and Ukrainian imperialism is the deceit that supports.
People in UK I don’t know about. Frankly I don’t think most ordinary people in the US support Ukraine. The more backward among them share the presumption that Russia and Ukraine are somehow equally bad in this fight and “we” shouldn’t waste our money doing foreigners any favors. And the misled ones with better instincts don’t believe Ukraine is fascist because they believe the propaganda *you also* disseminate, that Ukraine isn’t fascist. Your sectarian beef with George Galloway is possibly political envy but maybe the dude is a stinker…the thing is, I’m not taking your word for it. But NATO and the US keep widening the war and that’s not your concern, but alerting people to the wickedness of Putin? You look at UK politics and your concern is *not* the loathesome Keir Starmer, the next PM? That man stinks across the Atlantic!
I believe we should think of this period as the opening years of hybrid WWIII. Politically, the relevant lessons are not from WWI, the death knell of the bourgeois world (accomplished without any input from evil socialists by the way!) but from WWII. You need to ask yourself, do you really think that the CP support for US and UK governments against the fascist powers was class treason like the democratic socialists of August 1914?
The low point in your comments is the absurd notion that Putin also supports fascism. The Russian army does not incorporate fascist units. (Kadyrov’s quasi-independent forces are many Bad Things, but they are not fascist.) The late Navalny, whose alleged murder by Putin—a fact announced by the most reliable imperialist authorities—was anti-immigrant, calling in the past for crushing them “like cockroaches.” Why, if he was political competition instead of a collaborator with imperialism, he’d be worse than Galloway?
By the way, Anti-Capital gives the game away by the shock and indignation that ucanbpolitical would dare disbelieve imperialist propaganda.
Biden is for Ukraine and for the Zionist enterprise. And his support is a material commitment, not just cheap rhetoric. Yet, It is *Biden* who is consistent with his principles.
There is a problem with your hypothesis that the Russian Federation is imperialist: your liberal elites don’t believe that; this is just an opinion from some fringe movements of the Western Left.
The Western elites act like Russia is merely an obstacle, a buffer state separating their universalism from the final conflict against China. The problem with this ideology is that a buffer state presupposes it can be more or less easy to defeat, because the buffer state is, deep down, merely a glorified or deluxe cannon fodder. But the West cannot defeat Russia, that’s the big problem. And they will never touch China unless they defeat Russia.
Hence the third theory, the “big brain” theory proposed by the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinksi (don’t know how to type his name) and instinctively followed — through a nonsense logic — by the alt-right of the USA, which aims to divorce Russia from China. Turn Russia into an ally of the West, to then wage a war of annihilation with China (the last significant bastion of socialism in the world). For many reasons that don’t fit here, I don’t see it happening unless there is a color revolution in Russia. Both countries have already stated numerous times these last ten years that their relationship is “more than an alliance”, “stronger than ever”. So, if anything, this third option is more in the realm of fantasy.
“more than an alliance,” “stronger than ever,” the old joke is, when the government denies it, you know it is true. The joke is funny because it is so often the case.
Putin is a right-winger who wants a deal with imperialism and is quite capable of making one and has spent most of his political life trying to make one. And when push came to shove, it was still a “Special Military Operation,” not a war.
Foreign policy is domestic policy out on the town. The PRC’s illusions or delusions about Russia I fear stem from the appetites of the capitalist roaders in the PRC. (The extensive cooperation in the siege of the DPRK is another instance.)
“There is a problem with your hypothesis that the Russian Federation is imperialist: your liberal elites don’t believe that; this is just an opinion from some fringe movements of the Western Left.”
That’s not a problem with my hypothesis, is the opinion of my “liberal elite” what determines whether a country is imperialist? No, said country’s relation to others determines that.
(for what it’s worth, I would argue my “liberal elite” very much does believe Russia is imperialist, but they also have no coherent view of what imperialism is, hence their refusal to apply the term to their own countries)
Russia is a relatively weak imperialism capable of dominating its fSU backyard (i.e.: batting away western attempts to peel off countries like Georgia, military intervention against worker’s rebellions in places like Kazakhstan, use of “global labour arbitrage” in relation to central Asia in particular…) and mounting raids on the core imperial powers’ global accumulation structures (i.e.: Wagner’s activities in Africa, competing with western countries to be the new military guarantor for local compradors).
The arguments being made in this comments section against “Russian imperialism” rely on a definition of such that has nothing to do with a country’s concrete activities and relations – whether we think in the terms outlined by Lenin over a century ago or in more modern ones of unequal exchange.
Instead, only a country’s relative position in the world economy is considered, if you are not in the very top rank, you cannot be imperialist. This is “campism”, it leads to an ignoring of facts on the ground for fear of being a useful idiot for western imperialism. Use terms like sub-imperialism if you must – but we should be honest and unflinching. Or is it our role to lie to workers and play at being diplomats?
@ stevenjohnson
That’s the point: even with an Occidentalist in power (Putin), the West has managed to throw the RF to the arms of the Chinese. That gives even more strength to Marx’s theory: it is the economy that decides, not ideology.
If the West is not co-opting Putin, it is because capitalism has depleted its possibilities to a point where it is not possible anymore. The Western capitalist class is not antagonizing the Russian capitalist class because they want to, but because they have to.
That they are antagonizing China is very obvious even to the most pink of the social-democrats: China represents socialism, the mortal enemy of capitalism and its historical successor. The triumph of China will represent not only the end of the West, but also the end of capitalism.
–//–
@ Alex
You are entitled to have and express whatever ideology you want. If you want to call the RF imperialist, that’s your right to do so.
But let’s consider the scientific (concrete, objective) problems your ideology brings to the table:
My counter argument would be this: what brings us closer to the end of imperialism — the literal destruction of the really existing empire or the capitulation to the really existing empire? What would hurt imperialism systemically and ideologically more: the destruction of the greatest empire that was ever invented by humanity (i.e. the USA) or the alleged creation of one or two feeble empires?
As Marx once said: what really happens is more important than what is said or thought.
@vk
I’ve said nothing about Yeltsin and don’t consider that to be the case (Russia not being imperialist at that time). I draw your attention to the fact I’ve said nothing about Putin at all, merely referring to Russia.
Russia’s ability to compete was obviously impaired immediately after the collapse of the USSR, and furthermore sharper inter-imperialist competition was not required as global capitalism digested the meal of socialism outside the “five flowers” (even there managing to grow off and exploit Vietnam and China in particular through their integration into globalised production – even if you support the approach this was the case, the cost those two states chose to pay) and the that of various bourgeois nationalist developmentalist projects in the oppressed world.
But such relative peace’s can only be temporary under capitalist imperialism, eventually the world is divided up and profits get squeezed by overaccumulation. “The division of spoils becomes the apportioning of losses”. Our role should be to explain the overall nature of the crisis, not to passively cheer for it, as its positive resolution requires an informed and conscious global working class.
I actively disagree that the other countries you mention – the US’ helpers – are not imperialist.
Regarding point 3, imperialism will only ever be stopped by a socialist revolution of workers and oppressed. Everyone has a responsibility to be aware of and oppose their own country’s imperialism and should not act like it can be wielded to anti-imperialist ends. That responsibility is not the same as one to massage the image of other capitalist states.
Despite claiming to disagree, you sidestepped actually arguing against my reasoning for Russia being imperialist – just stating I have the right to my opinion. Perhaps you agree with me technically speaking, but think it’s impolitic to say so?
“If the West is not co-opting Putin, it is because capitalism has depleted its possibilities to a point where it is not possible anymore. The Western capitalist class is not antagonizing the Russian capitalist class because they want to, but because they have to.” Clearly Putin is the target, but who says the oligarchs are? “The West” clearly sees the oligarchs as potential allies. The oligarchs in Ukraine certainly are, there’s no intrinsic reason the closely related/overlapping Russian oligarchs can’t be too. Targeting Putin because he’s not as ruthlessly subservient as his political father Yeltsin is indeed because there’s never enough money, so the capitalists want even more from Russia than even Putin is willing to give. The oligarchs, not so much, hence Putin’s “tyranny” in keeping the oligarchs fingers off the state machinery even as he protects their wealth.
After WWII, the US bourgeoisie via its agents in the military and state department, the people it hires to do such work, did things like set up a formal democracy, restore a kind of trade unionism, restore rights to suitably reliable social democrats, conducted some limited reprisals against strongly Nazi-linked firms and some reforms in the concentration in industry and banking, promoted a secular society, abolished on a mass scale debts of the Nazi government and then even advanced capital for massive rebuilding. In Japan, there were some limitations placed on the zaibatsu, even the CP was permitted to return to public life, there was a disestablishment of State Shinto, there was a limitation of the monarchy. In Taiwan, due to its small size, the US et al. even sponsored a land reform (largely of Japanese colonial properties, but still.) The US bourgeoisie could still do those things.
In Iraq, the US deliberately broke up a secular national state into a group of confessional gangs. It did not pay to rebuild. It did not promote trade unions even to the limited extent it did in the former fascist countries. And in Russia, it promoted Yeltsin, the destroyer of bourgeois democracy at its alleged birth, bombing the Russian parliament. As I recall, to take Poland the capitalists forgave something like 50% of Poland’s former debt (run up by reformists who thought market relations with capitalism was a Good Idea, if I remember correctly.) Russia was too big.
The difference between US policy in the Trentes Glorieuses and the epoch of accelerating rot is indeed due to the diminishing capacity of the capitalist world economy. And if Putin is successfully assassinated or overthrown or simply dies (as he will,) the comprador capitalists in the newly reacquired neocolony will only gets a junior partner’s share…but then that’s true of all compradors everywhere. Putin’s not enough of a stooge, he’ll be gone sooner or later. Only if Putinism, sober Yeltsinism, will a comprador regime of acceptable pliability be ruled out. No, imperialism can’t deliver for the masses. But that’s like saying Ukraine isn’t fascist because the open fascists don’t get votes. Comprador regimes are not creations of the majority, they are impositions by the collaborators.
“The triumph of China will represent not only the end of the West, but also the end of capitalism. China represents socialism, the mortal enemy of capitalism and its historical successor. The triumph of China will represent not only the end of the West, but also the end of capitalism.” Like Michael Roberts, I do not believe the PRC is capitalist. Capitalist Chines is Taiwan and the Hong Kong City council and the neocolonial concessions of the SEZs/SARs. (And the burgeoning financial warlords as the national government loses control of the provinces.) But unlike you, I do not believe that the PRC is getting stronger because it’s tamed capitalism, I don’t think capitalism is reformable any more. I think the capitalist roaders have basically hitched their wagon to a falling star. Billionaires are not a sign of socialist strength, but of social weakness. Even as we speak the capitalist element in the PRC is undergoing yet another of the inevitable capitalist crises. How the PRC responds may determine everything.
The old excuse of the Dengists, that they’re crossing the river by feeling for the stones, was never a good image if you actually paid attention. But there is a point in the capitalist roading where, the stones are out of reach, and their wobbling when you stand on them, and the water’s rising, so you must leap. That is the true capitalist restoration. Suppose the US hegemony is defeated? A multipolar world is a world of war, unless you really do believe that imperialism can find a peaceful way to redivide the world. I think that’s as implausible as claiming that free competition, a good antitrust law and properly taxing unproductive wealth, will keep capitalism going forever, free of its defects from Bad People misleading. You might as well wait for Trump to smash the Deep State and make class war against the PMC!
In Iraq, the US deliberately broke up a secular national state into a group of confessional gangs. It did not pay to rebuild. It did not promote trade unions even to the limited extent it did in the former fascist countries. And in Russia, it promoted Yeltsin, the destroyer of bourgeois democracy at its alleged birth, bombing the Russian parliament.
In this, Mr. Johnson is totally correct; it’s the “asset-stripping” “asset-liquidating” LBO-private equity strategy at its zenith, where the purpose of destruction just that, destruction turning society into ashes without any prospect for restoration of the social benefits– like stable supplies of electricity or education opportunities for females. Pillaging meets the free market.
Took the form of destroying Iraq; the “failed states” of Central America and Africa; the massive disappearances of women in the maquiladora zones of Mexico; the demolition of Gaza; and the destruction in Ukraine; the Christian/nationalist/vigilante movement in the US– all manifestations of and derived from capital’s need to drive the cost of the reproduction of labor power below its value.
The truly intriguing thing about this war is its ideological aspect: why does the West treats it as “existential”?
After all, the Ukraine was never to enter NATO (see: Georgia). It was never part of NATO. It is not and never was part of the European Union. Its resources, for sure, would give some extra lifetime to European (specially German) and American (weapons industry, NATO) capitalism, but then, Bill Clinton essentially ruled Russia during Yeltsin’s reign and the economic surplus proved to be very short lived (up to September 2008) — one would think that, by now, the capitalist class has already realized direct territorial expansion will not save the system.
My guess is the importance of the Ukraine is ideological: Ukraine seems to be the last instance where the West (NATO + South Korea + Japan) will be able to truly unite at a diplomatic, political and economic level — that’s the essence of all of Zelensky’s international speeches; if you read them all at once and in sequence, you will be astonished by the centrality and persistence of this constant.
The Ukraine is, therefore, the West itself. It represents the capacity of the Western Civilization to, ultimately, preserve itself, forever. In this sense, it doesn’t matter if Russia really wants to invade the NATO countries (Poland, Estonia etc.), but that the Western Civilization’s very existence will forever be dependent of Russian mercy if it doesn’t defeat it in the Ukrainian front.
But then there is reality: contrary to the USSR, Russia is not really isolated economically. It has the so-called Global South (ex-Third World; the Third World revolted against the First World) and, more importantly than all of that, it has China.
I would also not advise Westerners to personify Russia to Putin. Evidence available indicates that all of the realistically possible successors of Putin are more anti-West than him, that is, he is the most moderate possible Russian chief. It was Yeltsin, not Putin, who was the exception that proves the rule.
Just came out:
Munich Security Conference: the four tasks on the EU’s geopolitical agenda, by Josepp Borrell
“The third strategic issue currently on our agenda is about our relations with the so-called “Global South” countries. I know that the term “Global South” encompasses very different realities, but it nevertheless raises a real issue. If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of “the West against the Rest”, Europe’s future risks to be bleak. The era of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended. While this has been theoretically understood, we have not always drawn all practical conclusions from this new reality.”
Borrell is, indeed, the Last European.
it is not “existential ” for west.west is mimicking what russia said earlier. west is ready for confrontation over ukraine as it is next step in NATO/EU expansion.west has decided to fight both russia & china simultaneously(NSS-2017) just like in 1950 and west is confident that they will win this cold war too.
Russia and Eu had issues over buying of oil /gas infrastructure around 2002-03!!
Part 2 — on the war itself
It is very clear to me the end, which is thus in very much sight: Ukraine as we know it will cease to exist, definitely losing the four already independent regions (Donetsk, Lughansk, Kherson and Zaporozhie) and probably, for military-national security reasons, also Odessa and Kharkhov. This was my immediate opinion-conclusion after the first 1h22min of the war, and it remains unchanged.
The reason the war is taking years is very simple: Ukraine is very big (the biggest country of Europe in territorial terms), and mounted many lines of fortifications during the eight previous years of civil war against Donetsk and Lughansk. History indicates this type of war, which is being waged with weapons of more or less the same destruction power of WWII or others of the Cold War, in this large of a territory, takes, on average, four years. Russia already conquered an area a little bit larger than the island of Great Britain — so, if one is a Western European, just imagine it conquered the UK sans Northern Ireland in one and a half hours to envisage the scale of the operation.
It is a waste of time to count corpses while the war is still going on because nobody in the battlefield (the only ones capable of verifying) is truly counting and, because propaganda is a war front, both sides tend to lie about the estimates to their favor. However, it is clear Ukraine has a lot more than 70,000 dead: recent decrees by president Zelensky ordered: 1) the extradition of men who fled the country and are living in Western Europe in order to be conscripted; 2) the end of exemption of conscription of college students; 3) the conscription of disabled people (including mental disability, such as Down Syndrome) and, lastly, 4) the conscription of women (there are already videos confirming they are being sent to the trenches, i.e. the first line of combat, so we are not talking about nurses here).
Taking into account Ukraine’s original population (the last census was done circa 2000, so we don’t know exactly), minus the amount of people who caused the Maidan coup who fled to Western Europe the first opportunity they had in 2014 (Poland alone claims to have more than 1 million of those), minus the people it lost to the provinces of Crimea, Donetsk and Lughansk right away, minus the people it lost to the conquered provinces of Kherson and Zaporozhie, and the desperation implied by those decrees, I would not be surprised if the Ukraine lost at least 500,000+ dead, 1 million + if we count the permanently wounded.
We can also infer such large losses of men from the fact that we know, for sure — because it was publicly said by a Ukrainian top brass — that the Azov Battalion (Ukraine’s military aristocracy, the equivalent to the Third Reich’s Waffen SS) was reduced to a single brigade (the 3rd, to be more exact); this 3rd Brigade itself took heavy losses in the last effort to hold Avdeevka before quickly surrendering the city or village. Those elite/aristocratic military formations are usually the first to be replenished (and with the best men and equipment) and the last to be sent to the front lines (always in the rearguard); if the Azov are so depleted, then so is the Ukrainian Army.
“Putin will win a new presidential term next month (and would probably could have done so even without killing off all potential opponents).”
This really is a very silly thing to write. And there is no need to explain why- that is how silly it is.
Navalny’s death so close to the Carlson Putin interview which for the first time received one billion clicks only benefited the West. Michael you really have a blind spot when it comes to the Ukraine. Total casualties from the most reliable sources put the figure at 600,000 on the Ukrainian side which is why they are desperate to recruit additional cannon fodder despite their recruiters being beaten up by communities knowing their men are being sent to a certain death on the front. In fact the death rate per enlisted soldier is already higher than that suffered by the Wehrmacht in WW2 during five years of fighting.
A proxy war is the cruelest kind of war because those who provoked and finance the war reside outside Ukraine in the USA and so are not accountable to those who have to bear the burden and consequences of the war. It results in far higher casualties and destruction because no political settlement is allowed. The US has now ordered the Ukrainian army to go on the defensive, ten years has been cited, making it a perpetual defense so Russia can be tied up in the Ukraine, while the US deals with China.
Ukraine is a terrible tragedy, a nation sacrificed on the bloody altar of US imperialism and if BlackRock thinks it will profit from this war it is as deluded as the Pentagon.
Navalny may have died by natural causes.
He’s diabetic and had a grave insulin shock in Germany, during which he almost died (the episode was sold by corrupt doctors of the Berlin hospital, probably under orientation of the BND, to cook the episode as a novichok-like poisoning attempt).
During his first week in the Russian prison, he lost a lot of weight (due to his diabetes) and passed out many times. Prisons are not hotels: their conditions are inherently worse for human health than the outside, middle class world. He surely was receiving treatment, but it is never the same as being free.
Prisoners die everyday around the world due to the inherently worse conditions of the prison system. Anders Breivik could be dead right now, but he lucked out to have committed his atrocity in Norway, which has an exceptional prison system. Most of the time, a prisoner’s death doesn’t make the news for the simple fact he is a poor person who committed a simple act of robbery.
Broken heart may have contributed to hasten Navalny’s death: he watched, hopelessly, his vision of the world to crumble in front of his eyes, with the inherent fall of Avdeevka and, why not (because people like him breath and live in propaganda) Tucker Carlsen’s interview. This hypothesis explains the timing of his death, but we will never know for certainty.
Again Michael, I think you might be overestimating Russian deaths and underestimating Ukrainian military losses. Mediazona, an anti-Putin Russian source run by those connected with Pussy Riot, puts the current total of Russian killed as approx. 45,000. Apparently the statistics are based on comprehensive surveys of Russian newspapers and other local media sources of obituaries etc. One cannot imagine that there is any political desire by Mediazona to minimalise the numbers, moreover, it collaborates with the BBC. Presumably the BBC rarely, if ever, refers to these figure because it doesn`t accord to the overall Western claim that the proxy war is going according to plan and it is the ´spending good money` resulting in huge numbers of Russian dead with no Western casualties (just Ukrainians). I am hesitant to give any overall figure for the number of Ukraine military fatalities but I would be surprised if it wasn`t multiple times the Russian total. This would accord with the way the Russians have conducted the war (after the intial stages) – slow incremental Russian advance, defence in depth, retreat when necessary, not prioritising the capture of territory and above all else allowing Ukrainian troops to expend themselves in counterattacks etc. In other words, from the Russia side – a war of attrition. Incidentally, it is clearly not a war of stalemate – things seem to be unfolding according to the Russian war plan.
“Overall, 28% of Ukraine’s arable land is owned by a mixture of Ukrainian oligarchs, European and North American corporations, as well as the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.” No reason to doubt, but a citation would help.
We also need figures on Russian oligarch ownership of ores, mines, and smelters in the areas it has seized and held.
Charles – on the quote, the reference seems to be from the South China Morning Post. https://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/who-owns-the-lands-of-ukraine-for-2024-suddenly-someone-forgot/ The facts are disputed – see my reply to Liam O. And indeed, the Russian capitalists are wasting no time in occupied Ukraine. https://www.dw.com/en/russia-ukraine-war-natural-resources-grain/a-66639269 AND https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/28/ukraine-war-russia-resources-energy-oil-gas-commodities-agriculture/
Hello Michael. I’m confused on one point:
‘…Cargill, Monsanto and Dupont own 40% of Ukraine’s arable land.’
‘Overall, 28% of Ukraine’s arable land is owned by a mixture of Ukrainian oligarchs, European and North American corporations, as well as the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.’
Forgive me but are the former companies not part of the latter group, or is there something else I’m missing?
Dear Liam it seems there is some dispute about this measure. I reference the following: https://unac.notowar.net/2022/08/07/us-corporations-own-around-30-of-ukrainian-arable-land/ AND https://fullfact.org/news/ukraine-land-sales-zelenskyy/ AND https://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/who-owns-the-lands-of-ukraine-for-2024-suddenly-someone-forgot/ Whatever the exact figures, it’s clear that much of Ukraine’s agro resources are in foreign hands – maybe much like other poor agro countries.
Here is the latest data on Ukrainian soldier deaths. https://southfront.press/irretrievable-losses-of-ukrainian-army-exceeded-active-military-personnel/ Now if we consider that Ukrainian enlistment over the last few years was between 1.2 million and 1.5 million men and women we are talking of a death rate of between 25 and 35% of those on the front lines and in support roles. This is a death rate seldom seen in war.
SouthFront is a Russian disinformation site.
Oh my god, really, you can’t be serious. And there I was thinking all the other sites were CIA, MI 5 fronts.
Oh my god, really, you can’t be serious. And there I was thinking all the other sites were CIA, MI 5 fronts.
So precious….except, as far as I can tell you’re the only one using a dubious website as an unimpeachable source of accurate information. Nobody else has engaged in that, or even made an issue of casualties and casualty rates.
Your position is, as you’ve stated explicitly to me, that although Russia is capitalist, and Putin is the chief of that capitalist Russia, it is important to support Russia, rather than put forward a
“Zimmerwald-ist” position, in that a defeat for NATO/US/Ukraine will break through the dormancy of the US working class and shock it into opposition against the US ruling class. Hence the rejection of class opposition to all the capitalist parties to this conflict, not to even mention prospects for advancing the revolutionary defeatist perspective.
Your position is exactly the mirror image of all those advocating for Ukraine as a struggle for “national liberation” and “self-determination” in that class opposition is assumed to be impossible.
You, and others, are stuck once again and forever in your iterations of “stages” theories-i.e. FIRST, the struggle must be against imperialism/fascism/hegemony and THEN we can get to class struggle. OF course in the bifurcation of the two there is always, as there was with the original stagists in the Russian Revolutions, the willingness, the tolerance of, the necessity to subordinate that very class struggle you promise to advance tomorrow and the days after.
That’s been the real history of defeats to proletarian revolution–its smothering under the blanket of stage-ism.
and your alternative to non-existent proletarian revolution is…? It’s all or nothing then. Pathetic.
Just for information: the RF Armed Forces officially claim to have killed, on a flat average since day 1 of the war, 600 Ukrainians per day (these last days, during the liberation of Adveevka, this average rose sharply to 1,000 per day, but it was too short of a duration of time to affect the overall average of the entire war). That’s the number Sergey Shoigu personally and publicly (it was released in the news the same day) informed to president Vladimir V. Putin a few months ago. Their official Telegram channel kept those same numbers on average, fluctuating between 300-800, depending on the day.
We just crossed the exact mark of two years of war (22 February, 2022), so 365x2x600=438,000 killed (approx. since the 600 number is, obviously, a rounding up or down, an estimate done by the RF Armed Forces). As I said in my second original comment here, I think the number is even greater (at least half a million dead), but my methodology is just my personal instinct.
Of course, we will never have an exact number for a war of this scale because no one is there bothering to count the exact amount of corpses, the same way we don’t have to this day the exact amount of dead in WWI or WWII. Only small wars allow for an exact count of dead and wounded.
Curiosity: even calculation of stuff like loss of tanks is hard to estimate, because different armies use different methodologies. For example, we are left to believe the Third Reich lost an incredibly small amount of tanks against the Soviet Union because they counted fixed tanks returned to battle as not lost (when, in fact, they were lost, because they take days to fix in the rear, and when they go back to the battlefield, the battle is already over).
Victoria Nuland admits the Ukraine aid is merely to boost American industry in a live interview to the CNN:
Most Ukraine aid ‘goes right back’ to US – Nuland: https://www.rt.com/news/593111-nuland-us-aid-ukraine/
There is a link to the original interview in the article. I chose the RT link because the CNN one doesn’t have the crucial part in their headline.
The USA is now in a de facto war economy, this aid configuring a wartime version of the Marshall Plan. That explains why it managed to grow some 2.5% last year while the rest of the First World fell into recession.
The USA is now in a de facto war economy…That explains why it managed to grow some 2.5% last year while the rest of the First World fell into recession.
Except… defense spending as a percent of GDP is basically unchanged between 2022 and 2023 and below the 2019 mark (https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&categories=survey#eyJhcHBpZCI6MTksInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyLDMsM10sImRhdGEiOltbImNhdGVnb3JpZXMiLCJTdXJ2ZXkiXSxbIk5JUEFfVGFibGVfTGlzdCIsIjE0Il0sWyJGaXJzdF9ZZWFyIiwiMjAxOSJdLFsiTGFzdF9ZZWFyIiwiMjAyMyJdLFsiU2NhbGUiLCIwIl0sWyJTZXJpZXMiLCJBIl1dfQ== )
Reply
Those aid packages are not entering the defense spending line of the budget (the same way spending on nuclear weapons enter the line of spending of the Department of Energy and not Defense).
The methodology of spending as a percentage of GDP to calculate the weight of defense is not a scientifically valid one because
The methodology of spending as a percentage of GDP to calculate the weight of defense is not a scientifically valid one because
Then what evidence do you have that leads you to believe that aid to the Ukraine has made the US into a “war economy,” and that explains the 2.5% growth in GDP? What are the measures?
Just to add-on– although not on the Tucker Carlson list of approved sources like South Front (apologies to all the mini-Yagodas), the Council of Foreign Relations has produced the following analysis of aid to Ukraine, and aid relative to GDP: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
You will note that Germany’s contribution is approximately 2x that of US as a rate of GDP. Didn’t keep them out a 4Q downturn and a reduced growth in 2023
US defense industry revenues in 2023 were about 2% above the 22 levels.
If the US is a war economy, then Trump really did re-industrialize the US economy. But that’s not true either.
First, the US is a highly militaristic society/state. The massive military spending, the widespread role of military personnel in political life (second only to lawyers?) and its role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy, all show this.
But that’s not a war economy. That’s just business as usual in a decaying society. In a true war economy, there is a wide panoply of measures intended to mobilize resources. Increased taxation, including and notably even on the rich; forced savings; possible wage limits; even more shockingly, possible price controls; rationing of essential commodities; no nonsense about balanced budgets; investments in fixed capital for essential industries, such as the building of chemical plants in the Kanawha valley in WV; massive propaganda campaigns that even promote solidarity among all the people in the name of the war effort.
No, the US is not a de facto war economy.
As to the claim the capital inflows for US weapons was the factor (temporarily?) preserving the US from the developing world slump? It surely must play a part but how can you be sure that the US position as an oil producer while energy costs for the EU have skyrocketed, hasn’t played as much or even more a part? I’m not converted to Michael Hudson but his observation that the US inflicted a defeat on the EU with this war is not one of my issues with him.
Given that I’m disagreeing with vk on the US as a war economy have to clarify I have zero in common with Anti-Capital. Three economic points: The benefits to the US economy are from selling weapons, especially to foreigners. The observation defense firms have reported increased revenues. It is unclear whether vk or Anti-Capital or both are also imputing temporary military Keynesian benefits. (In any case, I disagree on military Keynesianism is sound infrastructure investment.) Much of the arms sales are of inventory and the revenues are projected to keep on increasing as inventory is replaced, by the way, so Anti-Capital also misrepresents the effects on prospective profits, i.e., on investment. I happen to think this is going to be fairly minimal but I have no more evidence for this than Anti-Capital does, who doesn’t seem to know it’s an issue.
Another, though Anti-Capital doesn’t seem to know that it is also an issue, is how capital inflows into the US help preserve the values of the dollar, stocks and other financial instruments. But taken in conjunction with strains on other imperialist economies, the effect is multiplied. In a depression those who still have some money end up getting richer because they can buy more. Anti-Capital’s assumption it is not important needs actual evidence.
The third, related issue, is that outright gifts and loans (which distinction Anti-Capital doesn’t find rhetorically useful to make, by the way, or even which are being “paid” for by mortgaging Ukraine’s public property, such as it is) are not the sole expenditures. Economic warfare is warfare, period, despite the Trumpers who want to claim their tin God didn’t start any wars. The economic warfare by the EU is enormous. Further since the US is a major energy producer, it gives an enormous relative advantage to the US economy. Oil and natural gas are huge in the US economy, even huger than weapons.
Again, I entirely disagree with vk over US war economy, it’s not a thing, but I reject Anti-Capital’s Marxism.
I believe Anti-Capital’s most heartfelt political tenet is actually anti-Communism, as witness the childish swipe at “mini-Yagodas.” It is amazing that Anti-Capital would try to red bait ucanbpolitical….but Tucker Carlson as a mini-Yagoda? How far to the right do you have to be for that? And the funny part is that it was Yezhov, not Yagoda, who was the main man in the NKVD during the year 1937. Indeed Yagoda was accused in the big trial of 1938!
I have zero in common with Anti-Capital.
What a relief. I’m sure everybody was just worried to death about that. I know I was. You know what links Yagoda and Carlson?– a pathological need to make-things-up, to infer what’s never implied.
We finally have the official number of Ukrainian dead according to the Ukrainian government itself:
Zelensky warns ‘millions will be killed’ without US aid to Kyiv, as Ukrainian troop deaths reach at least 31,000
There it is: Zelensky claimed, “during a conference in Kyiv” that “It’s a big loss to us. 31,000 Ukrainians, Ukrainian soldiers, died in this war. Not 300,000. Not 150,000, whatever (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is lying with”. This is the very first time Ukraine comes up with a number of their own dead — they claim to keep the number secret because that could help the Russians (now they claim only the number of wounded would help them).
That number is not even half of this blog’s estimate. Zelensky didn’t even bother to come up with a credible number.
The more complete Guardian article made from the same conference claims Zelensky said there were 180,000 dead Russians + 500,000 wounded, but those are not between quotation marks. The 300,000 figure he claims to be false came from the Sergey Shoigu speech to Vladimir Putin I mentioned in my previous comment here in this post; it was mentioned around the mainstream Russian Media (I read it at Sputnik News at the time) and I’m almost sure there is video or an official transcript of it.
There was a number of dead the Russians once or twice revealed. If you count the Wagner Group (which was not RF Armed Forces up until the Prigozhin usurpation attempt), they are certainly above the 15,000 dead. The 150,000 number of dead Zelensky came up with probably comes from the fact that it is a known fact that this was the initial number of troops the SMO started with. There were two waves of mobilization of reservists in Russia since, totaling 330,000 total engaged in the war for the Russian side. From this mobilization, Zelensky assumes the Ukraine killed the totality of the original Russian soldiers who started the war, i.e. that those mobilized were done so in order to fully replenish the original army.
If the Ukrainian Army really only lost 31,000 in two years and killed Russian at a ratio of 1:5, then they are performing better than the Wehrmacht did in the Ostfront (the 1:10 or 1:8 ratios only arises from the massive amount of civilians and PoWs they killed).
barovsky The nesting comments are getting rather hard to follow, at least for me. I want to repeat that our host doesn’t do political analysis and his attack on Putin as a murderer is because the democracies say this and saying so is committing to democracy. But this is apparently Marxism, as witness Alex and Anti-Capital, I think vk would say it was Western Marxism, just another ideology of the “Golden Billion” but I don’t think it’s useful to lump bourgeoisie and workers together in one undifferentiated mass just because they’re in a richer state. Plus, hating indiscriminately on your fellows is more or less anti-solidarity and even worse, doesn’t actually do any good for the, what, the Leaden Seven Billion? When vk accuses us “Golden Billionaires” of being fascinated by Yeltsin, he’s doing exactly that, assuming that all citizens of the US (for one) are basically pro-imperialist and thus delighted by Yeltsin. Therefore demonstrating Lieven is an imperialist ideologist refutes nothing in the fascination charge and demonstrating Lieven’s fascination demonstrates the fascination of every “Golden Billionaire.”
In analyzing the situation, locally, the fact Ukraine is fascist matters immensely. Putin had no problem with fascists taking over in 2014, he immediately recognized the illegal regime and wouldn’t even endorse the legally elected president. The fact that no one else criticizes Ukraine for fascism despite Azov battalion with its international fascist (and military) connections and national police corps and the (should be) notorious Odessa trades union building massacre is in one sense irrelevant. Fascist apologists are going to apologize. But that’s why it’s imprudent to rely on Putin, he’s capable of making a rotten deal. And this is especially true if the people in Russia want to reap the fruits of their sacrifices. Putin is no Clement Attlee. I am still appalled at the number of sonnenrad socialists and wolfsangel democrats. I am pretty sure that there are local atrocities by fascists against people that are simply covered up by the media, including of Jews by the way, especially those not connected with Kolomoisky (an oligarch bankrolling Chabad in Ukraine.) It’s conceivable that when the regime collapses, mass atrocities will occur, but of course everyone will agree nobody could see that coming. But I say, fascists are going to fash.
Further, the US is indeed a kind of ultraimperialism. Not the kind that could make win-win bargains for a multipolar world—that’s the Kautsky swindle—but the victor of WWII. Reversing the verdicts of WWII will take another world war. I think that’s hybrid WWIII, already underway, but the US keeps renewing its nuclear force for a reason, namely, to be ready for use.
Another essential aspect is to act upon the fact that this is a war of the US and its murder machine NATO against Russia. The international working class does not need another victory for imperialism. Every professed reason for neutrality favors imperialist victory. When Marx was alive, he was acutely aware the defeat of imperial Russia, the giant reserve of European reaction, was objectively helpful.
The Marxists in the thread have lapsed into symptomatically revealing phrasing. For instance “the demolition of Gaza; and the destruction in Ukraine;” both apologizes for Zionist genocidal slaughter and conquest and libels the SMO which hasn’t even been as destructive of civilian life as the NATO wars on Libya and Iran and Afghanistan and Serbia, much less Gaza. But it’s true to be consistently pro-imperialist as Biden is, you would be for both the fascists and the Zionists. I wonder if the problem is that, unlike the OP, an end is in sight for some of the commenters and it’s got them too upset to be cautious?
But to hark back to something less contentious, or at least before anti-Communist* slurs became the go-to?
“Does Russia represent a point of ‘alternative polarity’ to Western capitalism? Does the victory of Russian capitalism represent a defeat for the US and its allies? The critical question is does the triumph of a capitalist economy over another capitalist economy represent a victory or a defeat for international revolution?”
The first answer is no, because it’s not a big enough defeat for US imperialism to reverse the verdicts of WWII. The second answer is yes, but in addition to, too little, it doesn’t offer an alternative, not in my opinion. Multipolarity is not yet a thing, just as the dollar is still the reserve currency and the Fed is the world’s central bank and US treasuries are liquidity. The third question is a fraud. The proper critical questions are, is the defeat of fascism in Ukraine a victory for the world, including the people of Ukraine, all workers everywhere and all their allies? Yes. Is the victory of the US over Russia a defeat of the world revolution? Yes. And it opens the road to war on the PRC too, not so by the way. Are democracy and socialism in the end the same so that the old democracies are the (peaceful?) road to socialism? No. Is the only socialist state worthy of support one that immediately is immediately superior to (not actually existing democracy) the ideal democracy in any democrat’s/democratic socialist’s imagination? No.
*To confess, back in the day I lost all credibility with my friends by arguing that we should advocate for our friends in Russia to plan for the seizure of power after the 1996 elections.
Anti-capital, as a North American you have a duty to develop or contribute to the anti-war movement in your country around the slogan: the enemy is at home just as I am doing so actively in Britain with some effect. In the absence of that your revolutionary programme for Ukraine is mere phrase mongering.
Turning to Russia, I have always called for the defeat of the Ukraine in this war despite mourning the Ukrainian dead. Why, well it is so simple it’s embarrassing. The purpose of the war was regime change in Moscow to expose China’s northern flank and complete the encirclement of China. This was the only way the US could maintain its hegemony even if it set the world on fire. Instead what has happened has been a strategic defeat for US imperialism, the home of reaction and everything counter revolutionary at scale. What would have happened had Russia lost. Well at the least, the West would have recolonized China, at worst a huge war with tens of millions dead.
Instead you sloganise in an infantile manner. It’s everything or nothing but that’s not how politics work. Of course we would be delighted, in rapture in fact, if the workers on both sides re-discovered their class consciousness and turned their guns on their officers. But in the absence of this the lesser evil was to ensure NATO did not prevail in the Ukraine.
We have clashed on a number of occasions. And this is not the site to expand on this, but on each occasion it is because I felt you had not stepped completely out of the shadow of US imperialism and not detached yourself completely from the left-dems.
It’s everything or nothing but that’s not how politics work. Of course we would be delighted, in rapture in fact, if the workers on both sides re-discovered their class consciousness and turned their guns on their officers. But in the absence of this the lesser evil was to ensure NATO did not prevail in the Ukraine.
Sure thing– for you “politics” works in and by stages and the lesser evil. And we can see how well that’s worked.
And this is not the site to expand on this
So why bring it up? Because your “lesser evil” is detaching oneself from “left dems”??
Not to put too fine a point on it but supporting the “lesser evil” is the signature characteristic of those politically “mature”-types who can never step out of the “shadow” of imperialism. Those are the real infants who pretend to run away from home only to keep going around in circles because they are afraid to cross the street.
If you have an effective form of anti-imperialist struggle in Britain, I am genuinely interested to hear what it is. The stop the war coalition and the like are just doing a – b marches and trying to elect “pro-Palestine” MPs, a good grift for those who end up with seats. Look up the charecter trying for the Ladywood constituency, don’t think a wealthy lawyer is going to lead us to the barricades myself!
The network of communist sects like the SWP that dominate the scene are compromised, they coordinate with the police as a matter of course, they defend rapists in their ranks when exposed. We have no organisation beyond very small local networks.
There are some spots of more militant resistance like Palestine Action, but even there I’m dubious about the leading lights and the actual impact – their celebrity backer Lowkey seems more interested in encouraging people to vote for George Galloway, a transphobe (do a search of his social media, it’s not hard to find) also known for pretending to be a cat on celebrity big brother back in the day. His party spends its time camapigning against ULEZ and explicitly wants to “control our borders”. And no, they’re not talking just capital, also labour.
So anyway I’m not filled with confidence about the state of British anti-imperialism, any more info or recommendations you can give us?
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On our duty to see the defeat of Ukraine, I don’t see it that way. Certainly we have a duty to oppose our own country’s imperialism, to build a movement to end all our foreign military committments (including in Ukraine), forgive debts, end intellectual property, end the border, and so on. I don’t think that can be effectively built by cheering on Russia – only by exposing our own country.
You, and many others, seem fixed on acting like you’re leading a state, rather than focusing on the situation in front of you, the need to build a movement where you are. I may be wrong, but I don’t think Anti-Capital has a programme for revolution in Ukraine; not that I’d be against one there, it’d just be a little pointless for a Brit.
I just don’t think they have a stance of spreading illusions about the situation there to workers in their own country – the idea that Russian capitalism can be a progressive global force. The idea that it, and countries like it, being the leading anti-systemic voices is not a problem, that it doesn’t mean the cooption of workers and oppressed. That’s certainly my position regardless.
Dear Michael,
you are way off on the Ukrainian casualties, but others have pointed that out. (The reason that they can’t hold on to their strong points anymore is not mainly that they lack ammunition, but that they lack manpower.)
Two other points to make:
1 The cost of rebuilding housing may be great, but it will not fall on Ukraine since the destroyed houses are mostly in areas that will be Russia when the war ends.
2 Don’t invest in a company claiming to own farmland in Ukraine since those assets are… you guessed it: mostly in areas that will be Russia when the war ends.
Russia won the war the moment they crossed the artificial border into Ukraine.
The rest as they say is history.