Prediction 4 – Zelensky's Regime Falls
Within about six months of the Russia-Ukraine war commencing, western warmongers and their apologists, were talking about the demise of Putin's regime, and with it, the beginning of the end not only of Russia, but also of its ally China, on the world arena. The renegade turned imperialist war monger, Paul Mason, even set out detailed maps and charts of how this decline was to come about. There were all the stories about Russia running out of resources, that its economy could not produce the weapons and munitions required to continue the war, its economy was going to be wrecked by the war, and need to meet those requirements, alongside the effect of all the western sanctions placed on it, to stop its sales of oil and gas, of grain and so on. Putin himself was going to fall either because he was dying, or because he was going to be chucked out by a palace coup.
Of course, if the Russian working-class had organised itself, and risen up against Putin's regime, and its attacks on Russian and Ukrainian workers alike, and had thrown out that regime, replacing it with a workers state, based upon workers' democracy, organised via workers soviets, and other organs of workers' power, Marxists would have been highly delighted. It is what we desire, and call for. But, that is not what western imperialism desires, and nor what they were working towards, in their proxy war against Russia. Nor, is it what the various social-imperialists, such as the Ukraine Solidarity Committee, which act as apologists for that US/NATO imperialism, and who have tied themselves to it, were calling for, or meaning in their own hopes for the fall of Putin. What they were looking to, was not the working-class as the global agent of change, but the enemy of that working-class, the bourgeois state, and its organisation within NATO, and other international imperialist bodies.
As Trotsky put it, in almost identical conditions, in the 1930's, as social-democrats, Stalinists, and others clamoured to back the growing war mongering of the allies, against Hitler,
"Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers."
(Phrases and Reality, in Writings 1938-9, p 21)
So too, today, with Putin. All of the actions of NATO, of the EU, G7 and so on, to impose economic sanctions on Russia, to provide Ukraine with ever greater quantities of arms, ever more sophisticated arms, to justify the use of those arms ever deeper inside Russia, and so on, simply reinforced the line put out by Putin, and his regime to the Russian workers that, once again, as in 1812, 1853, 1904, 1918, and after, and once again, in 1941, Russia was under threat from western imperialism, and its allies. And, of course it was, just as much as Russia and China threaten other countries, as they too vie for global strategic advantage. In this global phoney war, between these two imperialist blocs, for Marxists, the question of which one fired first, when that war breaks out into an actual armed conflict, here and there, is irrelevant. As Trotsky put it citing the words of Lenin in relation to WWI,
“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?””
The continued expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders, following the collapse of the USSR, and despite the promises given to Gorbachev, by NATO leaders, not to do so, wasn't just the western military machine deciding to have a nice drive out in the country! The decision of US imperialism to make its “turn to the Pacific”, was similarly not just a whim, but a recognition of the growing power of China, as its economy grew massively, in conditions where western imperialism had been more focussed, on consuming what China produced, paid for by rising amounts of debt, collateralised upon astronomically inflating prices of fictitious capital.
I have recently been watching “Guy Martin – Arctic Warrior”, in which the former motorbike racer has been training with British marines in Norway, and in which the underlying message was a growing preparation for war between NATO and Russia/China. Its part of a steady drumbeat to war, as the public are drip fed, by various sources, the line that Russia presents a near imminent threat to Western Europe, just as, in the past, we were told that Saddam Hussein posed such a threat, leading to the Iraq War. The reality is, of course, that Russia poses no military threat to Western Europe. All of the hyperbole about Russia failing in Ukraine, and so on, was quickly shown to be false, as it achieved its actual objective of occupying Eastern Ukraine, but, it did not do so easily.
The imperialists have tried to have it both ways, as they always do. On the one hand, we were told that Russia was weak, and that weakness was evident in its failure in Ukraine. On the other hand, we were told that this weak Russia that was not even capable of achieving its aims in Ukraine, and was about to be rolled back, and defeated, was planning to roll its tanks into Poland, the Baltic, and Scandinavia! So, which was it? Weak, and unable even to win in Ukraine, or a global military juggernaut able to roll across Europe? Both could not be true.
The truth was that Russia could win a limited war against Ukraine, and its huge backing from NATO, to occupy the majority ethnic Russian regions of Ukraine, which is what it did, and, despite all of the claims to the contrary, is what it actually mobilised to do, as against any idea of occupying the whole of Ukraine. But, even that has stretched it, meaning that the idea that it could pose a realistic threat to Western Europe is ludicrous. That doesn't mean it can't undertake other actions of hybrid warfare, such as using its resources and networks to promote things such as Brexit, or to engage in cyber warfare of various types, but that is far from the picture being painted of a conventional war, and the Russian tanks rolling down the Champs Elysée!
As the saying goes, every accusation is a confession. When NATO, and its propaganda arms talk about such plans by Russia, what they are really describing is their own ambitions to maintain and to extend their own strategic dominance. In “Arctic Warrior”, the narrative was set out that the Arctic is significant, because of its vast resources, and also because China could use Arctic sea routes, as global warming opens them up, to cut its shipping times of manufactures sent to Western Europe. This is a clear example of accusation being confession, because, even in setting it out, it was admitted that more than 50% of that Arctic coastline, is Russian! The Arctic does contain large resources of minerals and so on, but Russia already has legal right to the majority of them, it is Western Europe, and its US ally that is desperate to get their hands on them. Just look at the world map, and look at the vast expanse of Russia, and, in particular, Arctic Russia, in Siberia.
China has, also proposed to finance a 40 kilometre long canal in Thailand, to connect the Pacific to Indian Ocean, to facilitate faster sea routes. Who is opposing it? US imperialism. And, who is it that is, currently threatening to seize control of the Panama Canal, by military force? Donald Trump, and US imperialism, just as in the 1950's, the old colonial powers of Britain and France, alongside the Zionist state attempted to seize control of the Suez Canal. Similarly, who was it that blew up the Russian Nordstream gas pipelines to Germany? It was US imperialism, to prevent the EU going back to its supply of cheap Russian energy.
As for Arctic sea routes for China, for one thing they remain uncertain, for much of the year, but, for another, the whole point about China's Belt and Road Initiative is that it has built much faster and cheaper land routes for its trade across Central Asia, and into Europe. It has already run huge trains from China to London! Moreover, a large part of China's exports go to the US, and they simply travel across the Pacific to the US West Coast. The sluggish economy in Western Europe, resulting from the imposition on itself of all the costs of US imperialism and its proxy wars in Ukraine, the Middle-East and so on, means that China has far more significant growing markets for its exports than to be needing uncertain Arctic sea routes as a priority.
In fact, one of the reasons that all of the predictions by NATO imperialism about Russia's economy being destroyed, as a result of western sanctions, failed is that Russia, whose economy is heavily geared to the sale of primary products, has been able to continue selling them to China, India and elsewhere, and the effect of western sanctions has simply been to raise global prices of those products, and to encourage the development of alternatives to the western controlled global systems. It has been one of the biggest encouragements for the BRICS+ imperialist bloc there could be. What is developing is not a multipolar world, but a bi-polar world of these two huge imperialist blocs butting heads against each other, with the EU being torn by different forces in both directions.
Similarly, therefore, Marxists have no reason to favour the defeat of Ukraine, and its own oligarchy at the hands of Russia, either. Just as we favour the overthrow of Putin's regime by Russia's revolutionary workers, so we favour the overthrow of Zelensky's regime by revolutionary Ukrainian workers. A fundamental requirement of such an overthrow is that those workers are not duped and deluded into the idea that they have a shared national interest with that regime, which is their immediate class enemy and oppressor.
Unfortunately, there, currently, appears little chance of the workers in either Russia or Ukraine overthrowing their respective rulers. But, contrary, to the predictions of western imperialism of the demise of Putin, the end of Zelensky's regime appears to be on the horizon. Again, it will not be at the hands of Russia, but at the hands of reactionary forces inside Ukraine, and the abandonment of him by NATO, much as Russia abandoned Assad, leaving open the door to his ouster by Islamists. It is not just the fact of the arrival of Trump that makes that likely, though as with other things, it will hasten the process. Despite all of the resources and money ploughed into Ukraine by NATO imperialism, Zelensky's regime has failed them, and has gone backwards.
It is a regime that was corrupt to begin with, on the same scale as that in Russia itself, and that corruption has seen vast amounts squirrelled away by those with the ability to do so. It is a regime that was illiberal and undemocratic to begin with that has become more illiberal and undemocratic as the war progressed. Workers parties were closed down, even greater restrictions on trades union and civic organisations imposed, nationalistic and racist ideologies were legitimised, as well as the removal of basic rights for example in relation to the Russian language. Zelensky's regime lost any democratic legitimacy by, several months ago, cancelling elections. Inside Ukraine, the toll on the economy, even with all of the NATO support has been crippling, its population has been decimated as particularly younger people have fled abroad to escape and increasingly brutal conscription and press ganging of recruits.
The latest straw being clung to by liberals and social-imperialists is that Trump will threaten Putin that if he doesn't do a deal, the US will step up its support for Ukraine. That won't happen, because as has already been seen any such additional support will not change things. More importantly, Trump has promised his supporters an end to the war, and that the US is removing itself from it. He is not going to undermine that position, and the only way of ending it soon is by pulling the plug on Zelensky.
When Saddam Hussein failed his imperialist masters in their proxy war against Iran, in the 1980's, he stopped being useful to them. It opened the door to them looking for a replacement. The failure of Zelensky will have the same result. For NATO imperialism, the usefulness of Ukraine in carrying out the proxy war against Russia, was to drain Russia's economy. But, that required that the war could be sustained against it over a long period. Russia can sustain that war, but its clear that Ukraine cannot. Russia has taken most of what it sought, and simply has to defend it, with all of the advantages that brings. Ukraine, to justify the narrative given at the start of the war, has to act as though Russia intends to take the whole of Ukraine, and, at the same time, to commit itself to recapturing Eastern Ukraine. The latter is not possible, and NATO knows its not possible, and becomes less and less possible with time.
NATO, then, faces pouring money and resources into an endless pit, with little advantage from it, and the Ukrainian population turning increasingly against Zelensky with unpredictable results. NATO will ditch Zelensky, and will seek some kind of ceasefire to ensure the possibility of elections, and an orderly replacement, at least opening the possibility for them of recovering some of their lost treasure by opening up Ukraine to greater exploitation of its resources and labour-power. At this stage, its not clear that they will get their wish. As with the fall of Saddam, and now, with Assad, the potential for other, reactionary forces filling the vacuum is at least as great. In Ukraine, that could be in the form of the Azov Battalion, and the Right Sector.
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