Ukraine

Europe

EU sanctions over Russian elections in annexed Crimea

The European Union imposed new sanctions on five Russians over their role in elections in the Crimean peninsula. The EU sanctions framework was instated in March 2014, when Russian forces invaded and annexed the peninsula from Ukraine. At the time, the EU declared the move a “clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by acts of aggression by the Russian armed forces.” The new sanctions target five individuals involved in election of members to represent the annexed peninsula in the Russian Duma. Three are newly elected Duma representatives for the city of Sevastopol. The other two are head and deputy head of the Sevastopol electoral commission. (Map via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Russian anarchists call for anti-war resistance

As Putin finally ordered his forces across the Ukrainian border into the breakaway Donbas region, the Russian anarchist group Autonomous Action issued a statement to the world, entitled “Against annexations and imperial aggression.” It reads: “We urge you to counter the Kremlin’s aggression by any means you see fit. Against the seizure of territories under any pretext, against sending the Russian army to the Donbas, against militarization. And ultimately against the war. Take to the streets, spread the word… Do not be silent. Take action. Even a small screw can jam the gears of a death machine.” (Banner reads: “No war between peoples, no peace between classes.” Via Autonomous Action)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Russia and the new fascism

In Episode 111 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores the legacy of Francis Parker Yockey and other exponents of the fast-growing current in the Western fascist tradition that looks to Russia as a patron and ally. Under the leadership of Alexander Dugin, “Putin’s Rasputin” and the theorist of a “Eurasian” bloc against Western democracy, resurgent far-right Russo-nationalism is building ties to neo-fascist organizations across Europe—as well as to supposed “anti-war” leftists in the United States. The Putin propaganda machine’s Nazi-baiting of the Ukrainians is yet another example of the sinister trend of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. It is imperative that progressives in the West do not take the toxic bait of this “Red-Brown Alliance.” Any genuine anti-war position must begin with repudiating Putin’s threats and aggression against Ukraine. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Far-right protesters in Germany with sign reading “Putin, save us!” Via PRISM)

Europe

Ukraine’s already existing humanitarian crisis

Amid the ongoing Russian military build-up and apparently faltering diplomatic efforts to prevent an invasion of Ukraine, one thing is clear: any incursion will worsen the dire humanitarian situation in the country. The latest overview from the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, makes for sobering reading: 2.9 million in need, 13% children. This includes almost 300,000 people still displaced by an eight-year war that has claimed more than 13,000 lives. Particularly affected are the elderly in the separatist-occupied east. Since March 2020, when COVID-19 effectively rendered the so-called “contact line” impassable, they’ve been unable to cross to access their pensions and social services. Last week, eight trucks delivered the latest crossline international aid—COVID-19 prevention equipment, medicines, and construction materials. But how long these humanitarian convoys will be able to continue remains to be seen. (Photo: The New Humanitarian)

East Asia

Submarine incident in flashpoint Kuril Islands

Amid quickly escalating tensions over Ukraine, Russia lodged a diplomatic protest with the US embassy in Moscow, claiming that a US nuclear submarine penetrated Russian territorial waters near the Kuril Islands. According to Moscow’s Defense Ministry, a Virginia-class US Navy submarine was detected off Urup Island, where Russia’s Pacific Fleet was conducting exercises. The Defense Ministry said the submarine was chased off by Russian vessels, and retreated at “maximum speed.” The statement accused the US of a “violation of Russia’s state border.” Media accounts did not emphasize that whether this purported incident indeed took place in Russian waters is questionable, as the Kurils are in part claimed by Japan—a dispute which has prevented Moscow and Tokyo from entering a treaty to formally end their World War II hostilities. Russia over the past weeks has conducted naval maneuvers in the Mediterranean, the North Sea, and northeast Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Pacific and Sea of Okhotsk, where the Kurils are located. (Map: International Kuril Island Project)

Planet Watch

Podcast: Nuclear power? No thanks!

In Episode 110 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against the current greenwashing of nuclear power, and hype about a supposedly “safe” new generation of reactors. Every stage of the nuclear cycle is ecocidal and genocidal. Uranium mining has poisoned the lands of indigenous peoples from Navajo Country to Saskatchewan to West Africa. The ongoing functioning of nuclear plants entails routine emissions of radioactive gases, factored in by the bureaucrats in determining “acceptable” levels of cancer. Disposal of the waste, and the retired reactor sites themselves, is a problem that inherently defies solution. They will be deadly for exponentially longer into the future than biblical times stretch into the past. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in New Mexico, hyped as secure for hundreds of millennia, leaked plutonium after only 13 years. And finally there is the “sexiest” issue, the one that actually gets some media play, at least—the risk of accident. It is a mark of capitalism’s depravity that even after the nightmares of Fukushima and Chernobyl, we periodically get media campaigns about an imminent “nuclear renaissance.” Nuclear versus fossil fuels is the false choice offered us by industry. The imperative is to get off the extraction economy and on to one based on sustainability and resource conservation. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Glimmers of anti-war dissent in Russia

More than 100 Russian writers, activists and academics have signed a petition in protest of the war drive on Ukraine, which was published on the independent news site Echo of Moscow. The “Declaration by supporters of peace against the Party of War in the Russian government” charges: “The citizens of Russia are…becoming prisoners of criminal adventurism.” It has especially harsh words for Russia’s state media: “On state TV there is only one point of view, and that is the point of view of the supporters of war… [A]ggression pours out, and hate towards Ukraine, America, and Western countries… [W]ar is treated as an acceptable and inevitable development of events.” Some signatories have been officially designated as “foreign agents” by the Russian government, limiting their right to political activity. (Photo: Sign reads “Putin, hands off Ukraine!” Moscow, March 2014. Via RS21)

Europe

Podcast: Ukraine between East and West

In Episode 108 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock of the frightening East-West escalation over Ukraine. Beyond the front-line on that country’s eastern borders, the forces of Russia and its allies and those of NATO are preparing for war from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. The “anti-war” (sic) left in the US is, with perfect predictability, lining up with Russia. Contrary to pseudo-left misconceptions, the post-Cold War promises to Russia that NATO would not expand east were never formalized. However, the promises made to Ukraine that its sovereignty and territory would be protected were formalized. The prevailing double standard on the Western “left” sensationalizes a “Nazi” threat in Ukraine while ignoring the actual consolidation of fascistic dictatorships in Russia and Belarus. Putin’s propaganda, spread by the Kremlin media machine, is an exercise in fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. Ukrainian socialists and democratic-left forces advance a “Neither East Nor West” position that demands solidarity against Russian aggression from the world anti-war forces. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Planet Watch

Rapid nuclear escalation, East and West

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that Moscow will deploy intermediate-range nuclear weapons if NATO does not accede to demands to stop arming Ukraine and guarantee an end to eastward expansion of the alliance. His remarks come amid tensions over Russian military movements near Ukraine’s borders, where the Kremlin is estimated to have amassed some 100,000 troops. Amid similar tensions over Chinese incursions into the Taiwan Strait, a Pentagon report warns that the People’s Republic is undertaking an expansion and “modernization” of its nuclear arsenal to “provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.” And the US is meanwhile replacing gravity bombs with digitally guided nuclear missiles on its new design of the F-35A fighter jet. (Photo of F-35A via Air Force Times)

Planet Watch

‘Net-zero’ skeptics march in Glasgow

Thousands marched in Glasgow as the COP26 climate summit entered its second week Nov. 6, demanding ambitious and concrete proposals on limiting global warning to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels—the lowest target under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Police arrested 21 people, including members… Read more‘Net-zero’ skeptics march in Glasgow

Greater Middle East

Turkish drones decisive in regional wars

The Turkish military is unveiling a new upgraded “unmanned combat aerial vehicle,” the Bayraktar Akıncı, developed by private drone manufacturer Baykar Defense, which is owned by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar. The Akıncı is a more advanced version of Turkey’s iconic Bayraktar TB2, able to fly higher and carry more missiles. The TB2 has been used by Ankara against Kurdish guerillas in northern Iraq, and against Syrian regime forces. Turkey has also provided the TB2 to various foreign militaries; it is held to have been decisive in Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenian forces in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh war, as well as the Libyan government’s victory over the warlord Khalifa Haftar. Ukraine, having already tested an initial dispatchment of the drone, is now ordering 24 more for use in its war against Russian-backed separatists. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Europe

Putin rejects Ukraine law on indigenous rights

A Law on Indigenous Peoples passed last month by Ukraine’s parliament is aimed at protecting the culture, language and autonomy of the Tatars in Russian-occupied Crimea. Putin in an interview after passage of the law asserted that the present leaders of Ukraine are clearly hostile to Russia. “Otherwise, how can you explain a law where Russians are a non-indigenous people? What will this lead to? Some people will simply leave.” He then compared these imagined “consequences” with the effects of a “weapon of mass destruction.” In another interview, he said that the bill “reminded” him of Nazi Germany, as it divides people into “indigenous, first-class and second-class people and so forth.” (Image: One of the last demonstrations in Crimea in March 2014, before the Russian occupiers crushed almost all protest. Via Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group)