Zelensky in Wonderland

The British government rolled out the red carpet for Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday who addressed Parliament, held talks with Sunak and had an audience with King Charles that was a Ukrainian PR dream. The British government promised to supply the Ukrainians with more heavy weapons and provide more training facilities for their fighter pilots in Britain so that Ukraine can achieve a "decisive military victory on the battlefield this year". Well, that’s what Sunak says. But what does it all mean?
    Very little it seems given the parlous state of the British armed forces these days. A few Challenger tanks are hardly likely to change the balance of forces on the Donbas front as the entire Ukrainian army fights to stave off the advance of what is still only a Russian expeditionary force.
    Sunak, like Boris Johnson before him, may like to pose as a world leader and the greatest friend of Ukraine in Western Europe. But at the end of the day the only power that counts in NATO is the United States and Zelensky’s fortunes, and indeed his fate, will be decided by the amount of military assistance Washington gives him.
    The Americans call all the shots in Kiev and they’ve backed Zelensky to the hilt so far. Whether they will in the future depends on Biden’s long-term war aims – and those can still only be guessed at.
    Russia’s war aims have always been public. The Russians are fighting to defend the Crimeans and the people of the Donbas whose republics have chosen to join the Russian Federation. Russia is fighting to defend the anti-fascist Ukrainians whose parties have all been banned in Ukraine and whose leaders are either languishing in some Ukrainian dungeon or living in exile in Moscow.
    The Ukraine conflict has, however, exposed the limitations of American power. Imperialist sanctions have not brought down the Putin government. The Russian army has not been defeated (all its withdrawals in Ukraine were voluntary and for tactical reasons). Sweden and Finland have not joined NATO – largely due to the Turkish veto.
    US imperialism has, of course, achieved some of its objectives. It has ensured the survival of their puppet Ukrainian regime. It has sunk, in more than one sense, the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline that the Americans feared would make Germany dependent on Russian natural gas and made Western Europe dependent on much dearer American supplies. It has restored American hegemony over all their European allies – with the help of their willing tools in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
    Biden is, after-all, just a figurehead for the American deep state – what we would call the “Establishment” – that reflects the entire spectrum of bourgeois opinion. Their internal discussions – the rows between the “hawks” and the “doves” and the speculation of retired generals and diplomats – reflect the divisions within the American ruling class.
    So the Americans may have enough now to call it a day. Some believe that speculation in the mainstream US media about a “partition” of Ukraine that would meet most of Russia’s demands reflects genuine divisions within America’s ruling circles. Others think it’s merely disinformation designed to wrong-foot the Kremlin before their spring offensive. That certainly seems to be the view of most Russian commentators.
    None of this need trouble Sunak because he wasn’t in the loop in the first place. At the end of the day, like all British post-war leaders, he will just have to do as he’s told.

Johnson dips his snout into the bloody Ukrainian trough

 By Theo Russell

The British government is massively stepping up its military and political involvement in Ukraine, after a visit to Britain by President Volodymyr Zelensky and a high powered delegation which included a meeting with Prince William and a visit to Portsmouth Naval Base.
    The Johnson government is not concerned that Ukraine is infested with dozens of openly fascist militias who operate with freedom on the streets, where the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov sponsors the infamous Azov Regiment (logo based on the Waffen SS), and the head of the Kiev police, Vadim Troyan, is an Azov commander and an active member of the neo-nazi ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ movement.
    The UK has crossed a rubicon by agreeing to supply hi-tech armaments to the Kiev regime, reversing a policy of only providing ‘non-lethal’ military equipment, and a plan for a British military base in Ukraine.
    According to Russian sources Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told his British hosts that Ukraine is ready to agree to the creation of a British military base in the Nikolaev region, and “is considering the possibility of deploying British paratroopers”.
    The excuse for this put forward by Zelensky’s advisor Andriy Yermak is that Ukraine needs help to safeguard its security because “the suppression of post-election unrest in neighbouring Belarus posed a potential direct threat to Ukraine” – a pathetic bullshit lie.
Britain is also providing a £1.25 billion loan to Ukraine for the purchase of fast attack missile boats “capable of use in the Black Sea” with the contract for the first two ships conveniently going to UK shipyards.
    As if that isn’t enough, the Johnson Government has also proposed setting up a European Union or NATO centre to combat Russian ‘disinformation and counter-propaganda’ based in Ukraine. And at what the Ukrainians called “a historic meeting with the head of British diplomacy Dominic Raab” Britain agreed to support an international platform for “ending Crimea's temporary occupation by Russia”.
    Dmytro Kuleba said that during the visit last week Zelensky had pressed Boris Johnson to set a timetable for Ukraine to join NATO. This, along with US hopes to gain control of the Crimea naval base, is the principal reason for the imperialist-backed coup in Ukraine which swept hordes of fascists into positions of power in February 2014.
    As British defence minister Ben Wallace proudly announced during a visit to Kiev: “The Maritime Training Initiative will enable even closer collaboration with the NATO Alliance and Armed Forces around the world, and allows us to build on Ukraine's new NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner status”..
    The British Embassy in Ukraine Facebook page revealed in August that “as of today, more than 18,100 Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel and nearly 4,000 military instructors have been trained by the UK-established Operation Orbital mission since 2015”, which “has deployed over 2,500 British military personnel and 400 courses”. Last year Operation Orbital was extended for another three years until March 2023.
    British taxpayers may wonder why it is so important for hundreds of millions to be spent training soldiers in a country 1,500 miles away, where over 80 fascist militias, who worship the traitors who collaborated with the German occupiers in the Second World War, have been incorporated into the armed forces.
    We sincerely hope that one day our politicians will be held to account for actively supporting and collaborating with Ukrainian fascists, and trampling on the glorious memory of the fighters against fascism who were our allies in the Second World War.

Comedy Club Ukraine

Ukraine's incumbent President Petro Poroshenko has been soundly defeated by 41-year-old comedian Volodymyr Zelensky in the final round of the country's presidential election. Zelensky won 73 per cent of the vote whilst Poroshenko lagged well behind with just 25 per cent.

Poroshenko, a one-time member of a bogus Ukrainian social-democratic party, claims to be an ‘independent’. His rival Volodymyr Zelensky is a popular comedian of Jewish origin whom his enemies claim is a pawn of a Ukrainian media baron.

Poroshenko is an immensely rich Ukrainian oligarch who loyally did the bidding of US imperialism, which propelled him into power in the first place. His deeply unpopular regime relied on the fascist thugs who overthrew the legitimate government in 2014. He pursued confrontation with Russia and vowed to crush the people’s governments in the Donbas in a bloody but ultimately futile campaign that has left the country destitute and broken. And at the end of the day his millions counted for nothing in the poll that swept a popular comedian with no political experience whatsoever into power last weekend.

The elections were by no means ‘free and fair’. Anti-fascist movements have been driven underground and communists prevented from standing under “de-communisation” laws passed by the Poroshenko regime. But the vote clearly showed that most Ukrainians do not support the rabid nationalists and Nazi militias that have propped up the Poroshenko regime for the last five years. It also reflects a genuine desire to end the conflict in the Donbas and restore normal relations with the Russian Federation.

Zelensky, like most of his compatriots, is a Russian-Ukrainian, who says he wants to continue the drive to get Ukraine into the European Union and NATO whilst restoring old ties with Russia by genuinely adhering to the Minsk Agreement that was supposed to end the conflict in the east. But his newly formed ‘Servant of the People’ party, the name of Zelensky’s satirical TV show, currently has no seats at all in the Ukrainian parliament. That may change if he runs a slate in the general election later this year. In meantime he will have to work with the corrupt parliamentary factions that represent Ukraine’s rival oligarchs in the Kiev parliament.

Although the Russians are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt the Kremlin is clearly going to wait and see what Zelensky does in high office. At the moment he can do very little.