Feb. 21 – Before dawn on Feb. 20, the 79th Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attempted to cross the Seversky Donets River in Lugansk, near the Russian border, and attack positions of the People’s Militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). The antifascist militia soldiers drove back the Ukrainian troops. As they fled, the Ukrainian soldiers fired on the village of Pionerskoye, destroying five homes and killing two civilians.

Since Feb. 18, the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass mining region have come under heavy attack from Ukraine. There have already been multiple attempts by the Ukrainian military to break through the 200-mile ceasefire “line of contact” established in 2015, to find a vulnerable spot to begin an invasion, including one Feb. 20 at the Svetlodarsk Arc, about halfway between the republics’ capitals, and one that is ongoing at the time of writing in the south of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), near the fascist-occupied city of Mariupol.

The attacks are the most intense the region has seen since the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Militias defeated a Ukrainian invasion in February 2015 at the Battle of Debaltsevo. The renewed assault by the U.S.-supported government in Kiev is in flagrant violation of the 2015 Minsk II ceasefire accords, to which Ukraine is a signatory.

Since 2014, more than 14,000 people have died in Ukraine’s war on Donbass.

The illegal Ukrainian attacks are carried out with hundreds of tons of weapons supplied by the United States and other countries of the NATO military alliance. Many of these weapons are in the hands of neo-Nazi battalions that have pledged to ethnically and politically “cleanse” the Donbass of its Russian-speaking and other “foreign” residents and leftist Ukrainians.

More than 150,000 Ukrainian troops, or roughly two-thirds of the country’s military, is currently stationed on the line of contact, poised to invade. Strategic points are occupied by the Right Sector, Azov Battalion and other fascist groups that have been officially incorporated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces and received military training from the U.S., Canada and Britain.

As Struggle-La Lucha has frequently explained, the true danger of invasion is not coming from the Russian Federation against Ukraine, but from Ukraine against the people of Donbass. Washington has been relentlessly pushing the government of Ukrainian President Zelensky to attack Donbass for months in hopes of provoking a confrontation with Russia.

As it has done before every major war in its history, U.S. imperialism is lying about the real causes of the war crisis in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Like the claim of “weapons of mass destruction” 20 years ago that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the hue and cry from Washington and the corporate media about an “imminent Russian invasion” stands reality on its head. 

It is the four million residents of Donbass – who have lived under the shadow of war and blockade for nearly eight years – who are facing the consequences of U.S-NATO lies. They continue to resist. They need our solidarity now more than ever.

Evacuation ordered

On Feb. 17, as a gesture of goodwill after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the pullback of some Russian troops from their defensive positions on the country’s western border. 

Instead of accepting Moscow’s olive branch, Washington and Kiev took this as the opportunity to launch a major attack on the small republics near Russia. President Joe Biden once more declared that Putin had “decided to invade Ukraine.” This shows that Biden & Co. had no interest in preventing a war, only inciting it.

On Feb. 18, with the intensification of Ukraine’s attacks and the clear preparations for invasion,  Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik — heads of state of the DPR and LPR — announced the voluntary evacuation of civilians to Russia. Priority is given to elders, children and parents. So far more than 53,000 people have been evacuated to hastily prepared refugee centers in Rostov-on-Don and other cities in western Russia.

Soon after, Pushilin and Pasechnik ordered the full mobilization of the male population between the ages of 18 and 55 for service in the People’s Militia to defend their embattled homeland. Many other Donbass residents of all genders and ages, including political exiles from Ukraine, have decided to stay and resist, including workers responsible for the upkeep of infrastructure and vital services, healthcare workers and political activists.

On the night of Feb. 20-21, as Ukrainian shock troops attempted to break through the DPR’s southern border near Russia, shelling by Kiev’s military knocked out the pumping station that provides drinking water for 21,000 residents. The Donetsk News Agency reported that a Ukrainian saboteur blew himself up attempting to place a bomb at the railway station in Donetsk, the capital city. Two schools were reported damaged by shelling. 

Meanwhile, in a stark provocation, fire from Ukrainian-controlled territory destroyed a border outpost on Russian territory. Earlier, two Ukrainian shells were reported to have hit fields in Russia’s Rostov region.

Voices from Donbass

After a Ukrainian projectile exploded outside her home, Anzhela Martynenko, a resident of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, told a News Front reporter: “The shelling has started since yesterday. The child and I did not sleep, the child was frightened. 

“Why are we being fired upon? Please tell us what we did to [Ukrainian President] Zelensky? Why have we been suffering for eight years? Innocent people, children. … There is nowhere to hide, peaceful people live here – miners, teachers, doctors, children who still go to kindergarten.”

To the Biden administration, the New York Times and Washington Post, Bloomberg News and CNN, these embattled residents of Donbass are reduced to a “Russian false flag operation,” “separatists” and “Russian proxies.” 

To Democratic and Republican politicians, like the oligarchs and neo-Nazis of Kiev, the workers of Donbass are merely collateral damage, incidental casualities encountered in reaching the goal of NATO expansion and the suffocation of Russia.

As the Ukrainian military sends exploding shells whistling into civilian areas of Lugansk and Donetsk, its Sabotage and Reconnaissance Groups (DRGs) attempt to sow fear by infiltrating the republics and carrying out acts of terror. 

On the night of Feb. 18, as Ukrainian bombs rained on the world’s longest gas pipeline, causing a massive explosion in the capital of Lugansk, a DRG blew up the car of the Donetsk People’s Militia leader outside the government center in Donetsk. No one was killed. 

Then, on Feb. 20, a dramatic night battle took place between DPR special forces and a Ukrainian DRG in the Kievsky district of Donetsk. Two DPR troops were wounded. One Ukrainian terrorist was killed, and another taken prisoner.

Alexey Albu, an antifascist exile from Odessa, Ukraine, now living in Lugansk, witnessed the aftermath of the gas pipeline explosion from his home. He told Struggle-La Lucha: “The next day we tried to evacuate our comrades, but Ukrainian Nazis mined an important bridge in Samsonovka village. There was a big traffic jam. We drove in fields and got lost many times. When we came back we saw that the bridge was open and a lot of cars went to the border.”

Stanislav Retinsky, a secretary of the Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told SLL: “Due to the aggravation of the situation on the front line through the fault of Ukraine, the educational process, cultural and sports events have been suspended in the Donetsk People’s Republic. 

“Due to the increased demand, there was a temporary shortage of fuel at petrol stations. Large queues can be observed near ATMs. In this regard, the Central Republican Bank has set a daily cash withdrawal limit on one card of 10 thousand rubles. 

“At the same time, card payments in retail chain stores can be carried out without restrictions. Hospitals are operating normally.”

Sveta Licht, a political activist who grew up in Donetsk and returned there after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev, explained: “The evacuation that is currently taking place in Donbass is voluntary. Everyone who left, left of their own will. 

“Most of the remaining are those who left in 2014-15 and now do not want to, or their work is related to the functioning of important infrastructure, for example. Among those who remain, it is really people ready to become volunteers [to defend against invasion].

“We don’t panic, we’re fine. We are not planning to evacuate for now according to family circumstances. … Plus, the elderly and children are the priority, the republic is saving pensioners from nursing homes and orphanages first, and that’s right. Those who had to live as refugees will understand.”

It is because of the bravery, determination and sacrifice of the Donbass people that U.S. ambitions to provoke a bigger war with Russia have been held back for the last eight years. They continue to resist, true to the traditions of their Soviet ancestors who fought back and defeated the German Nazi occupation and its Ukrainian collaborators during World War II.

Today the responsibility of the workers of the world, and especially those in the U.S. and other NATO countries, is to extend the hand of solidarity to them and shut down Washington’s war plans.

Tell Klobuchar and Congress: No U.S. war with Russia! End U.S. intervention in Ukraine!

⏰ Thursday, February 24 st 4:30 p.m.
📍 in front of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office, 1200 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis

Join us for a picket in front of Senator Klobuchar’s office to say no to US intervention in Ukraine, including:

• No military aid to Ukraine!
• No sanctions!
• Money for schools not for war!
• Wars abroad militarize society – stop police violence!

Initiated by the Minnesota Peace Action Committee and co-sponsored by the Anti-War Committee, Climate Justice Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, May Day Books, MN War Tax Resistance, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Twin Cities Assange Defense and Women Against Military Madness

In a tweet, the member of the Political Bureau and Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, wrote: “We strongly reject the propagandistic and communicational hysteria unleashed by the U.S. government against Russia and we firmly oppose the expansion of NATO to the borders of that brother country”.

The last week – that of the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine, fabricated by Washington – ended, and with it even the Russian military maneuvers, scheduled in advance, began the timeline for the return home of those involved.

Both the President of the United States, Joe Biden, as well as the highest exponents of NATO and some European rulers or subordinates were left wanting the shots to ring out and insisted on new lies on the same subject, but now more towards the inside of Ukraine than in the foreign environment.

The Kyiv government, used as “bait” for Russia to “take the bait” of the West and provoke a war, seems to be disappointed by so many lies and manipulation of those who have promised it NATO membership and the guarantee of its security in the face of a possible reaction from Moscow.

However, with these actions, the only thing they have caused Ukraine is a substantial economic loss that already exceeds $3 billion, without counting the bills that will be passed on later for the “aid” in weapons of all kinds that they are providing it with. But where are the shots and the supposed casualties caused by the Russian invasion? Where did the tanks and artillery that Washington announced would reach Kyiv come in.

Then they remembered a key piece in this puzzle: the separatist republics of Donbass with their territories of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR), in Ukraine, became, overnight, the spark of a new provocation against Moscow.

Kyiv, with its army, is staging a montage that cannot be sustained, but which already this weekend left some civilians dead and more than 40,000 people of Russian origin were forced to cross the border and take refuge in the Russian region of Rostov.

In view of the heated warlike mood, both Russia and Belarus, which had already ended their joint military maneuvers, have decided to prolong them. Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin described the current scenario as “a strong smell of gunpowder” in the region, with the possibility of “Europe being pushed into a war”, as several neighboring countries are accumulating more advanced weapons, according to RT.

He also reiterated that the goal of the Russian and Belarusian maneuvers remains the same: “to ensure an adequate response and de-escalation of the enemies’ military preparations.”

In the meantime, the spark in Donbas may become, with the help of the West and the mainstream press at its service, a detonator that will make what Russia and the international community want to avoid – a war – a reality.

Source: Walter Lippmann/Granma

En un tuit, el miembro del Buró Político y canciller cubano, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, escribió: «Rechazamos enérgicamente la histeria propagandística y comunicacional que desata el Gobierno de EE. UU contra Rusia y nos oponemos firmemente a la expansión de la OTAN hasta las fronteras de ese hermano país»

La última semana –la de la «invasión» rusa a Ucrania, fabricada por Washington– terminó, y con ella hasta las maniobras militares rusas, programadas de antemano, comenzaron el cronograma de regreso a casa de los involucrados.

Tanto el presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, como los máximos exponentes de la OTAN y algunos gobernantes o subordinados europeos se quedaron con las ganas de que sonaran los tiros e insistieron en nuevas mentiras sobre el mismo tema, pero ahora más hacia el interior de Ucrania que en el entorno foráneo.

El Gobierno de Kiev, utilizado como «carnada» para que Rusia «mordiera» el anzuelo de Occidente y provocara una guerra, parece decepcionado ante tanta mentira y manipulación de quienes le han prometido la entrada a la OTAN y la garantía de su seguridad ante una posible reacción de Moscú.

Sin embargo, con esas acciones lo único que han provocado a Ucrania es una cuantiosa pérdida económica que ya supera los 3 000 millones de dólares, sin contarse las facturas que le pasarán luego por la «ayuda» en armas de todo tipo que le están facilitando. Pero, y los tiros y las supuestas bajas que provocaría la invasión rusa, dónde están. Por dónde entraron los tanques y la artillería que anunció Washington llegaría hasta Kiev.

Entonces recordaron una pieza clave en este rompecabezas: las repúblicas separatistas de Donbás con sus territorios de Donetsk (RPD) y Lugansk (RPL), en Ucrania, se convertían, de la noche a la mañana, en la chispa de una nueva provocación contra Moscú.

Kiev, con su ejército, está escenificando un montaje incapaz de sostenerse, pero que ya este fin de semana dejaba algunos civiles muertos y más de 40 000 personas de origen ruso se vieron obligadas a cruzar la frontera y guarecerse en la región rusa de Rostov.

Ante lo caldeado de los ánimos bélicos, tanto Rusia como Bielorrusia, que ya terminaban sus maniobras militares conjuntas, han decidido prolongarlas. El ministro de Defensa bielorruso, Víktor Jrenin, calificó el escenario actual con «un fuerte olor a pólvora» en la región, con la posibilidad de que «Europa sea empujada a una guerra», pues varios países vecinos están acumulando armas más avanzadas,  según RT.

Además, reiteró que el objetivo de las maniobras de Rusia y Bielorrusia sigue siendo el mismo: «garantizar una respuesta adecuada y la desescalada de los preparativos militares de los enemigos».

Mientras, la chispa en Donbás puede convertirse, con la ayuda occidental y de la gran prensa a su servicio, en un detonante que haga realidad lo que Rusia y la comunidad internacional quieren evitar: una guerra.

Fuente: Granma

A faculty panel has unanimously sided with Professor Rabab Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University (SFSU) in a grievance she filed through her union, the SFSU chapter of the California Faculty Association. Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance reiterated her demand for SFSU to fulfill its outstanding commitment to build Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies by hiring two additional tenure-track faculty members, institutionally supporting AMED, stopping the attempt to dismantle AMED, and ending the creation of the hostile work environment to which Dr. Abdulhadi has been subjected for at least 13 years for her directorship of AMED and her refusal to abandon it.

Issued yesterday by the three-person Faculty Hearing Committee that adjudicated Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance on February 4, a report agreed with Dr. Abdulhadi’s claims that SFSU breached her hiring contract and fostered a hostile work environment to pressure her to give up AMED Studies. The Faculty Hearing Committee supported Dr. Abdulhadi, and upheld AMED’s independence and integrity.

The statutory grievance filed by Dr. Abdulhadi documented SFSU’s refusal to honor the original Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) which the university signed when it recruited Dr. Abdulhadi to create and direct the AMED program in 2005. That MOU stipulated that two additional tenure-track positions would be hired along with Dr. Abdulhadi to ensure a full and sustainable academic, communal and advocacy multi-site space on the history, politics, cultures and social movements of Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities as they intersect with and contribute to the indivisibility of justice within and outside of the College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU. The fact that those faculty positions were never filled served to thwart AMED Studies and turn it into a token, one-person operation without possibility of growth and development – had it not been for Dr. Abdulhadi’s tenacity and determination to resist such designs.  In addition, the grievance detailed how the university created a hostile work and study environment on campus for Dr. Abdulhadi and her Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students and their allies, including anti-Zionist Jewish students, staff and colleagues. These efforts have been publicly decried by numerous scholars and academic organizations, including the SFSU chapter of the California Faculty Association.

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The February 4 Faculty Hearing Committee rejected the university’s claims, including several bad faith actions that sought to undermine the transparency of the grievance hearing. Not only did the SFSU Administration fail to submit the list of witnesses and evidence on time as per their own deadline. The university representatives made a mockery of the proceedings by sharing the names of their witnesses less than 24 hours before the hearing, contrary to the very agreement on which they had insisted.

The three committee members, Drs. Rita Melendez (Chair), Elahe Essani, and Hui Yang, relied on “written documents, direct testimony, and cross-examination of witnesses” to reach their findings defining Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance “to be serious, thus requiring an immediate remedy.” The committee’s report recognized that Dr. Abdulhadi “met the burden of proof and provided evidence that the former Dean of Ethnic Studies (Dean Monteiro) promised two new faculty positions in AMED as a condition of Dr. Abdulhadi coming to SFSU,” as stipulated in her job offer.  The report rejected the attempt by the SFSU Administration to engage in character assasination of Dr. Abdulhadi, stressing that SFSU “has fostered a hostile environment” and that “lack of hires has resulted in intellectual isolation for Dr. Abdulhadi and has had negative consequences in terms of her building an AMED program.” The report ordered SFSU to “issue an apology to Dr. Abdulhadi for not fulfilling the promise made to her upon her hire and for years of denying the requests for the faculty hires.”

The report comes on the heels of another recent victory achieved by Dr. Abdulhadi, AMED Studies communities, and Palestine scholarship and pedagogy. In October 2021, a Faculty Hearing Committee ruled unanimously that SFSU violated the academic freedom of Dr. Abdulhadi and her colleague, Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, when the university failed to stand up to Zoom’s silencing and cancellation of an open classroom they co-organized on Palestine, titled “Whose Narratives: Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled”, on September 23, 2020. The Faculty Hearing Committee members ordered the university administration to apologize to Drs. Abdulhadi and Kinukawa and host the censored webinar without interference from big tech corporations while also faulting the administration for colluding with The Lawfare Project, a right-wing organization that has been part of a network of pro-Israel lobby industry groups intent on smearing, bullying and silencing scholarship, pedagogy and advocacy for Palestinian freedom for years, including that of Dr. Abdulhadi and AMED. The Lawfare Project’s federal lawsuit against SFSU and Dr. Abdulhadi (the only faculty member named in this lawsuit) was dismissed with prejudice in federal court in 2018 after 18 months of persistent attacks against Dr. Abdulhadi.

Rather than respect members of the SFSU faculty who volunteered their time and exerted their intellectual energy to serve on the Faculty Hearing Committee, SFSU President Lynn Mahoney vetoed the committee’s unanimous decision that called for redress to Drs. Abdulhadi and Kinukawa. In so doing, President Mahoney sought to nullify the committee’s recommendations and sabotage the grievance process. Intellectuals and academics were outraged by President Mahoney’s disregard of faculty rights and due process and called for her immediate resignation. These outcries and calls coincided with similar calls for the resignation of California State University (CSU) Chancellor Joseph Castro, who in fact resigned on February 17, 2022 after reports appeared that he mishandled misconduct complaints. Chancellor Castro had been supportive of Mahoney, giving her a 10% salary increase despite faculty uproar over budget cuts and the firing of a significant number of lecturers, using the COVID pandemic as an excuse.  Castro also presided over the cancellation of the Edward Said faculty position at CSU-Fresno under Zionist pressure.

Academics, public intellectuals, and the broader Palestine justice movement welcome yesterday’s ruling and congratulate members of the Faculty Hearing Committee, Dr. Abdulhadi and the SFSU chapter of the California Faculty Association for their persistence in protecting faculty rights and refusing to join the SFSU Administration in its collusion with the Zionist, orientalist and racist agenda that seeks to silence the teaching of Palestine.  During the 6-hour virtual February 4 hearing, SFSU arrogantly dismissed the seriousness of Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance and disregarded the university’s own proclaimed principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). SFSU’s actions demonstrated its cynicism regarding the university’s well-publicized support for multiculturalism, equity and inclusion, which directly contradicts the history of SFSU’s collaboration with and preferential treatment of Zionist groups, including the recent agreement with Hillel, Hillel International and the Academic Engagement Nework, as well as the SFSU’s longstanding unjustifiable harassment of Dr. Abdulhadi by subjecting her to multiple baseless audits for the sole purpose of discrediting Dr. Abdulhadi and placating the AMCHA Initiative, a pro-Israel lobby group. SFSU’s deceitful practices, misrepresentation of facts, and continued attempts to smear Dr. Abdulhadi’s character in the recent hearing once again showed SFSU’s disdain for the AMED Studies program and its complicity with outside organizations that seek to silence Palestinian voices (see Mondoweiss).

Evidence presented in this most recent hearing, including testimonies by witnesses who were unable to testify due to SFSU’s attempt to subvert the process, such as Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley, Dr. James Martel and doctoral candidate Saliem Shehadeh, further demonstrates the corporatization of SFSU and its administration’s collusion with right-wing and Zionist organizations trying to dismantle and destroy the critical AMED Studies program. Testifying for Dr. Abdulhadi were Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, Dr. Marc Stein, Dr. Blanca Misse, and AMED/Ethnic Studies Graduate Student Leith Ghuloum. Dean Amy Sueyoshi, Associate Dean Catriona Rueda Esquibel and Dean of Faculty Carleen Mandolfo testified for the Administration. Dr. Abdulhadi was represented by Professor of English and member of the Executive Board of the SFSU Chapter of the California Faculty Association, Dr. Larry Hanley. Professor Hanley was supported by a committed team of scholars, public intellectuals and activists representing AMED communities of justice who worked tirelessly and voluntarily to defend Dr. Abdulhadi and AMED Studies and its students as they have done throughout the last 15 years of Dr. Abdulhadi’s battle to build AMED Studies and refusal to be stymied by the Zionist and corporatized agenda within and outside SFSU. Yesterday’s report by the February 4 Faculty Hearing Committee bodes well for the sustainability of critical challenges to these reactionary efforts and the racism and anti-intellectualism they entail.

For more information, contact The International Campaign to Defend Professor Rabab Abdulhadi or write to Team@professorabdulhadidefense.com.

Una colonia existe únicamente para el lucro del poder invasor imperial. Y hoy Puerto Rico se encuentra en la mayor crisis de explotación en nuestra historia. 

Aparte de todos los planes de austeridad y robo de recursos impuestos por el Congreso de los EUA a través de la maldita Junta de Control Fiscal, el puñal lo han clavado justo en el corazón del pueblo, su clase obrera, la que forma la mayoría de nuestra población, ya esté organizada en sindicatos, o no. Los ataques están dirigidos a empobrecer tanto esta clase que no tenga más remedio que emigrar o morirse lentamente sin recursos ni salud en su patria.

Pero esa clase, indignada y rebelde,  está en constante pie de lucha para defender sus derechos laborales, sus salarios y pensiones que les permita vivir dignamente. Exigen el cese de las privatizaciones que tanta corrupción y malos servicios han traído al pueblo.

Comenzaron por el sector del magisterio y de energía y se han sumado casi todos los sectores de servicio público, estudiantes y hasta meseras y meseros que reclaman un justo salario y no los $2.13 que reciben desde hace treinta años.

El magisterio en lucha está representado por FADEP, Frente Amplio en Defensa de la Educación Pública. Son sindicatos militantes que el gobierno no legitima porque solo avala el “representante exclusivo” la Asociación de Maestros, un sindicato patronal aliado al imperio y al sindicato estadounidense de maestros, la AFT.

Sin embargo, fue la FADEP la que luego de multitudinarias manifestaciones obligó al gobierno a sentarse a negociar, obteniendo una victoria parcial, el aumento de $1000 dólares al mes. Pero lo más importante, un retiro digno que represente un 75% de su paga como es actualmente, tanto la Junta como el gobierno se niegan a conceder. Prefieren usar ese dinero para pagar a los bonistas buitres, acreedores de una deuda ilegal que ni siquiera se ha auditado.

La lucha sigue creciendo y se están creando comités de huelga en los sitios de trabajo para adelantar un posible paro nacional en el futuro cercano.

Mientras tanto, la concientización del pueblo va aumentando y todos los días hay manifestaciones alrededor de la isla donde se oye decir ¿quién es ese que se escucha? Es el pueblo en pie de lucha.

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci

El 21 de enero de 2022, el vicealmirante Kay-Achim Schönbach asistió a una charla en Nueva Delhi, India, organizada por el Instituto Manohar Parrikar de Estudios y Análisis de Defensa. Schönbach habló como jefe de la marina alemana. “Lo que realmente quiere es respeto”, dijo, refiriéndose al presidente de Rusia, Vladimir Putin. “Y, dios mío, respetar a alguien cuesta poco, o nada”. Agregó que, en su opinión, “es incluso fácil darle el respeto que realmente exige y probablemente, también merece”.

Al día siguiente, el 22 de enero, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Ucrania, Dmytro Kuleba, convocó a Kiev a la embajadora de Alemania en Ucrania, Anka Feldhusen, y “expresó su profunda decepción” por la falta de suministro de armas alemanas a Ucrania y, también, por los comentarios de Schönbach en Nueva Delhi. El vicealmirante Schönbach emitió un comunicado poco después, diciendo: “Acabo de pedir a la ministra Federal de Defensa [Christine Lambrecht] que me libere, con efecto inmediato, de mis funciones y responsabilidades como inspector de la marina”. Lambrecht no esperó mucho para aceptar la dimisión.

¿Por qué fue despedido el vicealmirante Schönbach? Porque dijo dos cosas que son inaceptables para Occidente: primero, que “la península de Crimea se ha ido y nunca [volverá]” a Ucrania y, segundo, que Putin debe ser tratado con respeto. El “tema Schönbach” es una vívida ilustración del problema actual al que se enfrenta Occidente, en donde el comportamiento ruso se califica rutinariamente de “agresión” al tiempo que se desprecia la idea de “respetar” a Rusia.

Agresión

A finales de enero de 2022, la administración del presidente estadounidense Joe Biden comenzó a usar la palabra “inminente” para describir una posible invasión rusa a Ucrania. El 18 de ese mes, la secretaria de prensa de la Casa Blanca, Jen Psaki, no utilizó la palabra “inminente”, pero estuvo implícita en su comentario: “Nuestra opinión es que se trata de una situación extremadamente peligrosa. Ahora estamos en una etapa en la que Rusia podría, en cualquier momento, lanzar un ataque a Ucrania”. Unos días después, el 25 de enero, al referirse al posible calendario de una invasión rusa, dijo: “Creo que cuando dijimos que era inminente, sigue siendo inminente”. Luego, el 27 de enero, cuando se le preguntó sobre su uso de la palabra “inminente” con respecto a la invasión, Psaki respondió: “Nuestra evaluación no ha cambiado desde ese momento”.

El 17 de enero, mientras se intensificaba en Washington la idea de una “inminente” “invasión”, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Rusia, Sergei Lavrov, rebatió la sugerencia de “la llamada invasión rusa de Ucrania”. Tres días después, el 20 de enero, la vocera del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Rusia, Maria Zakharova, negó que Rusia fuera a invadir Ucrania, pero agregó que hablar de esa invasión permitía a Occidente intervenir militarmente en Ucrania y amenazar a Rusia.

Incluso una módica cuota de memoria histórica podría haber mejorado el debate sobre la intervención militar rusa en Ucrania. Tras el conflicto Georgia-Rusia en 2008, la Misión Internacional Independiente de Investigación del Conflicto en Georgia de la UE, dirigida por la diplomática suiza Heidi Tagliavini, descubrió que la guerra de información en el período previo al conflicto había sido tergiversadora e incendiaria. En contra de las declaraciones georgianas y occidentales, Tagliavini afirmó que “no había ninguna invasión militar masiva rusa en curso que haya tenido que ser detenida por las fuerzas militares georgianas que bombardearon Tsjinvali”. La idea de “agresión” rusa que se ha mencionado en los últimos meses, al referirse a la posibilidad de que Rusia invada Ucrania, reproduce el tono que precedió al conflicto entre Georgia y Rusia, otra disputa sobre las antiguas fronteras soviéticas que debería haberse gestionado diplomáticamente.

Los políticos y los medios de comunicación occidentales han utilizado el hecho de que 100.000 soldados rusos se hayan estacionado en la frontera de Ucrania como una señal de “agresión”. La cifra – 100.000 – suena amenazante, pero ha sido sacada de contexto. Para invadir Irak en 1991, Estados Unidos y sus aliados reunieron más de 700.000 soldados, junto con toda la tecnología bélica estadounidense que tenían en sus bases cercanas y barcos. Irak no contaba con aliados y tenía una fuerza militar agotada por la guerra de desgaste contra Irán, que duró una década. El ejército ucraniano – regular y de reserva – cuenta con unos 500.000 soldados (respaldados por el millón y medio de tropas de los países de la OTAN). Con más de un millón de soldados uniformados, Rusia podría haber desplegado muchas más tropas en la frontera ucraniana (y hubiera necesitado hacerlo) para una invasión a gran escala de un país socio de la OTAN.

Respeto

La palabra “respeto”, utilizada por el vicealmirante Schönbach, es clave en el debate sobre la irrupción de Rusia y China como potencias mundiales. El conflicto no tiene que ver únicamente con Ucrania, al igual que el conflicto en el Mar de China Meridional no tiene que ver únicamente con Taiwán. El verdadero conflicto gira en torno a si Occidente permitirá que tanto Rusia como China definan políticas que se extiendan más allá de sus fronteras.

Rusia, por ejemplo, no era vista como una amenaza o agresión cuando estaba en una posición menos poderosa en comparación con Occidente (después del colapso de la URSS). Durante el mandato de Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), el Gobierno ruso fomentó el saqueo del país por parte de la oligarquía – la cual, hoy en día, reside en buen parte reside en Occidente – y definió su propia política exterior basándose en los objetivos de Estados Unidos. En 1994, “Rusia se convirtió en el primer país en unirse a la Asociación para la Paz de la OTAN”, y ese mismo año, Rusia inició un proceso de tres años para unirse al Grupo de los Siete, que en 1997 se amplió al Grupo de los Ocho. Putin llegó a la presidencia de Rusia en el año 2000, heredando un país enormemente agotado, y prometió reconstruirlo para que Rusia pudiera desarrollar todo su potencial.

Tras el colapso de los mercados crediticios occidentales en 2007-2008, Putin comenzó a hablar de la nueva solidez de Rusia. En 2015, me reuní con un diplomático ruso en Beirut, quien me explicó que a Rusia le preocupaba que el acceso a sus dos puertos de aguas cálidas – en Sebastopol, Crimea, y en Tartús, Siria – fueran amenazadas por diversas maniobras respaldadas por Occidente. Según me dijo, fue en reacción a estas provocaciones que Rusia actuó tanto en Crimea (2014) como en Siria (2015).

Durante la administración del presidente Barack Obama, Estados Unidos dejó claro que tanto Rusia como China deben permanecer dentro de sus fronteras y conocer su lugar en el orden mundial. Una agresiva política de expansión de la OTAN hacia Europa del Este y de creación de la Cuadrilateral (Australia, India, Japón y Estados Unidos) atrajo a Rusia y China a una alianza de seguridad que no ha hecho más que reforzarse con el tiempo. Tanto Putin como el presidente chino Xi Jinping coincidieron recientemente en que la expansión de la OTAN hacia el este y la independencia de Taiwán no eran aceptables para ellos. China y Rusia ven las acciones de Occidente – tanto en Europa del Este como en Taiwán – como provocaciones contra las ambiciones de estas potencias euroasiáticas.

El mismo diplomático ruso con el que hablé en Beirut en 2015 me dijo, en ese momento, algo que sigue siendo pertinente: “Cuando Estados Unidos invadió ilegalmente Irak, ninguno de los medios de comunicación occidentales lo llamó ‘agresión’”.

Este artículo fue producido para Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad es un historiador, editor y periodista indio. Es miembro de la redacción y corresponsal en jefe de Globetrotter. Es editor en jefe de LeftWord Books y director del Instituto Tricontinental de Investigación Social. También es miembro senior no-residente del Instituto Chongyang de Estudios Financieros de la Universidad Renmin de China. Ha escrito más de 20 libros, entre ellos The Darker Nations y The Poorer Nations. Su último libro es Washington Bullets, con una introducción de Evo Morales Ayma

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the U.S. and Britain.

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave.” He was referring to independent journalists and whistleblowers, the honest mavericks to whom media organizations once gave space, often with pride. The space has been abolished.

The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, “shaping the narrative,” much if not most of it is pure propaganda.

The Russians are coming. Russia is worse than bad. Putin is evil, “a Nazi like Hitler,” salivated the Labour MP Chris Bryant. Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia—tonight, this week, next week. The sources include an ex-CIA propagandist who now speaks for the U.S. State Department and offers no evidence of his claims about Russian actions because “it comes from the U.S. Government.”

The no-evidence rule

The no-evidence rule also applies in London. The British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, who spent £500,000 of public money flying to Australia in a private plane to warn the Canberra government that both Russia and China were about to pounce, offered no evidence. Antipodean heads nodded; the “narrative” is unchallenged there. One rare exception, former prime minister Paul Keating, called Truss’s warmongering “demented.”

Truss has blithely confused the countries of the Baltic and Black Sea. In Moscow, she told the Russian foreign minister that Britain would never accept Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh—until it was pointed out to her that these places were not part of Ukraine but in Russia. Read the Russian press about the buffoonery of this pretender to 10 Downing Street and cringe.

Dangerous farce

This entire farce, recently starring Boris Johnson in Moscow playing a clownish version of his hero, Churchill, might be enjoyed as satire were it not for its willful abuse of facts and historical understanding and the real danger of war.

Vladimir Putin refers to the “genocide” in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. Following the coup in Ukraine in 2014—orchestrated by Barack Obama’s “point person” in Kiev, Victoria Nuland—the coup regime, infested with neo-Nazis, launched a campaign of terror against Russian-speaking Donbas, which accounts for a third of Ukraine’s population.

Overseen by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, “special security units” coordinated savage attacks on the people of Donbas, who opposed the coup. Video and eyewitness reports show bussed fascist thugs burning the trade union headquarters in the city of Odessa, killing 41 people trapped inside. The police are standing by. Obama congratulated the “duly elected” coup regime for its “remarkable restraint.”

In the U.S. media the Odessa atrocity was played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims—“Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says.”

Professor Stephen Cohen, acclaimed as America’s leading authority on Russia, wrote:

“The pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa… reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II. … [Today] stormtroop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other ‘impure’ citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s…

“The police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kiev has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorializing Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms…, renaming streets in their honor, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.”

Today, neo-Nazi Ukraine is seldom mentioned. That the British are training the Ukrainian National Guard, which includes neo-Nazis, is not news. (See Matt Kennard’s Declassified report in Consortium News on February 15.) The return of violent, endorsed fascism to 21st-century Europe, to quote Harold Pinter, “never happened… even while it was happening.”

On December 16, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism.” The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine.

Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine’s “borderland” that Hitler’s divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine’s Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.

Russian proposals

Setting aside the maneuvers and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia’s respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:

• NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow.)
• NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
• Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
• the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
• the landmark treaty between the U.S. and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The U.S. abandoned it in 2019.)

These amount to a comprehensive draft of a peace plan for all of post-war Europe and ought to be welcomed in the West. But who understands their significance in Britain? What they are told is that Putin is a pariah and a threat to Christendom.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kiev for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The “massing” army we seldom hear about is the 13 Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war.

In 2015, brokered by the Germans and French, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Minsk and signed an interim peace deal. Ukraine agreed to offer autonomy to Donbas, now the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Minsk agreement has never been given a chance. In Britain, the line, amplified by Boris Johnson, is that Ukraine is being “dictated to” by world leaders. For its part, Britain is arming Ukraine and training its army.

Since the first Cold War, NATO has effectively marched right up to Russia’s most sensitive border having demonstrated its bloody aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and broken solemn promises to pull back. Having dragged European “allies” into American wars that do not concern them, the great unspoken is that NATO itself is the real threat to European security.

In Britain, a state and media xenophobia is triggered at the very mention of “Russia.” Mark the knee-jerk hostility with which the BBC reports Russia. Why? Is it because the restoration of imperial mythology demands, above all, a permanent enemy? Certainly, we deserve better.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. John Pilger is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and author. Read his full biography on his website here, and follow him on Twitter: @JohnPilger.

On January 21, 2022, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach attended a talk in New Delhi, India, organized by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Schönbach was speaking as the chief of Germany’s navy during his visit to the institute. “What he really wants is respect,” Schönbach said, referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “And my god, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost.” Furthermore, Schönbach said that in his opinion, “It is easy to even give him the respect he really demands and probably also deserves.”

The next day, on January 22, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba summoned Germany’s ambassador to Ukraine, Anka Feldhusen, to Kyiv and “expressed deep disappointment” regarding the lack of German weapons provided to Ukraine and also about Schönbach’s comments in New Delhi. Vice Admiral Schönbach released a statement soon after, saying, “I have just asked the Federal Minister of Defense [Christine Lambrecht] to release me from my duties and responsibilities as inspector of the navy with immediate effect.” Lambrecht did not wait long to accept the resignation.

Why was Vice Admiral Schönbach sacked? Because he said two things that are unacceptable in the West: first, that “the Crimean Peninsula is gone and never [coming] back” to Ukraine and, second, that Putin should be treated with respect. The Schönbach affair is a vivid illustration of the problem that confronts the West currently, where Russian behavior is routinely described as “aggression” and where the idea of giving “respect” to Russia is disparaged.

Aggression

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration began to use the word “imminent” to describe a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine toward the end of January. On January 18, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not use the word “imminent,” but implied it with her comment: “Our view is this is an extremely dangerous situation. We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack in Ukraine.” On January 25, Psaki, while referring to the possible timeline for a Russian invasion, said, “I think when we said it was imminent, it remains imminent.” Two days later, on January 27, when she was asked about her use of the word “imminent” with regard to the invasion, Psaki said, “Our assessment has not changed since that point.”

On January 17, as the idea of an “imminent” Russian “invasion” escalated in Washington, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked the suggestion of “the so-called Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Three days later, on January 20, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova denied that Russia would invade Ukraine, but said that the talk of such an invasion allowed the West to intervene militarily in Ukraine and threaten Russia.

Even a modicum of historical memory could have improved the debate about Russian military intervention in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Georgian-Russian conflict in 2008, the European Union’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, found that the information war in the lead-up to the conflict was inaccurate and inflammatory. Contrary to Georgian-Western statements, Tagliavini said, “[T]here was no massive Russian military invasion underway, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces shelling Tskhinvali.” The idea of Russian “aggression” that has been mentioned in recent months, while referring to the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine, replicates the tone that preceded the conflict between Georgia and Russia, which was another dispute about old Soviet borders that should have been handled diplomatically.

Western politicians and media outlets have used the fact that 100,000 Russian troops have been stationed on Ukraine’s border as a sign of “aggression.” The number—100,000—sounds threatening, but it has been taken out of context. To invade Iraq in 1991, the United States and its allies amassed more than 700,000 troops as well as the entire ensemble of U.S. war technology located in its nearby bases and on its ships. Iraq had no allies and a military force depleted by the decade-long war of attrition against Iran. Ukraine’s army—regular and reserve—number about 500,000 troops (backed by the 1.5 million troops in NATO countries). With more than a million soldiers in uniform, Russia could have deployed many more troops at the Ukrainian border and would need to have done so for a full-scale invasion of a NATO partner country.

Respect

The word “respect” used by Vice Admiral Schönbach is key to the discussion regarding the emergence of both Russia and China as world powers. The conflict is not merely about Ukraine, just as the conflict in the South China Sea is not merely about Taiwan. The real conflict is about whether the West will allow both Russia and China to define policies that extend beyond their borders.

Russia, for instance, was not seen as a threat or as aggressive when it was in a less powerful position in comparison to the West after the collapse of the USSR. During the tenure of Russian President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), the Russian government encouraged the looting of the country by oligarchs—many of whom now reside in the West—and defined its own foreign policy based on the objectives of the United States. In 1994, “Russia became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace,” and that same year, Russia began a three-year process of joining the Group of Seven, which in 1997 expanded into the Group of Eight. Putin became president of Russia in 2000, inheriting a vastly depleted country, and promised to build it up so that Russia could realize its full potential.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western credit markets in 2007-2008, Putin began to speak about the new buoyancy in Russia. In 2015, I met a Russian diplomat in Beirut, who explained to me that Russia worried that various Western-backed maneuvers threatened Russia’s access to its two warm-water ports—in Sevastopol, Crimea, and in Tartus, Syria; it was in reaction to these provocations, he said, that Russia acted in both Crimea (2014) and Syria (2015).

The United States made it clear during the administration of President Barack Obama that both Russia and China must stay within their borders and know their place in the world order. An aggressive policy of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and of the creation of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) drew Russia and China into a security alliance that has only strengthened over time. Both Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping recently agreed that NATO’s expansion eastward and Taiwan’s independence were not acceptable to them. China and Russia see the West’s actions in both Eastern Europe and Taiwan as provocations by the West against the ambitions of these Eurasian powers.

That same Russian diplomat to whom I spoke in Beirut in 2015 said something to me that remains pertinent: “When the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq, none of the Western press called it ‘aggression.’”

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

Paris, Feb 17 (Prensa Latina) — The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) announced today its support to the media marathon called by the channel Europe for Cuba to denounce and condemn the blockade imposed by the United States on the island for more than 60 years.

The WFTU, the militant voice of more than 105 million workers worldwide, supports and participates in this initiative scheduled for April 2 and 3, said the organization’s Secretariat, in a communiqué shared with Prensa Latina by the European solidarity platform activated in October 2020.

In the document, the Federation recalled its traditional rejection of the economic, commercial and financial siege that Washington applies to the Caribbean country, a policy intensified in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our union family denounced from the first moment the criminal blockade against Cuba, and through various militant actions organized throughout the planet, continues to demand its total lifting, it stressed.

The WFTU also repudiated the aggressions aimed at destabilizing the island, which it described as imperialist provocations.

On January 23, Europe for Cuba launched the call for 24 hours of uninterrupted broadcasts through social networks, radio, television and the written press against the U.S. blockade, starting on April 2 at 8:00 p.m. Central European Time.

The call consists of using all possible platforms to disseminate videos, interviews and testimonies on the siege imposed by Washington and its consequences.

According to the WFTU, the initiative is a also a good time to show its support and solidarity with the workers and people of Cuba, whom it congratulated for their achievements and resistance.

“Cuba is not alone,” the world organization concluded its communiqué.

In a statement to Prensa Latina, José Antonio Toledo — one of the coordinators of the channel — highlighted the progress made last month in responding to the call, which seeks to accompany the universal demand to put an end to the blockade against the largest of the Antilles.

We already have numerous channels, radio stations and written press that will join in on April 2 and 3, so that little by little the foundations are being laid for a world media marathon, he said.

Toledo insisted on the importance of the participation of the alternative media, many of them already confirmed, for their role against the prevailing information monopoly.

Source: Prensa Latina