The World Trade Organisation Support Programme for Doctoral Studies (also known as the PhD Internship Programme) aims to support the development of academic expertise on WTO issues in developing countries. The WTO Secretariat invites doctoral students from developing countries to conduct research at the WTO and provides them with mentoring/advice in close collaboration with the students’ academic supervisors.
Participants in the PhD Internship Programme are expected to advance their doctoral thesis during their time at the WTO, taking advantage of access to WTO facilities and information as well as opportunities for interaction with the general trade policy community. They are not expected to undertake assignments on behalf of the WTO Secretariat. A mentor is allocated to the doctoral student for the duration of his/her internship. The role of the mentor is to provide the student with advice, as required, in close collaboration with the student’s academic supervisors. Before the end of the PhD Internship Programme, the participant is required to give a seminar on his/her work.
What Type of Scholarship is this?
PhD, Internship
Who can apply for WTO PhD Internship Programme?
The programme is open to doctoral students from Developing and Least-Developed Countries and customs territories that are WTO Members (or engaged in WTO accession negotiations). Government officials are not eligible to apply to the programme.
Applicants must be undertaking a WTO-related PhD or equivalent in economics, law, international relations or other relevant discipline.
Applicants must be in the final stage of their PhD. As a general guideline, a minimum of 75% of their thesis should be completed and submitted with their application.
If the thesis is not in one of the three official WTO languages (English, French or Spanish) this will reduce the likelihood of acceptance to the programme (which depends on the availability of WTO staff to serve as mentor).
Applications must be accompanied by a written recommendation from the applicant’s academic supervisor plus a letter from the University attended by the applicant confirming that he/she is registered for a PhD degree.
Those who are accepted into the PhD Support Programme will be requested to provide a medical certificate prior to the commencement of their residency.
Prior to accepting a candidate, the WTO Selection Committee may contact the applicant’s academic supervisor if further information is deemed necessary.
Where will Award be Taken?
Geneva, Switzerland
How Many Internships will be Given?
Not specified
What is the Benefit of WTO PhD Internship Programme?
Interns under the PhD Internship Programme receive a daily allowance of CHF 60 (including weekends and official holidays falling within the selected period). In addition, travel expenses (economy class air fare) to and from Geneva is covered by the WTO.
Medical health insurance coverage is mandatory in Switzerland, and interns are responsible for organizing their own health insurance prior to commencing their internship at the WTO.
Thousands of rail workers attended a mass meeting Thursday night to launch a nationwide balloting campaign for strike action across Network Rail and the train operating companies. 40,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) are being balloted over historic attacks on jobs, pay, terms and conditions as part of the Johnson government’s Great British Railways re-privatisation project.
Engineers working to repair the railway on a bridge (Credit: Network Rail)
3,500 RMT members registered for Thursday’s meeting—the first online mass meeting in the union’s history, and its largest in decades. Thousands more listened via Facebook livestream. The turnout demonstrated workers’ determination to fight. Balloting opens this week and closes on May 24.
RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch outlined plans by the Johnson government’s Department for Transport (DfT) and the rail employers for “a generalised attack across all train operating companies and Network Rail”. The railways employ more than 240,000 people, including 42,000 Network Rail infrastructure workers.
The current dispute involves 41,000 members of the RMT across Network Rail and 17 train operating companies including, Chiltern Railways, Cross Country Trains, Greater Anglia, LNER, East Midlands Railway, c2c, Great Western Railway, Northern Trains, South Eastern Railway, South Western Railway, Island Line, GTR (including Gatwick Express), TransPennine Express, Avanti West Coast, West Midlands Train.
Lynch said the DfT had “thrown down the gauntlet” with a two-year pay freeze, massive job cuts, changes to working practices, terms and conditions, and attacks on the railway pension scheme, hugely increasing contributions and scaling back benefits.
The cuts include:
· £2 billion in permanent consolidated cuts across the railways, £600 million of this to be achieved through “workforce reforms”
· Mass closure of ticketing offices
· Making Sunday part of the normal working week without compensation; scrapping current rostering principles, forcing all staff to work unsociable hours
· Stripping out jobs from station and retail grades, control rooms and catering services
· Multi-functionality between all station grades, including dispatch, gate-line customer service, passenger assistance, security and revenue protection, retail and control
· Accelerated introduction of digital technologies and remote monitoring to undermine conditions and safety
· New technologies used as a pretext for Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains, with guards and conductors removed from operational and safety-critical role to onboard customer service
· £400 million in cash savings across Network Rail through “workforce reforms”
· £100 million in cuts to Network Rail’s maintenance section with a shift to “risk based maintenance” and removal of 2,500 jobs.
· Network Rail operators will be replaced by roving “assistant technicians”, allocated to no specific discipline, team or route, paid as little as £21,000 a year, rostered individually and using their own vehicles to travel to job sites
· De-skilling of signalers and controllers (including use of drones to replace physical inspections) and authority of signalers to be overridden by management grade controllers
The Johnson government’s agenda was spelled out in a White Paper last May by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and former British Airways CEO Keith Williams, launching Great British Railways. Seizing on the collapse of the TOC private franchise model during the pandemic, the Tories have unveiled a new model of privatisation managed by GB Railways. It will oversee a profit bonanza for transport corporations and other financial parasites.
“Our response has been certain and true,” Lynch declared, “The time is now on us. We have no choice but to launch a massive fightback”. But his report was shot through with duplicity. Lynch stated that the pandemic had been used as a smokescreen for huge cuts, but was silent on the RMT’s participation, alongside rail unions ASLEF, Unite, TSSA and GMB, in the Johnson government’s Rail Industry Recovery Group (RIRG).
Johnson and Shapps initiated the RIRG in December 2020, uniting the private rail operators, Network Rail executives and unions to restructure the railways. On January 13, 2021 the RMT signed up to its confidential “terms of reference” including plans to enforce massive cost savings, jobs cuts, attacks on conditions and the slashing of pensions. Lynch made just two passing references to the RIRG in his speech but was silent on the RMT’s participation in this corporatist body.
While paying lip service to rail nationalisation, the RMT advances no challenge to the re-privatisation agenda of the Johnson government. In the mid-1990s the RMT and other rail unions betrayed the fight against privatisation, claiming a Labour government would reverse the Tories’ move. But Blair and his fellow Thatcherites completed the rail sell-off begun under Tory minister Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the RMT established a loyal partnership with the private TOCs, even as they looted billions, including £8.7 billion in dividend payments to shareholders since 1996.
During the pandemic, this looting operation has been expanded. Emergency Measures Agreements (between March and September 2020) saw the TOCs pocket £98 million in taxpayer funded “management fees”. These were succeeded by Emergency Measures Recovery Agreements, expiring this month, with handouts of £231 million. National Contracts, running for five years, will begin this month, with TOCs set to receive £626 million. The Johnson government also covered the leasing payments of the rolling stock companies (which own the trains), allowing them to gift £950 million to shareholders in 2020.
GB Railways is socialism for the rich, with the government acting as guarantor against any future losses to private TOCs. It will be modelled on Transport for London, with funding dependent on meeting a moving feast of efficiency targets, creating a relentless pressure to boost productivity and downgrade safety.
Lynch outlined the RMT’s demands: an end to the pay freeze, no compulsory redundancies, and an assurance there will be no detrimental changes to work practices and terms and conditions. But the Johnson government will make no such assurances. Its reforms, spelled out in the White Paper and in months of discussions at the RIRG, are a declaration of war against the working class.
The RMT demands no compulsory redundancies, knowing that thousands of jobs will be permanently destroyed through voluntary redundancies, retirement, and natural attrition. According to the RMT’s own estimate, 2,500 jobs have already been axed in recent months via the government’s Voluntary Severance Scheme.
The Socialist Equality Party calls for the widest mobilisation to return a “yes” vote for industrial action, but the dispute must not be left in the hands of the RMT. Rail workers must inscribe on their banner the fight for nationalisation of the railways under workers’ control. The train operating companies must be placed under public ownership and their profits seized to improve conditions and pay, expand the rail system and make fares affordable.
Lynch declared Thursday, “we cannot rely on others”. But success depends on a unified movement. On the London Underground, the RMT and ASLEF are sitting on massive strike votes by their members, refusing to organise a joint offensive to defeat the Johnson government’s plans being enforced by Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Rank-and-file strike committees should be elected at every station and depot to turn out and win support across the railways and among transport workers in the UK and across Europe, who are facing the same attacks.
In one of the largest deployments since the Cold War, Britain’s government announced Friday it was sending 8,000 army troops across Europe from next month to participate in a slew of military exercises.
As of April 2021, there were 86,240 soldiers serving as regulars in the British Army, meaning that around 10 percent of the entire force is being sent to confront Russia.
Tanks uploaded on military truck platforms as a part of additional British troops and military equipment arrive at Estonia's NATO Battle Group base in Tapa, Estonia, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Sergei Stepanov)
The troop movement, to gather momentum between April and June, is the latest escalation by Britain as part of NATO’s de facto war against Russia. The announcement was made hours after US President Joe Biden signed off on a massive $20 billion of weapons shipments
In a Ministry of Defence (MoD) press release, Commander Field Army Lieutenant General Ralph Wooddisse said, “The UK makes a significant contribution to the defence of Europe and the deterrence of Russian aggression. The British Army’s series of exercises is fundamental to both. We continue to deploy across Europe, from the Baltic to the Aegean, to train and fight alongside our allies and partners, providing powerful, capable and ready forces to support NATO.”
Troops will be deployed mainly in a series of four separate NATO wargames codenamed Arrow, Hedgehog, Defender and Swift Response.
There is no exact number of troops participating from the countries involved but the MoD noted, “Tens of thousands of troops from NATO and Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) allies and partners are involved in the exercises.”
The UK-led JEF comprises nine other “High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea” nations: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. It was established in 2014 at the initiative of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative government and the United States/NATO.
An MoD breakdown states, “Troops from B Squadron of the Queen’s Royal Hussars have deployed to Finland this week to take part in Exercise Arrow. They will be embedded into a Finnish Armoured Brigade, with participation from other partners including the US, Latvia and Estonia. The exercise will improve the ability of UK and Finnish troops to work alongside each other as part of the JEF, deterring Russian aggression in Scandinavia and the Baltic states.”
NATO’s Exercise Swift Response began this week and “sees elements of 16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team and 1 Aviation Brigade Combat Team operate alongside French, American, Italian, and Albanian counterparts in North Macedonia. There are 4,500 personnel on the exercise including 2,500 British troops. The exercise involves parachute drops, helicopter-borne air assaults and sees a company of French paratroopers integrated into the 2 Parachute Regiment Battlegroup and an Italian battlegroup working to a British chain of command.”
In Exercise Hedgehog, in May, “the Royal Welsh Battlegroup and the Royal Tank Regiment exercising on the Estonia-Latvia border alongside 18,000 NATO troops, including French and Danish, who are part of the British-led NATO enhanced Forward Presence. Hedgehog is the biggest military exercise in Estonia and takes place every four years.”
While Operation Hedgehog is underway, “Exercise Defender in Poland is ongoing until late May, with 1,000 soldiers from the King’s Royal Hussars Battlegroup and C Squadron of the Light Dragoons deployed alongside troops from 11 partner nations including Poland, Denmark and the United States. This exercise involves Challenger 2 tanks and other armoured vehicles deploying from the NATO Forward Holding Base in Sennelager, Germany. The deployment is supported by 104 Theatre Sustainment Brigade operating from the UK and in bases in Europe.”
Britain has taken part in and sometimes led NATO operations for years, backing the encirclement of Russia. Over the past year this has intensified, beginning with the May 2021 launch of NATO’s Carrier Strike Group 21 armada, headed by the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier with seven helicopters visible onboard at Portsmouth harbour. May 1, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)
Early last month, more than 3,000 sailors and Royal Marines were deployed to the Arctic Circle, ashore, at sea and in the skies of Norway, as Britain’s contribution to Cold Response 2022. This involved around 30,000 troops from 27 NATO allies and “partners”. The two-week operation, a live-fire rehearsal for war on Russia’s northern flank, was the largest military exercise hosted in Norway since the Cold War. The Joint Forces website noted, “Britain’s biggest warship, HMS Prince of Wales, led the naval fleet, demonstrating her ability to act as NATO command ship—a role she will hold for the rest of 2022. This was the first time one of the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers has been so far north.” The “ship’s role in the exercise saw her work side-by-side with a breadth of British and Allied air power from F-35B Lightning stealth fighters to the Americans’ unique Osprey MV22 aircraft and Sea Stallion helicopters.”
Norway shares a 200 kilometre (124 mile) land border with Russia, with the operation’s drills involving 200 aircraft and 50 vessels held a few hundred kilometres from Russia.
The UK’s military build-up was prefaced with a statement Monday on Ukraine from Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. He boasted that Britain had already handed Ukraine “more than 5,000 anti-tank missiles, 5 Air Defence systems with more than 100 missiles, 1,360 anti-structure munitions, and 4.5 tonnes of plastic explosives.” Weeks after hostilities began the UK stepped up its arming of Ukraine with “Starstreak high velocity and low velocity anti-air missiles. I am able to now report to the House that these have been in-theatre for over 3 weeks and they have been deployed and used by Ukrainian forces to defend themselves and their territory.”
While Parliament was in Easter recess, “my ministerial team… hosted a Ukrainian government delegation at Salisbury Plain Training Area to explore further equipment options. This was quickly followed by the Prime Minister announcing a further £100 million worth of high-grade military equipment, 120 armoured vehicles, sourcing anti-ship missiles, and high-tech loitering munitions for precision strikes.”
The UK was now “offering a deployment of British Challenger 2 Tanks to Poland to bridge the gap between Poland donating tanks to Ukraine, and their replacements arriving from a third country.”
Britain is deploying virtually the entire capability of its armed forces from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, Wallace boasted. “We have temporarily doubled the number of Defence personnel in Estonia, sent military personnel to support Lithuanian intelligence resilience and reconnaissance efforts, deployed hundreds of Royal Marines to Poland, and sent offshore patrol vessels and Navy destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean. We have also increased our presence in the skies over south-eastern Europe with four additional Typhoons based in Romania. That means we now have a full squadron of RAF fighter jets in southern Europe, ready to support NATO tasking.”
A Daily Telegraph article reported, “In a further message to the Kremlin, nuclear-powered attack submarines from the UK, US and France have berthed in Britain’s Faslane naval base on the Clyde [in Scotland], home to the UK’s strategic deterrent.
“Earlier this week HMS Audacious, a Royal Navy Astute-class hunter-killer boat, was seen loading Tomahawk missiles at the naval facility in Gibraltar. The submarines are all understood to be preparing to take part in naval exercises in the north Atlantic, due to start in the coming days.”
After nearly triggering an armed conflict last summer with Russia in the Black Sea, when a British warship entered waters near Crimea, Wallace said Thursday that the UK would send anti-ship Brimstone missiles to Ukraine specially to prevent a Russian blockade of the Black Sea.
Wallace threatened that Russia could not be allowed to “control the Black Sea” as “it’s not theirs anymore.” The Telegraph reported, “The latest intelligence assessment from the Ministry of Defence suggests there are 20 Russian navy vessels in the Black Sea, including submarines.”
With the dust settled on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s two-day visit to India last week, the picture that emerges is of Britain’s greatly diminished stature on the world stage. This was clouded at the time by the “partygate” storm dominating the media coverage centred on Johnson’s personal travails.
In the Guardian’s account, Johnson was feeling “Westminster heat under the Indian sun”. According to the Times, which reported “frantic calls” between Johnson and the Conservative Party back home, “There was no respite for the PM overseas”. Perhaps the most used word to describe his visit was “overshadowed”. ITV’s deputy political editor Anushka Asthana wrote that “from the perspective of the trip to India” events back home in Westminster were “a disaster”.
Comments focusing on Johnson’s performance in India were no more flattering. The most publicised event was a photo-op at a JCB plant, “British owned but made in India,” touted Johnson (and owned by a Tory donor), where he posed on top of a bulldozer. But in the days before, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi had used JCB machines to flatten Muslim homes and businesses as part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s communalist campaign. The prime minister was branded “ignorant” and “tone deaf”.
22/04/2022. Delhi, India. Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives a press conference with Prime Minister Modi. (Flickr / Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street)
His trip was certainly a flop. But the relentless focus on Johnson’s personal failings, designed to underscore the argument of a broad section of the ruling class that he is now a liability for British imperialism, hides deeper causes that are as unpalatable to his critics as to Johnson himself. The Tory leader is playing his hand badly, but it was a bad hand to begin with.
When the Guardian’s editors write, “The UK PM ought to have taken greater note of [Indian Prime Minister] Narendra Modi’s… refusal to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, or Labour’s Shadow Trade Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds argues, “Not even raising the issue of India’s neutrality on Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is a failure of leadership that shows a Prime Minister too distracted by trying to save his own skin to do his job properly,” they are tapping into the same fantasy on which Johnson’s trip was based—that the UK can unilaterally exercise any such influence on its former colony.
India, closely courted by the imperialist powers as a potential ally against China, was one of the countries to abstain from a United Nations vote censuring Russian over Ukraine. The Times explained that Johnson was on a mission “to reduce the amount of arms it [India] buys from Russia” and “wean it off Russian fuel”. He would “offer India alternatives to Russia ties”, according to Reuters.
But a joint statement on the Johnson-Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks simply “expressed in strongest terms their concern about the ongoing conflict and humanitarian situation in Ukraine” and “reiterated the need for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a peaceful resolution of the conflict”. The Independent reported, “India’s foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said that Mr Johnson did not seek to put pressure on Modi to change his stance.” In a press conference on the final day of his trip, the UK prime minister admitted, “The position on Russia that the Indians have historically is well known. They are not going to change that, of course, that’s true.”
For Johnson to have pushed the issue any further would have exposed the UK’s tenuous position. As Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, International Institute for Strategic Studies fellow for South Asia and member of the UK-India Advisory Council, wrote in the Financial Times ahead of Johnson’s visit, “Rhetoric is far ahead of reality when it comes to UK-India ties”.
In terms of defence, Johnson reportedly offered to streamline the UK’s licensing rules on military exports and assist India in developing its own fighter jets. But the UK is in no position to transform the current heavy reliance of the Indian military on Russian equipment and arms suppliers. Cooperation with the US and its allies in moves against China—the Indian navy joined NATO’s UK-led Carrier Strike Group in the Bay of Bengal last year and the country participates in the anti-China Quad group—does not preclude for India its continued close relations with Russia, a critical security partner.
Retired Lieutenant General Deependra Singh Hooda, former commander of India’s northern army, told Al Jazeera India’s dependence on Russia, despite plans to diversify and bring in-house its sources of military hardware, was “huge”, adding, “It’s just not possible to suddenly replace 60-70 percent of your equipment.” That equipment includes fighter jets, transport aircraft, battle tanks, air defence systems, an aircraft carrier and a leased nuclear submarine, with four warships on order.
The leading Swedish defence think tank SIRPI estimates that India imported 46 percent of its arms from Russia between 2017 and 2021.
By contrast, the UK has over the post-Second World War period fallen from its position as India’s largest arms supplier to a market share in the last 10 years of just 3 percent.
At the end of March, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss travelled to Delhi to discuss “closer defence and security partnerships between the UK and India”. But her visit was undermined by the welcome given to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the same day.
Lavrov’s main purpose was to discuss the sale of discounted Russian oil, which Truss sought to pressure India into refusing. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar pointedly answered the British foreign secretary, “I think it’s natural for countries to go out and look for what are good deals… there’s a much broader spread of countries who have views and influence on how the world should be run.”
Since then Indian oil purchases from Russia have more than doubled on last year.
The UK courted embarrassment again with Johnson’s trip, leading to an argument over his helicopter transportation in India. According to the Times, the prime minister’s advisors vetoed the use of a Russian-built Mi-17. An American Chinook had to be flown in from a base six hours away.
Nor does Britain have any commanding economic leverage over India. The two countries now vie for the position of the fifth largest economy in the world, with India set to outstrip the UK in the coming years. Not factoring in the very real threat of global economic and political convulsions, the International Monetary Fund predicts the UK economy will grow by 3.7 percent this year and 1.2 percent the next; India’s is forecast 8.2 percent then 6.9 percent. While the UK’s share of global exports declined from 5.3 percent in 2000 to 3.3 percent in 2019, India’s increased from 0.8 percent to 2.1 percent.
As for direct ties, the UK fell from India’s second largest trading partner for goods in 1996/7, to its 18th largest in 2019/20. Britain’s trade balance with India for goods and services has been in deficit since 2001, standing at minus £4.3 billion in 2020. Between 2000 and 2019, the UK was the only G7 economy to see a decline (minus 3 percent) in its exports to the country.
It was therefore Johnson trying to push Modi for a deal in India, urging of a free trade agreement “we are telling our negotiators, get it done by Diwali in October.” He signaled during the trip that the UK would bring in reduced visa restrictions on Indian citizens, a long-term sticking point in the talks. Modi only went as far as saying India would make “all efforts to conclude the FTA [free trade agreement] by the end of this year.”
The same reasons that made Johnson’s India trip so lacklustre also made it necessary to undertake. With its economic and military weight in steep decline, the UK has sought to base its position on a close alliance with US imperialism. This “special relationship” has increasingly been shown for what it is: a necessarily slavish commitment to Washington.
Brexit has supercharged this process, with the UK forced to make up for its diminished value as an American proxy in the European Union with an even more fervent proselytising of American interests. In recent months, this has meant playing the role of NATO’s drill sergeant, barracking governments to unreservedly fall into line with the US war drive against Russia.
Johnson went to India hoping to provide the same service, but only proved that the UK’s scope for achieving its foreign policy objectives is extremely limited—the prime minister’s hailing of his “special friend” Modi and the UK and India’s “long-term partnership” notwithstanding.
Away from the political spotlight, the ruling class is more sober. In January 2021, the leading British foreign policy think tank Chatham House issued “A blueprint for the UK’s future international role”, authored by director Robin Niblett, which admitted Britain could not “reincarnate itself as a miniature great power”. It instead advocated Britain serving “as the broker of solutions to global challenges.”
Niblett identified India as one of four “difficult” countries:“ It should be obvious by now that the idea of a deeper relationship with India always promises more than it can deliver. The legacy of British colonial rule consistently curdles the relationship. In contrast, the US has become the most important strategic partner for India, as recent US administrations have intensified their bilateral security relations, putting the UK in the shade.”
The report’s less than flattering portrayal of India prompted an even blunter assessment from its former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal: “Britain’s hope after Brexit to be a global broker reflects both its diminished status and its imperial nostalgia.”
These facts do not lessen but increase the danger posed to the UK and international working class by British imperialism. As recent years have proven, its response is to throw around what weight it does have, above all in the military sphere, even more provocatively in the hope of earning a share of the spoils of a world redivided by the US. Lauding a major foreign policy speech delivered by Truss this Wednesday, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom Nile Gardinerwrote, “As the great Iron Lady used to say, America needs friends and partners in the often lonely task of global leadership. And the US has no more powerful and robust ally than Great Britain”.
Funding such an aggressive foreign policy means squeezing the working class at home ever more tightly. Writing in the Times this week, Iain Martin cheered, “Post-Brexit Britain’s back on the global stage”, but wagged his finger, “rhetoric must be matched by increased firepower”. In her Wednesday speech, Truss decried a “generation of underinvestment” in the military and called for the 2 percent of GDP target for NATO members to be made “a floor, not a ceiling”.
Canada’s Liberal government, with the support of the entire political establishment, is recklessly and relentlessly escalating the US-NATO war with Russia over Ukraine. The minority Liberal government, which relies on the support of the trade union-sponsored New Democrats for its parliamentary majority, has begun supplying heavy weaponry to the Ukrainian army and has pledged to provide half a billion dollars worth of additional military aid to Kiev by next March.
Over the past week, the Trudeau government has confirmed it will send armoured vehicles and heavy artillery to Ukraine. Defence sources who spoke to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on condition of anonymity confirmed that four 155mm M777 howitzers from the Canadian Armed Forces’ stockpile are now in the hands of the Ukrainian armed forces. The M777s were first used in combat by Canadian forces during NATO’s neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan. The Department of Defence press release also revealed that Canada has supplied Ukraine with an unspecified number of Carl Gustaf anti-tank weapons from its existing stockpiles.
Canadian imperialism played an important role in preparing and instigating the US-NATO war on Russia over Ukraine. Above, a Ukrainian soldier undergoing training in urban warfare as part of the Canadian Armed Forces' now seven year-long military training mission in Ukraine, Operation Unifier. (Government of Canada)
At a Pentagon press conference with her US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Thursday, Defence Minister Anita Anand confirmed that Canadian troops will train Ukrainian forces on using the M777s but refused to say where the training is to take place. An official later said that a “third country” in Eastern Europe would be used.
Anand and Austin, fresh from attending a war council involving 40 countries at the American Ramstein air base in Germany, held talks for an hour. Austin used his trip to Europe to all but acknowledge that the US, and by extension its NATO allies, is a direct party to the war with Russia in Ukraine.
The deluge of heavy weaponry being sent to Ukraine by the US, Canada and other NATO powers will undoubtedly exacerbate what is already an explosive situation in Eastern Europe. The slightest miscalculation could ignite the Eastern European powder keg and plunge the world into a Third World War fought with nuclear weapons. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that NATO-supplied weapons are legitimate targets for Russian strikes, while President Vladimir Putin made a thinly veiled threat to deploy nuclear weapons against countries “interfering from the outside.”
The political establishments in both the United States and Canada know full well that their aggressive policy of NATO expansion up to Russia’s borders over the past three decades, which was responsible for provoking the current war, is bringing the entire world to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly asserted that Canada must prepare for “all scenarios” given the warnings made by Russia about a nuclear exchange.
In other words, the Trudeau government calculates that NATO’s criminal escalation of the war, to which it is eagerly contributing, carries the real risk of a nuclear weapon striking Canada but considers this a risk worth taking in order to secure its predatory imperialist ambitions. As Joly put it, “(W)e won’t stop our efforts until Ukraine wins. When I mean Ukraine wins, what I mean is Russian forces leave Ukraine.”
Nobody is asking Joly, Anand and Trudeau the obvious questions that follow from this: If you are prepared for “all scenarios,” how many Canadians do you estimate would die in a nuclear strike by Russia? How many lives are you prepared to sacrifice to maintain Canada’s alliance with far-right and fascist forces in Ukraine and advance Canadian imperialist ambitions in Eastern Europe and the Arctic?
The ruling elite’s recklessness is not merely motivated by geopolitical considerations but also by the mounting domestic social and political crisis. Last month, the Trudeau Liberals entered a formal “confidence-and-supply” agreement with the NDP, whereby the social democrats, with the full-throated support of the unions, have pledged to provide “political stability” by keeping the Liberal government in power until June 2025. Under conditions in which inflation has hit a 30-year high, and strikes and protests by workers across all sectors are on the rise, Trudeau, his NDP allies and the Conservative opposition are banking on war fever to produce “national unity” and suppress the class struggle.
Those workers who do boldly assert their class interests will be denounced for disrupting the war on Russia and targeted for state repression. This was already the case for 3,000 CP Rail workers who challenged management’s concession demands and brutal work regime, only to have the Teamsters union accept binding arbitration under threat of a government back-to-work law.
The recent shipments of weaponry to Ukraine are only the latest in a massive program of military and financial aid to Kiev. Figures in the 2022 budget state that Canada has officially announced at least $1.2 billion in direct contributions and $1.6 billion in loans to Ukraine.
In her April 7 budget, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced a five-year $8 billion increase in defence spending. This is in addition to the 2017 commitment to hike military spending by over 70 percent from 2017 levels by 2026. Expenditures highlighted in Chapter 5 of the budget include $847 million to maintain Canada’s military at a higher state of readiness for the NATO Readiness Initiative and $252 million over five years to lay the groundwork for modernizing the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD). The Canadian bourgeoisie considers NORAD’s modernization as essential for enabling Ottawa to wage wars of aggression in alliance with Washington against its geopolitical rivals, including conflicts fought with nuclear weapons.
Two weeks after the budget’s release, a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer revealed that it surreptitiously set aside a further $15 billion for military expenditures over the next five years.
As with Canada’s disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw hundreds of billions of dollars transferred to the banks and major corporations virtually overnight, the cost of footing the bill for this huge military build-up will fall on the working class in the form of cuts to public spending and attacks on jobs and wages.
Canada’s ever-more aggressive role in the US-NATO war with Russia underscores that Canadian imperialist foreign policy is in lockstep with the US and its NATO allies, which are intent on effecting regime change in Moscow and reducing Russia to the status of a semi-colony. Once upon a time this bellicose policy would have met with at least rhetorical resistance from some sections of the ruling elite, who sought to portray Canada as a “peacekeeper” and “honest-broker” middle power during the Cold War. However, this period has long since passed.
Insofar as there are criticisms of Canada’s aggressive war drive against Russia, they are that Ottawa is not advocating even more aggressive measures, such as a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine, or investing enough in Canada’s war arsenal. The US has consistently bemoaned the fact that Canada does not spend 2 percent of its GDP on its military, a goal to which all NATO members and the Trudeau Liberal government have formally committed.
The Conservatives attacked the Liberal-authored, NDP-backed budget for not doing enough to further Canada’s imperialistic ambitions in the Arctic. Conservative shadow ministers for the Arctic, Procurement and National Defence released a joint statement attacking the government for not presenting a concrete plan of massive military expenditures, particularly in Canada’s barren, albeit resource-rich north.
Citing Russian and Chinese interest in the Arctic, the ministers stated, “What we needed from this NDP-Liberal budget was an understanding that urgent action and firm commitments are required to match today’s geopolitical realities. The fact that the budget contains neither of these is unacceptable and further shows that Justin Trudeau still does not take this issue seriously. Conservatives will continue to call on the NDP-Liberal government to put forward a robust plan to defend Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and security.”
Support for waging war around the world and strengthening the military extends from the Conservatives on the right to the NDP on the “left.” The New Democrats responded to the US-NATO conflict with Russia by forming their three-year governmental alliance with the Liberals. It gives the Trudeau government a free hand to wage war against Russia in Eastern Europe, massively hike defence spending and launch attacks on the working class at home to pay for imperialist war abroad.
On Wednesday, NDP MP Heather McPherson introduced a motion in parliament calling for Canada to adopt the inflammatory description of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “genocide.” Motivating support for the motion, McPherson explained that she hoped it would impel the government to do more to support Ukraine militarily.
The motion was backed unanimously by all MPs and parties, including the Greens and Bloc Québécois. Prime Minister Trudeau previously gave his stamp of approval to the genocide accusation, telling reporters on April 13, that it is “absolutely right that more and more people” are “talking and using the word genocide in terms of what Russia is doing, what Vladimir Putin has done.”
The term genocide was coined in the aftermath of the Holocaust to describe the systematic, industrial extermination of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, including the Ukrainian nationalists of Stepan Bandera’s fascistic Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the Nachtigall Battalion, and the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician). The political heirs of these fascists are now being equipped with lethal weaponry by the NATO powers, including Canada.
The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide codified the international legal definition of genocide as specific crimes “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such.”
If what Russia is perpetrating in Ukraine is genocide, the US and its NATO allies, Canada included, are guilty many times over. Russia’s bloody invasion has not seen the overwhelming use of air power that characterized the “shock and awe” campaigns the US and its NATO allies mounted in the Balkans and Iraq. Nor has it seen the endless, indiscriminate drone strikes on weddings and funerals employed during the “free world’s” interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
On Thursday, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, gave the green light for the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine.
The motion, with the cynical title “Defending Peace and Freedom in Europe,” was jointly introduced by the governing parties—Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP)—as well as the Christian Democratic (CDU/CSU) opposition, passing by 586 votes to 100, with seven abstentions. It is a barely veiled declaration of war on Russia.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) advocates the delivery of heavy weapons in the Bundestag on 27 April (Photo: DBT / Florian Gaertner / photothek)
The ten-page motion calls on the German government to “continue and, where possible, accelerate the delivery of needed equipment to Ukraine, including extending the delivery to heavy weapons and complex systems, for example in the framework of the ring exchange.” The “ring exchange” refers to a process whereby Eastern European NATO members supply Ukraine with Soviet-era weaponry, which is then back-filled by Germany with ultra-modern equipment.
The motion advocates the “comprehensive economic isolation and decoupling of Russia from international markets.” It states that in addition to “intensifying and accelerating the supply of effective, including heavy, weapons and complex systems by Germany,” this is the “most important and effective means of stopping the Russian advance.”
Accordingly, the German government should “follow up the embargo on coal decided by the EU as quickly as possible with an exit roadmap for Russian oil and gas imports,” and “initiate a far-reaching exclusion of all Russian banks from the SWIFT international banking communication system.” The motion adds that Germany should “further severely restrict economic relations with Russia and Belarus,” and “consistently implement, selectively expand and tighten the far-reaching sanctions against Russia decided so far.”
The Bundestag passed its declaration of war just two days after the US government held a war summit at Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate with representatives of 40 nations to plan the next stage of the escalation. The meeting left no doubt that NATO itself is the driving force in the war with Russia.
“The aims of the war are now clear,” the WSWS commented in regard to the meeting. “The bloodshed in Ukraine was not provoked to defend its technical right to join NATO, but rather was prepared, instigated and massively escalated in order to destroy Russia as a significant military force and to overthrow its government. Ukraine is a pawn in this conflict, and its population is cannon fodder.”
Meanwhile, both sides are with increasing openness considering the use of nuclear weapons. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin have both made it clear that they will resort to this means if Russia feels its existence is threatened.
“If someone decides to intervene in ongoing events from the outside and create unacceptable strategic threats to us, they should know that our response to these coming strikes will be quick, lightning quick,” Putin told Russian parliamentarians on Wednesday. He said Russia had “all the tools” for a quick counterstrike, adding, “We will not brag about them for long: We will use them if we have to. And I want everyone to know that.”
The US is also stepping up its threats. They range from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s statement that the Ramstein meeting was called to “win” the conflict with Russia, to former US Army Commander in Europe Ben Hodges’ announcement that the US was out to “break Russia’s back,” to discussions about the odds of victory in a nuclear war in the Wall Street Journal.
In that newspaper, Seth Cropsey, a former high-ranking official in the Department of Defense, published an opinion piece entitled, “The US should show it can win a nuclear war.” In it, he suggests that the US destroy a Russian nuclear missile submarine, thereby reducing Russia’s second-strike capability—that is, its ability to strike back after an American nuclear attack.
Instead of countering this dangerous spiral of escalation, which threatens to turn all of Europe and large parts of the world into a nuclear desert, the German government and the Bundestag continue to fuel it.
At the meeting in Ramstein, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) announced that the German government would now also supply Ukraine with heavy weapons and provide it with “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks. Just four days earlier, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had warned in Der Spiegel of a nuclear war and made assurances that everything would be done to avoid a direct military confrontation with the nuclear power Russia. Now he has cast his own warning to the wind.
The Bundestag has reaffirmed this dangerous course. Its decision is accompanied by a breath-taking falsification of history. To set German tanks in motion against Russia again, the responsibility arising from “our own history” is invoked. Germany “has a special responsibility to do everything possible to ensure that aggressive nationalism and imperialism no longer have a place in Europe and the world in the 21st century,” the motion says. Accordingly, the motion claims, the Bundestag fully supports Ukraine’s right to self-defence.
It takes a lot of effort to fit so many lies into a single paragraph. The biggest imperialist power in Europe, which twice plunged the continent into a world war, is fighting “nationalism and imperialism” by allying itself with Ukrainian nationalists to wage war against Russia!
In fact, the Nazis, in their war of extermination against the Soviet Union—and before that, the Kaiser’s imperial army in the war against Bolshevik Russia—had collaborated with Ukrainian nationalists who “unreservedly” advocated the independence of Ukraine, and in World War II participated in the genocidal crimes of the Nazis.
Today’s rulers in Kiev revere these collaborators as heroes and have erected monuments to them. For example, the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, is an avowed supporter of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist-terrorist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians.
Even after the Bandera biographer and historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe had described Bandera’s crimes in detail in the latest issue of Der Spiegel, Melnyk publicly acknowledged his role model. In defending his admiration for the Nazi collaborator, he tweeted that Germans, above all, should “rather hold back with lectures on whom we Ukrainians should revere.”
Elsewhere, the Bundestag resolution welcomes the “ban on broadcasting Russian propaganda channels.” It does so on the grounds that “freedom of the press is central to the defensive capabilities of democracies.” So “freedom of the press” prevails where one is allowed to listen only to the propaganda of one’s own government, and that of the other side is suppressed!
The Bundestag’s declaration of war is not a spontaneous response to the reactionary Russian war against Ukraine. It has been prepared over years. Back in 2014, when the US and Germany organized a right-wing coup in Kiev to install a regime dependent on them, a fierce campaign to revive German militarism and reinterpret history raged in Germany.
The government proclaimed that Germany had to once again play a role in foreign policy and military affairs commensurate with its economic weight. Political scientist Herfried Münkler relativized German responsibility for the First World War and proclaimed that Germany, as a “power in the centre [of Europe],” had to once again become the “taskmaster of Europe.” Historian Jörg Baberowski proclaimed that Hitler had not been cruel and that his war of extermination had been forced on the Wehrmacht.
When Russia responded to the coup in Kiev by annexing the largely Russian-populated Crimea, Germany imposed the first sanctions. The Ukrainian army, which had almost completely broken apart after the coup, proved powerless at the time. Germany and France therefore negotiated the Minsk Agreement, freezing the conflict over eastern Ukraine—which is also Russian-populated.
In the meantime, the Ukrainian army was systematically rearmed. The Bundestag resolution boasts that Germany has “provided a good two billion euros in financial support” since 2014. “No country has provided more financial support to Ukraine in recent years,” it adds. How much of this has gone to military projects is not mentioned.
The reactionary response of the Putin regime, which reacted to NATO encirclement with war, is now being used to advance the militarist and imperialist goals of 2014, for which there is little popular support.
One day before passage of the Ukraine motion, the Bundestag debated the first reading of the special fund appropriation of 100 billion euros, which triples the defence budget in one fell swoop this year. Here, too, all parties pulled together, with the only disputes being differences over technical details.
In the debate, it became clear that the 100 billion euros are only the beginning. Defence Minister Lambrecht enumerated a long list of deficiencies for which funds were needed for maintenance and repair. For ammunition shortages alone, 20 billion euros would be required. Planned armament projects—including procurement of nuclear-capable F-35 fighter bombers—meant that the 100 billion in special funds would quickly be depleted, she said.
The Reservists Association is urging a doubling of troop strength. “With around 200,000 soldiers, the Bundeswehr is too small,” association President Patrick Sensburg told the Rheinische Post. For national defence, he said, around 340,000 servicemen and women and 100,000 regularly exercising reservists were needed.
The Left Party and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), most of whose deputies voted against the Bundestag’s decision to supply weapons, supported the government’s aggressive course. Four AfD deputies even voted in favour of the motion, while three abstained.
The Left Party, whose votes do not matter at the moment, officially speaks out against arms deliveries in order to keep up appearances, while pushing all the harder for tough sanctions.
Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) told the Thüringer Allgemeine, “Before Russia turns off the gas tap, we turn off the money tap, step for step. Before Putin escalates, we have to escalate.” The entire energy infrastructure that Russia owns in Germany must be put under trustee administration, he said.
The cultural boycott against Russian artists, museums and scientific institutions is assuming an increasingly vindictive character. Any artist who refrains from making a political declaration of solidarity with Ukraine and opposition to Russia is treated as an accomplice of Vladimir Putin by various cultural organisations, regardless of that artist’s contribution to global culture in the fields of music, art or literature.
Artists and scholars of Russian origin are being excluded from cultural activities in a manner that threatens to resemble the fate of Jewish artists in Nazi Germany almost 90 years ago.
At the same time, however, there is a growing chorus of artists and intellectuals who oppose the anti-Russian campaign. To a certain extent, they articulate the sentiments of millions of workers and young people who are deeply concerned about the massive rearmament taking place and the growing danger of nuclear war—a danger that is not being addressed by political parties or the media.
The recent courageous declaration by the Belgian national opera La Monnaie in Brussels that it would continue to perform Russian works in the coming season because its task was to create art, not wage war (“make art, not war”), has found a resonance in other countries, including Germany.
One recent example is the awarding of the Osnabrück Music Prize to young Russian violinist Dmitry Smirnov for a concert in which he played a concerto by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. The programme for the concert was deliberately changed and took place under the motto “Don’t Burn Bridges.” Instead of the music of Haydn, the focus of the concert became pieces by Ukrainian composers and the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Confiscation of works of art
The anti-Russian cultural boycott has become a central component of the current hysterical war propaganda. Contrary to their deep roots in mankind’s yearning for peaceful and humane social relations, art and culture as a whole are being turned into weapons of war by those responsible for cultural policy.
In a criminal act, Finnish customs officials recently confiscated famous works of art by European masters worth about €42 million that were on loan to Western European museums. The artworks were on their way back to Russia after the Russian government ordered its museums to retrieve their possessions.
Titian, 'Portrait of a Young Woman with Feather Hat' (1536), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Among the confiscated paintings and sculptures from Russian museums, which until recently was on display in the Gallerie d’Italia in the Palazzo Reale in Milan and in the Fondazione Alda Fendi in Rome, is Titian’s world-famous work “Portrait of a Young Woman with Feather Hat” (1536). It was loaned to the Milanese museum along with other works by Titian, as well as paintings by the high-Renaissance artist Giovanni Cariani and Pablo Picasso. The masterpiece “Winged Cupid” by Antonio Canova was also exhibited in Milan. The works came from the collections of the Hermitage and the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum in St. Petersburg, and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
The confiscation by customs at the Vaalimaa border crossing in southern Finland was justified on the basis of European Union (EU) sanctions against Russia. That such sanctions should include the confiscation of works of art recalls barbarous acts carried out by the Nazis.
In the Second World War, Finland was allied with Germany and participated in the war against the Soviet Union with its own divisions from 1941 to 1944. Now the Finnish government is seeking to join NATO as soon as possible and is attempting to whip up extreme hostility toward Russia.
Similar efforts in France to confiscate artworks from Russian owners have so far been rebuffed. In the past few months, over 1 million visitors have viewed the Morozov collection of modern art at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. The collection includes some 200 works by artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Picasso. When the exhibition ended, there were calls made to confiscate these works under EU sanctions or even auction them off to “help Ukraine.” Such a move, however, was declared impermissible by French lawyers.
Other museums are now having to cancel exhibitions featuring Russian works of art or otherwise alter their plans. This not only affects art museums; the archaeological museum in Chemnitz, Germany has had to review its schedule. A mummified Scythian figure from Novosibirsk was due to be exhibited in the museum, which had procured a special cooling device to preserve the figure.
Joint research projects and cooperation between German and Russian museums, universities and scientific institutions, some of which have existed for decades, have also been abruptly terminated. For example, the director of Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Dr. Matthias Wemhoff, expressed his regret that a planned exhibition dealing with excavations carried out by famed archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) due to open in May, will not go on later to Moscow as previously planned.
Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky targeted
The current culture wars even affect composers and poets from past centuries, active long before Putin’s birth, and at a time when Europe’s elites were favoured guests in the court of the Tsar. In addition to cancelling performances by first-rate Russian musicians, such as conductor Valery Gergiev and soprano Anna Netrebko, spineless education and cultural officials are seeking to erase immortal works of literature and music from the cultural heritage.
In Cardiff, Wales, a concert programme of works by Tchaikovsky was cancelled, even though the composer was very fond of Ukraine, the birthplace of his grandfather. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra cancelled a performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Slavonic March” and instead played a hymn by the Ukrainian composer Mychailo Werbyzkis. In Szczecin (Poland), Tchaikovsky’s music was replaced in a concert by pieces by Antonin Dvořák and Ludwig van Beethoven. In Bydgoszcz in northern Poland, Tchaikovsky’s opera “Eugene Onegin” was cancelled along with a performance of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” at the Polish National Theatre.
Back in March, the Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni cancelled all performances of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” with the Bolshoi Ballet, triggering a storm of protest. Dozens of Greek Facebook users posted angry comments addressed to Mendoni. “You are ridiculous to a dangerous degree and, of course, outrageously ignorant,” and “let us know when the book burning starts.” And: “Soon we’ll be reading Tolstoy in the cellar and hiding Tchaikovsky’s records in a basket with the dirty laundry. Mendoni is a disgrace to culture in Greece.”
Statue of Dostoevsky in Cascine Park, Florence (Photo-Facebook, City of Florence)
Even world literature in the form of works by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky has been targeted. The University of Milan, for example, sought to cancel a Dostoevsky lecture in order to “avoid tensions”—a move that also led to fierce protests. The lecturer who was going to give the lecture, Paolo Nori, wrote: “What is happening in Ukraine is terrible and makes me weep, but these reactions are ridiculous. When I read this email from the university, I couldn’t believe it.”
Dostoevsky, he said, had not only been sentenced to a labour camp for taking part in an uprising against the tsarist regime, he was also in frequent trouble with censors. “We should talk more about Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, the first to promote non-violent movements and who were greatly admired by Gandhi. For a university to ban this course of study is incredible!”
In a tweet, Nori also pointed out that the famous author Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev, but had always written in Russian.
Even a statue of Dostoevsky in Florence has become the object of an absurd attack. It stands in Cascine Park and, according to so-called “culture warriors,” should be removed to disappear into a depot.
Increasing protests
The ferocious campaign against Russian culture inevitably brings to mind the era of Nazi rule in Germany and the exclusion of all Jewish artists and their works of art from cultural life.
“What gives us as Germans the right to equate Russian culture with war? Don’t we remember what German culture meant after the world war?” wrote film producer Günter Rohrbach in an angry comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He referred to the crimes committed by the German Wehrmacht in its war of extermination in the Soviet Union and asked how serious were the “confessions of guilt” “that “our politicians make year after year with good reason at the places of our shame?!”
Rohrbach continued: “What gives us, we Germans of all people, the right to ban Russian artists, scientists, and athletes from public life, to prevent them from practising their profession, to demand they make statements resembling confessions? Do we no longer know who we are, where we come from?”
In another critical article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the well-known filmmaker, film producer and writer Alexander Kluge (b. 1932) expressed his horror that “great Russian artists are being pressured into making convenient statements.” He stated forthrightly: “A war is a challenge to art. In times of war, art is often used by both sides for propaganda purposes. It is not suitable for such a purpose. Actually, it belongs to the popular resistance against war.” Therefore, “obstructing artists cannot be an act against war.”
Among the few critical voices that have found a hearing in the German media are the writer Christian Baron, the philosopher and former Minister for Culture Julian Nida-Rümelin and the writer and vice-president of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, Kathrin Röggla. On Saarländischer Rundfunk, the Austrian-born Röggla expressed her opposition to the “deranged debate” about a blanket cultural boycott of Russia. She warned of the dangers “if people were once again exposed to currents such as xenophobia or nationalism.”
