 Hello everyone, and welcome back to Marxist Voice, the podcast of Socialist Appeal. This week we have the pleasure of being joined by Hauhe Martin, an activist with the international Marxist tendency and a writer for indefensive Marxism. This week we're going to be talking about the conflict in Ukraine which broke out about two weeks ago at the time of recording. Since then, Western leaders in the capitalist media have been pouring forth hypocritical denunciations of Russia's actions. But what has actually been going on? What is Russia trying to achieve? And who is to blame for this mess? And most importantly, how do we respond to these events as Marxists? And how can we put an end to the horrors of war and capitalism? All of these questions will be answered in this week's episode of Marxist Voice, the podcast of Socialist Appeal. So we're now into the thirteenth day of the invasion and the war that's taken place in Ukraine. And you know, in the first few days, you know, there were really only scraps of information coming out of the area. And it was kind of hard to sort of get a picture of what was going on. But I think that now there is a more clear picture now of what is taking place. And now, of course, there is propaganda on both sides. You look at the sort of the Western bourgeois media and they say things like, you know, the Russian sort of, you know, the Russian advances have now ground to a halt, you know. So yeah, I was just curious to hear, you know, what has happened so far, basically, could you, could you, you know, summarize the events as they've taken place? Yeah, this is a very important question because as someone said, Greek philosopher said once, the first casualty of war is truth. And this is what we've seen over the last two weeks in Ukraine. Just to give you an example yesterday, the Pentagon issued an estimate of the number of Russian soldiers who have been killed in this campaign. And they said it was between two and four thousand. But this was at odds with the official statements of the Ukrainian army, which said that they'd killed eleven thousand Russian soldiers. And the statements, of course, of the Russian Ministry of Defense, who said that only five hundred have died. So you have to be very careful in these situations. But before we go into this, I'd like to just make clear right from the start what is the position of the IMT. The IMT, the International Resistance, is against this war, is against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But of course, we are against not for the same reasons that the imperialists and the mass media in the West, they keep talking about national sovereignty and international law and the rule of law and this and that. But they're completely hypocritical because in fact what Putin has done is exactly what they do all the time. Invade countries, organize militaries, break up countries, anytime they want and now they raise a hue and cry over this just because it's someone else who's done it. We haven't heard such denunciations from Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, which is a murderous war. We haven't heard the same denunciations over NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999, where dozens of civilians were killed in a 78-day campaign of aerial bombardment. We haven't heard the same denunciations of the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. And today we have BBC news anchors in Lviv, in Kiev and reporting daily for 25 minutes about the conflict, about the invasion and the humanitarian impact of it and the disaster for the Ukrainian civilian population. But we didn't have any BBC correspondent in Fallujah or in Baghdad or in Yemen or in Afghanistan on the side of the civilian population being bombed by US imperialism and British imperialism. So they're completely hypocritical. And if I can just give a couple of examples, one is Kondol is rise, the other day was on Fox News and the presenter was asking her, so when a country invades a sovereign country, can this be considered a war crime? And Kondol is rise with a straight face, nodded along and said, yes, when she was crucial in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, i.e. the invasion of one country, sovereign country by another country, which is by her own admission a war crime. So she's a war criminal and she's there with a straight face. Or Javier Solano, who was the general secretary of NATO at the time of the bombing of NATO bombing of Serbia and he now says that he cannot even comprehend the idea of war in Europe. Well, where was Serbia when it was being bombed by NATO? Was it in another continent? I mean, this is completely cynical. We oppose Putin's invasion of Russia's invasion of Ukraine because it's a reactionary invasion carried out for imperialist interest in the defense, the national security interest of the Russian capitalist. We're not in favor of that at all. But however, we're not gonna join in the chorus of denunciation by Western imperialism, which is completely cynical and hypocritical. Now, as for what's happened so far, well, Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February and I wouldn't pay much attention to all of this talk about Russian invasion having slowed down or Russian advances having slowed down. In fact, in the last couple of days, if you look at any map that's been published even by the bourgeois media, you can see there's been very rapid advances in the north of the Russian forces towards Kiev and in the south in other directions. And the situation, and you also have to compare with other military campaigns, which can be similar, let's say for instance, the territory of Ukraine is bigger than the territory of Iraq, but in terms of population is more or less the same, about 40 million. And if you think about 1991 and 2003, the two U.S. invasions of Iraq, well, first the bombardment, 1991, and then the invasion in 2003, you see that in 2003, they had this thing they called shock and awe. A massive campaign of aerial bombardment of all sorts of targets, civilian and otherwise, that they were not discriminating at that time, in order to soften up, that's how they called it, in order to soften up the country for a land invasion. And that went on for two weeks. And then after that, it took them, I can't remember, two or three weeks to reach the capital back that. So you think about this, Russia has not conducted a campaign, two week campaign of aerial bombardment to soften up the country before the land invasion. So nevertheless, two weeks later, they're very close to taking care of, we don't know how long that is gonna last. And so this is the reality on the ground. Most of the newspapers, scandalously, they don't have their own assessment of the situation, they just repeat the Ministry of Defense, public intelligence assessments, which are probably very different from their own internal intelligence assessments. They're interested in telling themselves the truth, but they're not necessarily interested in telling the public what the truth is. And we have heard for two weeks, the Russians are losing, the Russians are losing, they didn't expect such a resistance and this and that. But as a matter of fact, the Russians have been advancing military, serious bourgeois military, imperialist, military analysts prior to the war. They said that the relative, the comparative strength of Ukrainian and Russian army means that the Russians will probably be able to take Kiev in two weeks. Well, this is more or less what we at point we are at. Now they haven't taken Kiev yet, but they're very close to surrounding it. So I think it's very difficult for a country like Ukraine with the military strength that it has, even after being armed and supplied by the West to resist a big country, a big power like Russia. What the Russians did the first day was destroy the air capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force and most of the air defenses so that they could advance unimpeded. I mean, when you think about this, what it is, 15 mile long column of tanks, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Why is it that the Ukrainian Air Force is not targeting? They're sitting ducks, right? They are in a traffic jam apparently, they can't advance, they're now starting to advance, but they were for a few days. Why are they not being bombed out of existence because the Ukrainians can't? They are unable to do that at the present time. So this gives you an idea. And then of course, on top of this, there's the cynical attitude of the West that act on Zelensky and the Ukrainian government not to make any concessions to Russia prior to the war when Russia was threatening and didn't make any concessions themselves, as we'll talk later on. But now they're not prepared to really help Ukraine. They're not prepared to implement a no-fly zone. They're not prepared to send any ground troops with friends like this. You don't need enemies. So this is basically the situation two weeks into the war. The Russians have mostly control of the Azov Sea coastline uniting the Donbas republics with Crimea. They're now advancing west towards the rest of the Black Sea coast with the aim of taking Odessa. They're trying to come down from Kharkiv and linking up with their forces near Zaporizhia, which will close off and circle the bulk of the Ukrainian army, which is in the Donbas front in the east, and prevent them from coming to the help of the defense of Kiev and all the major cities. So I would say it's not looking good for Ukraine as was to be expected, as people could see beforehand. People say, well, the aim of Putin was a quick war and in 48 hours the government was gonna collapse. I mean, I'm not a military expert, but I'm guessing that when you go into a war, you have different scenarios, right? You have scenario A, there's a rapid advance and the government collapses, scenario B, that doesn't happen, and therefore you do X, Y and Z. That's how it works. There might have been a calculation that this was the original possible scenario, but obviously they had other ways they wouldn't have moved 100 and whatever it is, and 20,000 or 150,000 troops to the border. They were preparing for a massive invasion and that's what they've been doing, wave after wave. And they haven't really been stopped. They've been slowed down maybe in some places, but it seems to me that this is not going well for Ukraine. And the other thing is this, the Putin is in a position where he cannot back down. He cannot back down. He needs to win this. If he doesn't win this, from point of view of an imperialist power, then he will be in serious trouble because he's been defeated in a military adventure and his power, prestige and position in the world that he know will have been severely dented with very serious potential consequences for him at home. So he can't stop and he will now deploy whatever it needs to be deployed in order to smash any resistance that is on Ukraine's part. And perhaps the war will become even bloodier in terms of civilian casualties than it has been so far already. So just that you mentioned that the West has been pretty intransigent towards Russia's demands. They're not prepared to make any concessions basically. So I was just curious, what are Russia's aims? What are Russia's demands? What are they trying to achieve? I think that there are two levels to this question. One is what Russia wants immediately in relation to Ukraine. And then is the more general question of what Russia's aims in relation to the West. The first one is fairly simple. Putin has put it very clearly. What they want is a Ukraine that doesn't join NATO, that has a neutral position. And in fact, if you think about this, when Ukraine declared independence in 1991, it was in its constitution, it was gonna be a neutral country, not aligned with any big powers. But anyway, that's the aim of Putin. He said it clearly. He wants a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. The other thing that he now says is that, and this they've said at the negotiations that are taking place even today, they said that they want a recognition of Russian jurisdiction of a Crimea, that this will not be put into question. And also now they're saying that they want clear guarantees that the two republics in the Donbas, the Donetsk Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, will, their independence will be recognized. Although I'm thinking that perhaps they are prepared to negotiate that use that as a bargaining chip. I'm not totally sure because now that they've recognized their independence, they will probably want to keep it that way. And they've also talked about the demilitarization of Ukraine, basically which is an aim that they have more or less achieved. They basically destroyed the main parts of the Ukrainian army and the de-nazification of Ukraine. I think that's mostly for propaganda purposes for putting back home. But yeah, they might demand the disbandment of some of the neo-Nazi battalions which are now part of the Ukrainian army, things like that. But the main demands is that the Ukraine should have a neutral status or it should change the constitution because the constitution was changed. In 2019, by the Rada, the parliament, to say that Ukraine belongs to the North Atlantic Treaty system, a NATO and the EU. So they will want that changed, a guarantee of that. A guarantee that Ukraine will not rearm and a guarantee of Russian sovereignty over Crimea that that will not be put into jeopardy. Now Putin says this intervention, there is war on invasion of Ukraine, which he doesn't like the word being used. He says it's a what? Military police operation. But it is an invasion, clearly. He says that this is being carried out in order to defend the rights of the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. And yeah, there has been since 2014 an assault on the rights of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. And this was what led to the uprising in the East. But this is not what Putin is about. He uses for propaganda purposes to use great Russian nationalism and so on. But basically what he's defending in Ukraine is the general interest of the Russian capitalist class. And the Russian capitalist class is acting in an imperialist way, not as a worldwide imperialist power. They don't have the economic or military might to do that. But yeah, in a regional setting, they are acting in an imperialist way in the Caucasus, Central Asia, in the Middle East partially, but also in Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans. They have aspirations of that kind. And this also means, in my opinion, that Russia does not want the permanent occupation of Ukraine, which they understand will be very costly, will be faced with armed insurgency or resistance, will be costly in terms of money and also in terms of soldiers being killed and so on. And they are afraid of a scenario developing like that of Afghanistan when the Soviet troops went in, it's 1979, 1980, and they were bogged down in a long-term guerrilla insurgency. So they're not prepared to do that. They would like to avoid that. What will happen depends on many different factors. But they would like to basically force the Ukrainian government to submission on Russia's terms. And the longer this goes, the more stringent will Russia's terms with. And then withdraw, and that's it, and perhaps skip some troops in the Donbas just for safekeeping and that's it. On a more general level, this is a conflict between Russia and the United States. Two imperialist powers, the United States being the most powerful of the two and Russia feels and is not wrong that Western imperialism took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union to advance towards the East. A number of agreements and commitments were signed back in 1991, and this is all in writing. The documents exist, there's transcripts of them. And these documents set, these commitments by the West said that they will not expand NATO to the West further than Germany. And since then, lots of countries have joined NATO in the Balkans, in Eastern Europe, in the Baltics. And quite rightly, quite rightly, Russia feels, Russian capitalist class feel that this is an aggressive move on NATO's part towards them. Now it's very fashionable to say NATO is a defensive alliance, it doesn't threaten anyone, but anyone who knows anything about history and they know this is a threat. And so this is the more general context of this situation. And Russia now, unlike in 1991 or in 1997, feels strong enough to be able to resist any further encroachment of the West, Western imperialism into what they consider their own spheres of influence, whether they right or wrong doesn't enter into this. This is a struggle between two big powers and they fighting for spheres of influence, markets, export of capital, natural resources, and so on. And this is what this is about. And Putin warned the West, said if you take any further moves in relation to this, we will be forced to respond. And the most ironic or perhaps the most scandalous thing about all of this is that you could see it coming. I mean, I never thought that Russia was gonna invade Ukraine because I thought that by that time, the West, which was not prepared and they had said so, was not prepared to commit ground troops will want to reach some accommodation with Russia. But no, instead of that, they up the ante, they made more and more belligerent statements which they had no intention of following through. I mean, Biden said in November already, and this is US policy that Ukraine cannot join NATO in the short term, Biden said, Ukrainian democracy has a lot of work to do before they can even consider joining NATO. And it's clear that the European Union countries don't want Ukraine to join. This is gonna be revealed now in the next few days when they discuss the application form that the Ukraine has sent. So will it have been so difficult for the West, for US imperialism to put this in writing, to say to Russia, yes, we're not thinking about Ukraine joining at least in the short term. And the other thing that Putin wanted was some securities, military guarantees in Europe that there's not gonna be NATO military exercises in the border with Russia, which they have been taking place quite regularly. There's not gonna be deployment of NATO troops to the border of Russia, and also that the US will return to the treaty for non-proliferation of medium-range ballistic missiles, which they left a few years ago, unilaterally. This rule half prevented this war. Why could Western imperialism not agree to these terms, just because the only reason it seems to me is that they are the most powerful imperialist power on Earth and they cannot be seen to be backing down in the face of threats by Russia. This will have weakened their position internationally and they're not prepared. But therefore this means that this war was prepared by the West in order to maintain its prestige. A war that they have no intention of fighting directly, which the Ukrainian people will be massacred over. And yeah, so that's the long-term objectives of Russia. Russia has been, as felt that they were on the back foot for 30 years, the US advanced on what they considered the Russian capitalists. We're talking here about not talking about the country in abstract, we're talking about the interest of the Russian oligarchs capitalist class around whose interest put in represents. They felt that the West was pushing, and pushing, and then at certain point they started to push back. In Georgia, 2008, in Crimea in 2014, in the Middle East, in Syria in 2015, and now with this war on Ukraine, invasion of Ukraine, they saying enough is enough. And basically these are two imperialist powers fighting it off for spheres of influence, domination of countries and national security, of the capitalist class. Yeah, thanks for that. And I think you very correctly identified that the West and then the Western imperialists are fought for this and they have created the situation and stoked up these tensions consciously. And you mentioned 2014 as well. And I'm just curious if you could go more into the events that took place in Ukraine in 2014 and how that basically led to the situation that we have today. Yeah, certainly. And you cannot understand what's happening in Ukraine today without going back, not only to 2014, but perhaps all the way back to the collapse of Stalinism in 1991, which was a complete disaster from the point of view of the Ukrainian working people, Ukrainian workers and youth. The living standards were destroyed. The state property was ransacked by oligarchs, helped with armed gangs fighting it amongst each other, Kolomoisky, Poroshenko himself, Ahmetov and a whole number of other people, basically gangsters who looted the state property, destroyed the country, took it away and pocketed it in their own pockets while millions of Ukrainians were forced to emigrate to Russia, to Western countries in order to look for jobs because there weren't any in Ukraine itself. And this has been a complete disaster for all this period of time. For 30 years, there's been a constant struggle with different governments coming to power. We had the Orange Revolution in, when was it? 2004, 2005. The coming to power of pro-Western, pro-liberal, anti-Russian government, which then was reversed in elections subsequently. Then in 2014, we had the opposite happening, the overthrow of Yanukovych. By another gang of oligarchs, replacement of one gang of oligarchs by another gang of oligarchs, but this other new gang that came to power, Yatsenyuk, Avakov, Poroshenko, they were more pro-Western, more aligned with the United States. People now talk about the national sovereignty of Ukraine, but this, in fact, since 2014, they've had a government whose economic policies are directly dictated by the IMF, who's closely aligned with the United States, to the point that the United States embassy decides, or has a say in the composition of the government, regardless of what the Ukrainian people really think. And the 2014 Euromaidan movement that led to the overthrow of Yanukovych and the arrival of this new gang to power was a turning point, was a turning point, because the neo-Nazi gangs played an important role in the Maidan. That doesn't mean the Maidan was a big movement. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the Maidan square at the beginning, but then finally, when the final events took place, the ones who led the charge, who played the key role, the ones who were organized and armed as well, were the fascist gangs, Zvoboda, who then became the Asov battalion, which at that time was the social national assembly of Ukraine and other fascist and neo-Nazi groups. And they have one thing in common. They claim the heritage of Stefan Bandera. And this was a Ukrainian reactionary nationalist in the interwar period and in the Second World War, who at one point collaborated with the Nazis and many of these so-called Ukrainian freedom fighters. They went on to form the SS Galicia division, part of the Nazi troops. They carried out massacres of Polish people, of Jewish people and so on. And this is the heritage that these people claim. And then subsequently, the government that was formed, the government was not a Nazi government, the Nazis were not in power, but the government that was formed was also following this rhetoric. For instance, they made, there was earlier on even under the previous government attempt to make Stefan Bandera a national hero. Now there is a law that was passed after the Euro Maidan that says the criticism of Ukrainian freedom fighters is banned. A criticism of neo-Nazi collaborators is banned. And then they took a number of measures against the Russian language, the downgrading of the Russian language. Even up to 2019, there's another law, a law about language law. And obviously this created a lot of alarm. The national identity of Ukraine is very complex. There are some people who take Ukraine to mean these different regimes that were subject to Western imperialism, or in this case, German domination, in 1918, during the Second World War and so on. But then there's a whole massive section of Ukrainian society who referenced themselves in the struggle against Nazi Germany in the Second World War, which was fought on Ukrainian territory to great loss by the Red Army. So you can't have in Ukraine a government that claims one side of this so-called heritage. This will inevitably lead to the breakup of... Sorry, not of Yugoslavia, which was also a reactionary breakup pushed by Germany to the breakup of Ukraine. And this is the problem, that this is what the government has been doing in Ukraine since 2014. This led after the Euro Maidan. There was also an anti-Maidan movement with big demonstrations. People who felt worried about these developments in many places, in Kharkiv, in Odessa, in many places. And there were armed clashes between far-rightists and people on the other side. And the people on the other side were a mix of people, people who consider themselves communists, or who claim the legacy of the Soviet Union, the struggle against fascism, the great patriotic war, as it was known by Stalinism, but also others who were more pro-Russian nationalists, even some who were nostalgics of the Russian Empire, which is a completely reactionary trend. And these clashes led, for instance, to the massacre of the Odessa massacre on May 2, where 40, 50 people were killed in the House of Trade Unions when they were surrounded by Euro Maidan protesters. As far as the far-right, the building was set on fire and people were not allowed to leave the building, and many were burned to death, including communist militants, Vadim, Padura, and others. And this then led to an uprising in the East, in a whole number of towns in the Donbas. The people took the official buildings. They basically overrun the security forces, and they took power, if you want. It was a rebellion, an uprising. And the response of the Ukrainian government was to send the army against its own people. And at that time, there were mutinies in the army. Soldiers didn't want to fight. There were big protests and so on. But finally, this kind of solidified in this conflict that's been going on for what, since 2014, up until now, eight years. Conflict, 14,000 people have been killed. No one says anything about this, but there was already a war in Ukraine before this invasion. And it wasn't in your BBC news bulletins. And there weren't BBC anchors in Donetsk reporting daily about the suffering of the people there. This is another case of double standards. But this is really the background to this. Of course, Putin uses the plight of the people in Donetsk and Luhansk for cynical reasons. He's not really interested in any of that. He's not interested in the rights of Russian working people in Russia, never mind Russian working people elsewhere. However, this is part of this conflict, because otherwise, there wouldn't have been an uprising in the East. And the Ukrainian society wouldn't have been so sharply divided. In fact, there's one detail just to finish on this point is that when Putin made his speech two weeks ago where he recognized the independence of the two republics, Donetsk and Luhansk, he said to the Ukrainians, he said, you want decommunistization? So you'll get decommunist because, in fact, Ukraine only exists in its current borders because of Lenin and the communists, which he thought was a bad thing. He wants to go back to the situation of the Russian empire prior to the Russian Revolution, where most of it was part of the Russian empire. Another part was part of other countries. And he's not wrong, in fact, some Ukrainian comrades that I've been speaking to for going back to the Euromaidan in 2014. They say, ironically, they say Lenin created Ukraine because independent Ukraine has only ever existed at that time. Lenin created Ukraine, and now the Ukrainian nationalists have destroyed it. They are right, in a sense, that this kind of encapsulates the problem, the policy. The Lenin followed in relation to the national question was extremely careful. He was a policy of recognizing the right of the Ukrainians and other nations within the Russian empire to independence. And when the Soviet Union was created formally in 1922, 100 years ago, it was a federation, a union of independent republics, including independent Soviet Ukraine, independent Russia, and the Trans-Cocasian Federation. They all united on equal footing. And there is a thing that was a clause in the Soviet Union constitution that said that any of the component parts, any of the unions that form part of the Soviet Union, can live at any time if they so wish. This was the only way of uniting Ukraine in its present form, the different tensions and national identities that exist there. And the West doesn't care anything about all this. They've been pushing and pushing. And basically, they are largely responsible for this. And the government in Ukraine is also largely responsible for these situations. Zelensky himself came to power in 2019 on the basis of a program of reaching peace agreement, a settlement with Russia and the republics, i.e., the Minsk two agreements. And then once he was unfighting the oligarchs. Once he was in power, he became an agent of one set of oligarchs. And he started pursuing an anti-Russian policy, which is not just a policy against your most powerful neighbor, but it's also a policy against a whole section of your own population who are Russians and who want, I mean, it's not that they are not Ukrainians, but they are ethnic Russians and they will like a Ukraine that is at peace and in friendship in one way or another to with Russia. So yeah, I will say that in reality, Putin has invaded Ukraine. And this is a reactionary action which can only have reactionary consequences. But behind this whole conflict is the relentless push of Western imperialism against Russia. And this clash was inevitable. And the Western imperialists seem to have relished on the prospect of this clash taking place. And even though they're not prepared to participate directly, they just want to use it in one way or another to weaken Russia as much as they. So yeah, I think these events have actually, in a way, sort of exposed some of the weaknesses basically of the Western powers. You've seen Germany playing quite a sort of a vacillating quite soft role with regards to how Russia should be approached. Obviously, Germany is quite reliant upon Russian resources like oil and gas and stuff like that. And at the same time, you've had the Tories, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss with all of this bluff and bluster about how we're going to defend Ukraine when actually the response has been pretty weak in terms of actually the prospect of sending troops over or anything like that. It seems very clear that the West don't really want to engage too heavily further than sending military aid and such. So what do you think this sort of weak response at this stage really shows us about the balance of power on a world stage and particularly the role of the US in world relations as well? Yes, this is very relevant to this situation. The United States is still the dominant imperialist power on Earth and therefore the most reactionary force on the planet. The military spending is the same or the military might is the same as that of the 10 next countries in the top list to put together. So there's no comparison and even in terms of its economy, now there's a lot of talk about whether Chinese GDP is bigger than the US, but obviously Chinese population is much, much bigger than the United States. Productivity of labor is still slower in China. So this is the dominant imperialist power. However, some of the people listening might remember 30 years ago at the time of the collapse of Stalinism, there was all this talk about the unipolar world, a new world order they set, which they implemented in Iraq in 1991. New world order means that anyone who steps out of the line will be faced with a massive US military invasion in a coalition of other countries. At that time, Russia and China could do nothing about it. They had to abstain in the Security Council of the United Nations. And so that invasion was carried out under the banner of the United Nations. There seemed to be this illusion that there was going to be a peace dividend, that one power was going to dominate the world. But that's not so much the case. That's no longer the case. Because we have seen a relative decline of US imperialism. US imperialism is the dominant power in a world that is much more unstable in a world dominated riddled by capitalist crisis. We've had the big recession of 2007, 2008. Now the one during the pandemic. And this has affected the United States economy itself. There's a massive crisis in the ruling class, which is a reflection of that crisis in the economy. We saw the election of Trump and all of that. And this basically means that the United States is weaker on the international arena. And there are a number of other powers that are rising. They can't yet catch up to the United States. But they're rising. And they're reasserting their power. They're looking for spheres of influence, markets for the products, markets for the capital, and guaranteeing the supply lines and so on, sources of energy like China, Russia to a lesser extent. I will say that China is stronger than Russia economically, quite clearly. And then Russia is a peculiar imperialist country because its economy is, I think it's now the number 11th in the world. It's more or less at the GDP of Russia is more or less the same as the GDP of Spain. But in terms of military might, Russia is much, much stronger. It inherited the nuclear arsenal from the Soviet Union. It inherited the high-tech military industry in which they spending a lot of money. And military might is the consequence of economic might. Imperialists project the power. The power comes from the economy, but it's projected through military might. And so the United States is no longer able to control the whole world. And we've seen that even recently. They, for instance, in the Middle East, the war in Syria, they were completely unable to play any role. They've been bogged down for how long? Long time since 2003 in two wars of invasion, imperialist invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, from which they found it very difficult to live. And now they've left Afghanistan in completely humiliating conditions. They announced that they were leaving. And immediately the government, the puppet government they left in was completely overrun by the Taliban reactionary force. But in any case, they could claim that at the end of the day they defeated US imperialism, which is a phenomenal thing. When, as I said, when the war in Syria, the United States has strategic interests in the Middle East and they could do nothing, nothing because they could then, they wouldn't, they were unable to commit ground troops. And so therefore, who was the deal breaker, the deal maker in this war in Syria was Russia, which dealt with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the reactionary fundamentalist, the FSA and settled the whole matter, the Kurds settled the whole matter. And then we had other things like the situation in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is a country where the imperialists have big investments in oil and other things. And who settled the matter when the people rose up? It wasn't the United States, it was Russia sent the army in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which was mostly triggered or promoted by Turkey for their own reasons. Who broke at the peace deal? Russia. And who sent the peacekeepers? Russia. The United States was nowhere to be seen. They had enough dealing with their own political crisis at home. So this all reveals the relative decline of US imperialism. And I think that that's perhaps one of the reasons where US imperialism was so keen for this war to go ahead and for Russia to become bogged down in a situation that's gonna be difficult for them. That's what they expect. Just to reassert their own power and just as a revealing their own insecurities. And then there's this other thing that you mentioned which is very correct and is very visible that splits the divisions between the US and its European allies, which have different interests. There has been a rift for some time between Berlin and Washington. But now this question of sanctions which they were introduced yesterday is very easy for the United States to say we're gonna ban Russian oil. The only rely 55% of the oil they import is from Russia. And they now incidentally, ironically, they now gonna get some of that from Venezuela where they don't even recognize their government. Now all of a sudden they recognize the government. They ditched this idiot why though that they recognize previously. And now this regime that was supposed to be undemocratic, they couldn't talk to them and illegitimate. Now they're talking to them for oil. So that's the cynicism of imperialism. But anyway, it's very easy or relatively easy for the United States to ban imports of Russian oil. But Germany, as you said, depends 60% on imports of Russian gas. They can't do it. They can't do it in one year. They never mind doing it in a few weeks, you know. So yeah, this is the logic of capital flows and a globalized world that they all depend on each other. Not only this, but Russia's the first producer of a number of important minerals. Nickel, but of all palladium, I think. And then rare earths together with China. But they're a big power in relation to export of energy, sources and raw materials and all of that. And in fact, if Russia does what it's threatened to do, if they start attacking Russia economically and Russia retaliates, the ones who are gonna lose out is the Europeans. For this reason, European capitalists, for this reason, Macron and Schultz, the chancellor in Germany had a completely different position prior to the war. They were more in favor of negotiations or diplomatic arrangement because they have most to lose from a war. At the end, what's happening in reality is that this is creating massive economic problems and who's gonna pay for these economic problems? Well, you and me in our energy bills, which were already very high, they're now going up higher even. But yeah, basically these two factors are very important and they are relatively new. One, the relative decline of US imperialism. Second, the splits between US imperialism and its European allies. And I think that Russia has taken advantage of this or attempted to take advantage of this in saying enough is enough and making a stance over this question of Ukraine. Yeah, and you mentioned sanctions. And sanctions definitely seem to be sort of the preferred weapon in the arsenal of the imperialists at the minute. And we've seen also private companies, companies like McDonald's have withdrew all of their services from Russia. But also, yeah, MasterCard, Visa, Google Pay and so on have also restricted or indeed actually just halted their services altogether in Russia. What effect do you think that the sanctions are going to have? Are they going to be effective in terms of achieving the objectives of the Western imperialists? Yeah, what effect are they going to have in Russia? And indeed, what are all these sort of economic measures and this general economic dislocation going to have on the world economy in general? I mean, you mentioned the price rises, which indeed will be compounded with already existing inflation. So yeah, I'd be interested in hearing briefly your views on that. Yeah, sanctions will not stop Russia's war in Ukraine at all, not at all. And they've never worked anywhere. I mean, there's been US blockade of Cuba for 60 years. They haven't achieved anything. There's been US sanctions on Venezuelan oil since 2019 and other sanctions since 2015. They haven't achieved anything or any of their stated aims, regime change. They have the sanctions on Iran, haven't prevented Iran from developing a nuclear program. These sanctions, they don't work, particularly in the case of Russia, because Russia had already discounted the impact of the sanctions. The West had announced the sanctions. It's going to be the biggest sanctions ever. They're going to hurt and blah, blah, blah. So obviously the Russian state and the capitalists had already taken certain measures to kind of insulate themselves as much as possible from these sanctions. They built up the reserves of the central bank and so on. Now these sanctions will have an impact on the economy. And who's going to pay for this? Not the oligarchs, but ordinary working people in Russia, they're going to suffer from these sanctions in the same way that the sanctions on Iraq for most of the 1990s were paid by the Iraqi people, 500, half a million people died directly as a result of these sanctions. Did they prevent Saddam Hussein from holding on to power and repressing his own people? No, not at all. So that gives you an idea of what's going to happen with these sanctions. The other thing is that the West is also very cynical with sanctions, of course. During these negotiations for sanctions, for instance, Italy got an exemption so that they could continue to export luxury handbags made in high-fashion firms in Milan to Russia because there's a big market for that. The Russian oligarchs like it. So they're very cynical in this respect. In London, which is a place, London, sorry, all these places where the Russian capitalists have their monies stashed in property and so on, these sanctions in Britain are only gonna take effect in a month's time or in six months' time by which time the Russian oligarchs will have already changed the property deeds of the houses and mansions or they will have sold them out to other people and cashed in the money. Most of these oligarchs, incidentally, are donors of the funders of the Tory party so they don't want to upset them too much. Most of these things are for show but the sanctions that really have an impact, economic impact, will also backfire on Western imperialism because it will have a knock-on effect on them. For instance, Britain said, we're not gonna buy any more Russian oil. Where are you gonna buy the oil from? And gas, Britain is not very dependent or not as dependent as European or the European countries but still bringing gas in tankers from the United States is much more expensive than gas from Russia via Europe. So who's gonna pay for this? I mean, at the end of the day, it's gonna be the consumers in the West. McDonald's has ceased to operate in Moscow. Well, they're so lucky they're gonna have a better diet, I'd say, this doesn't really have a big impact and the sanctions that do have an impact are gonna be paid by working people over there in Russia and over here as well because these sanctions come at a time when the world economy was in a very fragile state coming out of the pandemic, more or less, already threatened by high inflation, slow growth. According to some calculations, these sanctions, the knock-on effect of sanctions on the world economy gonna knock out, I don't know, 1%, 2% of growth in the world economy in 2023 and 2024. That is for two years to come. At the time when the world economy was growing at a very sluggish pace. And the other effect that they will have, which is bad for Western imperialism, is they're gonna push Russia further into the arms of China that are already deals to ease off the impact of sanctions, the deals that were signed during the Olympics in Beijing, the Winter Olympics. But this is gonna be the effect if they wanted somehow to separate Russia from China, they achieve the opposite effect, of course. And some of these sanctions will then gonna be lifted, are going to be lifted once the war is over and the war will end at some point. But some others will have a more permanent effect of pushing the Russian economy more into direct links with the Chinese economy. But the most dangerous thing about all this is that this could be the trigger, not the cause, but the trigger for another worldwide recession of capitalism when we have just barely come out of the previous one. And this is gonna be really bad for working people everywhere. Yeah, so you've outlined the situation and the knock-on effects that this is gonna have. I guess I'd like to move on to the final question here, which is how should we, as Marxists, as socialists, as revolutionaries, respond to these events and what is the solution really? What are the demands that we can put forward and what is the fundamental solution to the horrors of war and conflict and capitalism and national oppression, is there an answer to this and how can we actually achieve a lasting peace? I will say that a good starting point is the slogan that Karl Lipnick raised at the time of the First World War, when he said the first enemy of the working class is at home, i.e. our own ruling class. And this applies to this conflict. Of course, we oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine because it's done not for any progressive reasons, but for reasons of imperialist ambitions of Russia and the defense of Russia's capitalists, national interest and national security. There's nothing progressive in that. The first task of the Russian Marxists, Russian working class activists is to oppose Putin and our comrades of the international Marxist tendency in Russia have done so. And many of them have been arrested in this, they took a very clear position of opposition to this war and many of them were arrested, some of them are in jail, some of them been fined and so on. But for us here in the West, our main task is to oppose our imperialist class, our main enemy is also at home. Our main enemy is not Putin, our main enemy is Boris Johnson, NATO and US imperialism. They should be clear about this. And our main task is to denounce the hypocrisy of them and to denounce this mad dash for rearmament and spend more military spending that they're using the excuse of this war in order to pass through our parliaments in Germany, in Britain, everywhere. So there's no money, we are in an economic crisis, there's no money for the health service, there's no money for proper sick pay, there's no money for education. But however, they very quickly find money when it's a question of spending in weapons. And this is a complete scandal and this should be our main position, which is precisely the opposite of the position that's been taken by Starma, the leader of the British slave party. His main position is any criticism of NATO at this time is Cassus Belli, is a reason for expulsion. Any MP member of parliament who criticizes NATO will be expelled from the parliamentary, this is a complete scandal and it's basically the same position that the big majority of the social democracy took during the First World War, basically voting for the war credits. In fact, if you think about it, Starma is more belligerent in favor of NATO than even Boris Johnson, is trying to criticize Boris Johnson from the right, which is a complete scandal. So it's clear, our main task, I would say the main slogan of the British Marxists, Marxists in Britain or in the United States is down with NATO, disband NATO, US troops and bases out of Europe. And we have to fight our own imperialist powers who are also responsible for this war, while at the same time, of course, offering solidarity to the working people of Russia, the working people of Ukraine and so on, but the best way we can do that is fighting our own imperialists. So this will be our first duty. The second point that should be noted is that there are others on the left who have a position of say, we fight for peace, we fight against this war, and we should go back to diplomacy, the respect for international law, the United Nations. We also have to say that this is a very weak position, which reflects lack of understanding of the real functioning of imperialism. The United Nations are an empty talking shop. They just passed a resolution demanding Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. And what's happened? Nothing has happened. In the same way that the United Nations passed a resolution every single year for the last 20, 30 years, demanding the end of the US blockade of Cuba. And nothing's happened. And incidentally, you know which countries voted against last year when it was voted. It was Israel and the United States voted against, and then two countries abstained. Far-right Brazil of Bolsonaro and Ukraine. The Ukrainian government abstained on that I supported the United States. The United Nations has passed many resolutions in support of the Palestinians against the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli state. And nothing has happened about this. The world relations are not dominated by any so-called international law or commonly agreed rules. They are dominated by the rule of the strongest. The mightiest powers carry the day. And they do so if they can through negotiations and deals. And if they cannot, they do so through wars, either direct wars or proxy wars. This is how the world works. And if you want peace, if you want peace, which is we all want peace. We don't want a wall of war where people have to flee their homes because they're being bombed and leave their possessions and just start on an unknown, towards an unknown destiny somewhere else. No, we don't want that human suffering. However, if you really want peace, you have to fight for socialism. You have to fight, you have to understand what is the cause of war? The cause of war is capitalism and particularly in its imperialist phase. The struggle for resources, markets, and the conflicts for spheres of influence. This is what causes war. And therefore, if we want to fight war, we need to put an end to imperialism. There's no other way around this. And also, we shouldn't have double standards. We are against war. We are against all wars, not just the wars that are conducted by our enemy imperialist power, but mainly the wars that are carried out by our own imperialist power. So this is what I would say. The program of the Marxist should start from this slogan, the main enemy of the working class, the first enemy of the working class is at home. Therefore, we should fight our own imperialist powers. We should also, in my opinion, fight any illusions, any pacifist illusions. The real way to achieve peace is to put an end to imperialism. And therefore, to struggle for socialism. Once the workers come to power in one country after another, there will be no reason for war. And this still leaves one question. What should we say to the Ukrainian working people? Well, our solidarity goes to them quite clearly. But at the same time, we need to understand what are the causes of this war. The friends are not NATO or Western imperialism who egg their leaders on to this war and then abandon them. But rather the true friends. First of all, the workers of Ukraine, which will be united across language and national divide against their own oligarchs, who plunge them into this war and the destruction of the last 30 years. And united with the Russian workers who have nothing to gain by oppressing the Ukrainian workers. And they have the interest, and not in common with the interest of the Russian imperialist ruling class. And only on this basis, as it was proven in 1922, can Ukraine have an independent existence based on working class fraternity and brotherhood across national and linguistic divides. And that will be a big contribution to a world socialist federation. There's no reason in the 21st century why there should be war, hunger, misery, millions of people having to flee their countries because of war conflicts or poverty or starvation. And there's no reason why millions of people have had no access to COVID vaccinations. Hundreds of thousands have died unnecessarily from this pandemic because the capitalist governments put profits before people's needs. There's no reason for any of this. The only reason why these things still exist, war, poverty, hunger, misery and conflict is because of the continued existence of the capitalist system. A system that is completely rotten and should be swept from the face of the earth. The sooner, the better. Yeah, I totally agree with what you just said there. I think it's absolutely necessary that we fight against capitalism and imperialism to put an end to this horror. And I think to do so, we need a revolutionary leadership that's capable of cutting through the lies of the bourgeois press and capable of exposing the hypocrisy of the imperialists and their lackeys in the labour movement as well. And above all, we need a leadership that is capable of leading the masses to victory in the struggle against capitalism. So yeah, I would urge all of those who are listening today to get involved with socialist appeal and the international Marxist tendency. And yeah, you can find out more about how to do that using the link in the show notes of this podcast. And so yeah, I'd like to thank you for coming on the podcast, Jorge. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you on again soon. Yeah, sure, it was a pleasure for me. And yeah, I would like to echo your call. All who listen to this podcast should have a look at marxist.com, socialist.net, find out what our ideas are and war puts all tendencies to the test and find out what our position is, compare it to the other positions of all the tendencies in the workers movement. And if you agree with us, if you wanna help us in this struggle to put an end to capitalism, join us. So that's it for this week's episode of Marxist Voice. If you'd like to learn more about the situation in Ukraine as the events unfold, head to www.Marxist.com for regular news and analysis from a Marxist perspective. And if you'd like to learn more about how Marxists approach the question of war and imperialism, head to the Education Hub on our website at www.socialist.net forward slash education. There you can find various texts, books and talks on various aspects of this vital question. And make sure you stay tuned for next week's episode where we'll be releasing part two of our series on women's liberation on the topic of the origins of women's oppression. Hope you all have a revolutionary week. I've been your host, Jack Ty Wilson and you've been listening to Marxist Voice, the podcast of Socialist Appeal.