White House discussed plans to send up to 50,000 troops to Eastern Europe

Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

Yesterday evening, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is discussing plans to deploy thousands or tens of thousands of troops to the borders of Russia and Ukraine. Despite the Biden administration’s threadbare attempt to present this as a defense of Ukrainian sovereignty against Russia, it is apparent that Washington is preparing a military escalation aiming to provoke Russia, a major nuclear power, into a war.

Biden apparently discussed plans with Pentagon strategists to deploy 1,000 to 5,000 troops to Romania and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This could be increased up to tenfold, to 50,000 troops. This comes after Washington announced plans to provide the Ukrainian government with armaments to build bases for missile systems that could launch strikes on Moscow in a matter of a few minutes.

US tanks are unloaded in Antwerp, Belgium to take part in the Atlantic Resolve military exercises. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

The New York Times’ story on the report acknowledged that this would be a “major pivot for the Biden administration … moving away from its do-not-provoke strategy.” It also cited calls for a former top Pentagon planning official, Jim Townsend, calling for a massive military build-up across Europe predicated on the assumption that war with Russia would erupt.

“It’s likely too little too late to deter Putin,” Townsend claimed. “If the Russians do invade Ukraine in a few weeks, those 5,000 [US soldiers] should be just a down payment for a much larger US and allied force presence. Western Europe should once again be an armed camp.”

Yesterday, Washington ordered US diplomats’ families and advised US citizens to leave Ukraine, “due to the continued threat of Russian military action,” a measure usually taken if war is imminent.

US Colonel Alexander Vindman, an officer involved in top-level talks between Washington and the Ukrainian regime, bluntly spelled out US calculations yesterday. Calling for provocative NATO weapons deliveries to Ukraine, directly on Russia’s border, Vindman told MSNBC: “These things are already moving. It’s almost certain that this is going to occur, and now is the time to take those last-minute steps.”

Declaring that NATO is “almost locked into a course of action,” Vindman endorsed plans for war with Russia. He said, “Why is this important to the American public? It’s important because we’re about to have the largest war in Europe since World War II. There’s going to be a massive deployment of air power, long-range artillery, cruise missiles, things that we haven’t seen unfold on the European landscape more than 80 years, and it is not going to be a clean or sterile environment.”

The pretext on which this war is being launched—that NATO is defending Ukrainian democracy and national sovereignty—is a fraud. The far-right Ukrainian regime in Kiev was installed by a US- and German-backed putsch in February 2014 that toppled a pro-Russian government. Since then, Washington and the other NATO powers have been systematically moving to arm Ukraine as a base for operations against Russia. These plans are now being dramatically escalated.

Today, NATO is beginning war games in the Mediterranean, “Neptune Strike 22,” that will last until February 4, involving the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman. US defense department spokesman John Kirby on Friday claimed it had nothing to do with “scenarios” that “could play out with regard to Ukraine.” However, he then made clear the exercise aims to threaten Moscow over Ukraine.

Russia’s positioning of troops on Russian soil near the Ukrainian border, he said, “continues to be concerning … We’re going to make sure that we have options ready to reassure our allies, particularly on NATO’s eastern flank. If there’s another incursion and if they need that reassurance, if they need the capabilities to be bolstered, we’re going to do that.”

Neptune 22 is one of a series of NATO war games surrounding Russia with vast forces. On February 20, the “Dynamic Manta 22” anti-submarine exercise in the Mediterranean will begin, and on February 22 the “Dynamic Guard” exercise in Norway. This will transition into Cold Response 2022. The largest Norwegian-led military maneuver since the 1980s is to involve 35,000 troops from 26 nations, including 14,000 soldiers, 13,000 seamen, as well as 8,000 air force personnel and staff. The first troops are reportedly already on site and have begun exercises.

NATO claims that Russia is driving this confrontation are absurd on their face. It is denouncing Russia for having troops located on its own soil, while it is sending NATO troops and lethal weaponry up to Russia’s borders. A substantial faction of the ruling elite in the NATO countries is pushing for a war with Russia, speculating about Russian intentions while fabricating accusations in order to concoct a case for war.

The British government, reeling from a scandal over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, launched a further provocation against Moscow yesterday. On Saturday, UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss and the British Foreign Office released a statement accusing Moscow of preparing a coup to install a pro-Russian regime in Kiev. This charge, for which London released no evidence, was a provocation that fell apart under the weight of its own incoherence.

“We have information that indicates the Russian government is looking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv as it considers whether to invade and occupy Ukraine. The former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev is being considered as a potential candidate,” Truss declared.

Truss’ statement continued: “The information being released today shines a light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin thinking. … As the UK and our partners have said repeatedly, any Russian military incursion into Ukraine would be a massive strategic mistake with severe costs.”

This claim was soon discredited: Murayev, the supposed leader of London’s hypothetical coup, pointed out that he faces a state ban in Russia and his assets there have been seized. “You’ve made my evening. The British Foreign Office seems confused,” he told Britain’s Observer. “It isn’t very logical. I’m banned from Russia. Not only that but money from my father’s firm there has been confiscated.”

Nonetheless, the US National Security Council embraced this claim to again denounce Russia. Its spokeswoman, Emily Horne, said, “this kind of plotting is deeply concerning. The Ukrainian people have the sovereign right to determine their own future, and we stand with our democratically-elected partners in Ukraine.”

The Russian foreign ministry, for its part, denied the story. “The spread of disinformation by the British foreign ministry,” it declared, “is one more piece of evidence that NATO countries, led by the Anglo-Saxons, are escalating tensions around Ukraine. We call on the British foreign ministry to stop its provocative activities.”

The campaign is not only a continuation of US-NATO interventions against Russian allies in Ukraine and in Syria, where NATO has fought a decade-long proxy war. It is also a reckless attempt to deal with internal class and social tensions that are reaching explosive levels as the world enters the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Desperation increasingly dominates the calculations of major capitalist governments.

The NATO powers as well as the post-Soviet capitalist kleptocracy in Russia have all imposed a disastrous policy of “living with the virus” on the working class. There have been over 2 million COVID-19 deaths in the NATO states and over 326,000 in Russia. Last week alone saw over 13 million new cases and 28,000 COVID-19 deaths in NATO, and at least 270,000 cases and 4,799 deaths in Russia. Yet governments across the region are ending public health measures to restrict the contagion and instead allow the virus to spread even faster.

Since the year began, mass protests and strikes have erupted against official pandemic policies in the United States, Greece, France and Italy. It is clear that, as they seek to impose further policies of mass infection and death upon rising working class opposition, the major imperialist powers are accelerating a turn towards militarism, police-state rule and wars that could threaten millions or billions of lives.

UK government crisis forces backtrack on scrapping free prescriptions for over 60s in England

Ben Trent & Richard Tyler

The widely reviled Johnson government has been forced to backtrack on plans to end free prescriptions for those aged 60. In recent months speculation mounted that the National Health Service (NHS) in England looked set to impose the policy, with the qualifying age raised to 66 in April this year.

The brutal policy would have seen many elderly people no longer be able to afford vital medication, or forced to choose between paying the prescription charge or for other daily necessities.

In the White Paper last year, the government argued that there is now a “disconnect” between the current aged-based exemption and the State Pension Age (SPA). As senior citizens are now forced to work for years longer, they are “economically active and more able to meet the cost of their prescriptions,” runs its cynical logic.

This week, government health minister Maria Caulfield was forced to backtrack, saying that “at the present time no decision has been made to increase the upper exemption for free prescriptions” and claiming that speculation that the exemption would be removed for pensioners is “completely false”.

The government's consultation paper on "Aligning the upper age for NHS prescription charge exemptions with the State Pension age"

There was no speculation. At the time of its White Paper the government held an eight-week consultation between July and August 2021, “Aligning the upper age for NHS prescription charge exemptions with the State Pension age”. It proposed two options for consideration. Option A was to raise the qualifying age for free prescriptions to the SPA (currently 66) for everyone. This would mean that those aged 65 and under would have to pay for their prescriptions until they reach the age of 66, unless they qualified for another exemption. Option B was “to raise the qualifying age for free prescriptions to the SPA (currently 66) but with a period of protection, which would mean that people in the age range 60 to 65 would continue to receive free prescriptions.”

With Prime Minister Boris Johnson facing the threat of a leadership challenge, the proposals have been shelved but no doubt only temporarily.

Campaigners from the Prescription Charges Coalition (a collection of 40 charities) decried the intention to raise the qualifying age, telling iNews it would mean “disaster for tens of thousands of people who may face a new barrier to accessing their vital medicines.”

Laura Cockram, head of policy and campaigns at Parkinson’s UK and chair of the Prescription Charges Coalition, explained, “Worryingly, we also know that thousands of people are already having to choose between food and medications.”

Cockram added that “people with Parkinson’s lose an average of two-and-a-half hours a day to debilitating symptoms when their medication naturally wears off. If they were forced to reduce doses to make it last, or to stop it altogether, life would be unmanageable.”

Age UK reported one person telling them, “I will soon be 60. I spend £9 odd on one item of medication. At the moment, I am afraid to tell the doctor of my added illness as I cannot afford the prescription price and barely manage my health issues with the medication I have.”

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK said, “We are regularly contacted by older people asking what is happening with the changes as they are so worried about having to pay for their prescriptions with little warning.”

The move to make the elderly shoulder the cost of often vital life-preserving medication is part of the Conservative government’s plans to raise the pension age to 68 for those born after April 1977.

When the government launched its White Paper last year floating the idea of aligning the qualifying age for free prescriptions to the new SPA, it received over 32,000 responses. In a letter to the Department of Health and Social Care, responsible for the consultative exercise, 20 healthcare organisations raised “deep shared concerns” that the abolition of free prescriptions would adversely impact over 52 percent of those aged between 60 and 64 with long-term health conditions. Even the government’s own impact assessment, they pointed out, had found that 66 percent would become ineligible to claim free prescriptions, resulting in 15 percent discontinuing taking their prescribed medication.

When the National Health Service (NHS) was first formed in 1948 under Clement Atlee’s Labour government, prescriptions were entirely free. Within a year, Labour introduced legislation allowing for the introduction of charges. In 1952, the Conservative government of Winston Churchill introduced a charge of one shilling (less than £2 today) per prescription. In 1956, the charge was levied against each item, rather than the entire prescription.

The charge has existed ever since, imposed by successive Tory and Labour governments, with the brief exception between 1965 and 1968. In 1979, with the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher, the charge was increased at a pace higher than the rate of inflation, reaching £3.05 in 1990, nearly a 15 percent rise in 11 years. Between 2007 and 2011, the devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (run by the Scottish National Party, Labour Party and the Democratic Unionist/Sinn Féin respectively) all abolished prescription charges.

From 2011, the charge in England has risen annually (approximately 20p each year). The change now being proposed would see a further 2.4 million people paying for their prescriptions, with charges also set to rise from the current £9.35 per item in April.

Compared to overall NHS spending, the money that would be saved by raising the qualifying age is a drop in the ocean. The cost of free prescriptions in England in 2019 was approximately £600 million, which represents less than 0.3 percent of the NHS budget in 2020/21. But there is an ideological imperative at work.

The formation of the National Health Service in 1948, like the earlier introduction of the Old Age Pension, marked major social gains for the working class. For more than three decades, both Tory and Labour governments have sought to erode these and shift the cost of health and other welfare provisions onto the individual. By decreasing the share of socially created wealth expended on the working class, this can flow into the coffers of the richest in society.

The government’s real aims for the NHS are clear. All barriers to the private sector fortunes from it are being removed, in anticipation of the carve up of all facets of the NHS and a continued sell off to private investors.

At the first opportunity, the Johnson government, or one led by a prime minister even further to the right, will move to end all free prescription exemptions from the NHS that the elderly and millions more people that rely on. A report by the House of Commons library this month noted, “A broad system of exemptions from prescription charges, including for those on low incomes and people with some long-term medical conditions, means around 89% of NHS prescription items are dispensed in the community free of charge, according to a Government answer to an oral Parliamentary Question in October 2019.”

US and NATO press ahead with anti-Russian military buildup

Andrea Peters

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, stands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before their meeting, Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

Against the backdrop of Friday’s meeting in Geneva between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the US and NATO have been continuing to rapidly build up their military forces along and near Russia’s borders. While Blinken described yesterday’s conversation as “frank and substantive” and Lavrov said there was an agreement “to have a reasonable dialogue,” the White House and the trans-Atlantic alliance continue to take one provocative step after another.

This week, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace declared that London is increasing its support for the Ukrainian military by funneling more defensive weapons to Kiev. In addition to providing the government with 2,000 highly advanced anti-tank missiles, it is dispatching 30 elite troops as trainers. According to Sky News, witnesses have noticed a dramatic uptick in surveillance flights over the region by British aircraft since Monday of this week.

Britain is also currently in the process of making a $1.6 billion loan to Ukraine to update its navy and help it build a port in Berdyansk, which sits on the Sea of Azov, a body of water that Moscow considers its domain and whose entry-exit waterway—the Straits of Kerch—is controlled by Russia.

The United States has now authorized the Baltic countries to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine and approved another $200 million in military aid for the country, on top of last year’s $450 million. Given that any possible invasion by Russia would take the form of ground forces, the provision of air defenses to Kiev would seem to have little purpose beyond staging some sort of provocation that would draw a Russian incursion or be put to future use in transforming Ukraine, as retired four-star Navy admiral James Stavridis and Senator Mitt Romney recently proposed, into the next Afghanistan.

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, is pushing the passage of the “Defending Ukraine Sovereignty Act of 2022,” which would “impose crippling sanctions on the Russian banking sector and senior military and government officials,” “prohibit transactions on Russia’s primary and secondary sovereign debt,” “authorize sanctions on Russia’s extractive industries as well as on providers of specialized financial messaging services (e.g., SWIFT),” “call upon the Departments of Defense and State to expedite transfer of defense articles to bolster Ukraine’s defense capabilities,” and “authorize $500 million in supplemental emergency security assistance to Ukraine.”

In an interview on MSNBC on Friday, Menendez, in comments directed at Putin himself, said that if Russia invades Ukraine, “not only will you and the Russian economy face devastating sanctions but you are going to face a much more fortified Ukraine such that if you send Russia’s sons into battle expect the casualties of war will send many back to Russia in body bags.” To make such a promise to the Russian people is extraordinary. Nazi Germany put 27 million of them in body bags.

Meanwhile, Spain, Denmark, and Canada have all declared their solidarity with Kiev. Following a meeting with Blinken on Tuesday, the government in Madrid dispatched warships, including a minesweeper and a frigate, to the Black Sea and fighter jets to Bulgaria. There they will be joined by Dutch aircraft, with Amsterdam announcing it is sending F-35s to the Black Sea nation.

Canada, which since 2020 has had special forces on the ground in Ukraine training their counterparts, has now sent additional troops, stated it is considering sending military materiel, and promised a $120 million economic aid package. Denmark has sent a frigate into the Baltic, and France is dispatching forces to Romania.

In Ukraine itself, the war hysteria flows unimpeded. The press secretary to Ukraine’s president claimed Friday that Russia may intend to march its troops all the way to Kharkiv, a major city in the country’s north and about 340 kilometers west of the breakaway pro-Russian republics in the east. Doing so would entail occupying a large portion of the country. The purpose of this accusation, for which no evidence was presented, is to whip Ukraine’s nationalists into a frenzy and its population, at least as much as it can, into a state of terror. Much of Ukraine is ethnically Russian, speaks Russian as its first language, and/or identifies with the Russian culture and people. These kinds of remarks can lay the groundwork for an ethnic bloodbath inside Ukraine, whose military is under the control of open fascists.

Last week, the US made clear that it is prepared, at any minute, to turn Ukraine into a war zone. Claiming that it had evidence that the Kremlin was preparing to launch a “false flag” operation in Ukraine to justify a Russian invasion, the White House—the grandmaster of “false flags”—can now argue that any attack on, for instance, Russian citizens in Ukraine, is the work of Russia itself and that the US and NATO must respond.

The Russian government is answering the escalating threat by deploying 140 additional warships to the Black Sea, along with 10,000 troops, and another 1,000 pieces of military equipment. It is also sending amphibious watercraft to the Baltic. Over the course of this month and next, Russia’s navy is conducting exercises across “all zones,” including all oceans that touch Russia and those seas of major global significance, such as the Mediterranean, the Northern seas, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Northeastern Atlantic, and the Pacific. Battalion tactical groups in Russia’s Southern Military District are actively training.

Russia’s Duma, the country’s parliament, is in the process of issuing a formal appeal to President Putin to recognize Donbass and Luhansk—the breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east—as independent republics. It also wants the Kremlin leader to announce that Russia will take measures to defend Russian citizens in this region.

Coming out of the Friday discussion between the two representatives, Blinken stated that the US would provide a written response next week to Russia’s demands, which include a guarantee that Ukraine not be admitted to NATO, NATO troops and equipment be pulled back, and massive, anti-Russian NATO military exercises be halted.

As the US has so far indicated that it will agree to none of this, whatever letter is delivered to Moscow next week may well reject all of the Kremlin’s demands and instead contain a list of ultimatums to which Russia cannot agree. Washington and Brussels have repeatedly insisted that Moscow move its military forces away from the Ukrainian border and not invade Ukraine. But inasmuch as the Kremlin has continually said it has no intention of invading Ukraine, it is impossible to appease the US and NATO on this point. And were Moscow to concede that Washington and Brussels have the right to dictate where Russia locates troops inside its own country, the Kremlin would effectively be abdicating sovereignty over its own territory.

Beleaguered by a never-ending pandemic that is killing millions worldwide to which the Western governments are responding by lifting practically all public health measures, the reckless and mad dash to war with Russia over Ukraine has no base of popular support in the United States.

A just-released poll by the Convention of States Action in partnership with the Trafalgar Group found that in the US “just 15.3 percent of likely general election voters believed the U.S. should provide troops as ‘boots on the ground’ in the event of an invasion” of Ukraine by Russia, according to Newsweek. One third said that only diplomacy should be used to intervene.

Escalating COVID-19 cases and deaths as Omicron enters Fiji

John Braddock

COVID-19 screening in Fiji [Credit: FBC News Fiji @FBC_News, Twitter]

Fiji’s third wave of COVID-19 cases, which began in early December, has continued to rage over the past month. After initially holding off COVID-19 in 2020 due to strict border controls, the country has now registered a total of 60,509 cases and a death toll of 752, most since mid-2021. Fiji’s population is about 900,000.

Following an outbreak last April, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama resisted calls for a national lockdown, saying it would “destroy” the economy. After peaking in August, case numbers dropped through September before escalating again in December, with 1,524 cases recorded between 20 December and January 2.

The Health Ministry reported the entry of the Omicron variant into the community on January 4, apparently from two cases in managed quarantine. Positive samples sent to Melbourne for genomic sequencing confirmed community transmission of both the Omicron and Delta variants.

Health Secretary James Fong has admitted there are another 655 COVID-19 positive patients who died from serious medical conditions they had before they contracted the virus. These are not being classified as COVID-19 deaths.

Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported last week that there is “no end in sight” for the Pacific nation, as infections continue to spike. From January 7-20, there were 4,860 new cases reported, including 724 on January 19.

The current wave has coincided with the reckless decision by the government to open the country’s borders to international travel on December 1. The move was in line with the clamour from big business and political elites internationally for the global population to “live with the virus.” In the Pacific, this agenda has been propelled by demands to restore the devastated tourism industry, deemed essential to the economies of island businesses.

According to Tourism Fiji, there were 75,000 international bookings for hotels and resorts until the end of January, mostly from Australia, New Zealand and the US—all countries experiencing outbreaks of both Delta and (except for NZ at this stage) Omicron. During December, some 300 international visitors reportedly arrived with COVID-19, which was only subsequently discovered, and they were isolated within segmented parts of their hotels.

On December 30, with case numbers rapidly rising, Fong told the Fiji Times that plans to amend curfew hours and close international borders were “still under discussion.” However, he flatly declared, if a variant was transmissible enough, the use of stringent border and community measures could “only delay the inevitable entry and spread of current and future variants” of the virus, i.e., claiming the use of basic protective measures is essentially useless.

Questioned further by the Fiji Times on January 14, Fong denied that the increase in Omicron cases could solely be attributed to the reopening of the border. He said the Omicron variant was “already in Fiji,” before the ministry recorded the first two cases. “The day it was reported, it was already in many of our travel partner countries,” he said, adding; “Nobody knew it was there. We only got aware of it after we started opening.” Fong did not say where it could have originated.

The purpose of the official obfuscation is to avoid shutting the borders to international tourists. Fong said the border quarantine measures were only focused on “avoiding a variant coming into Fiji that the rest of the world has not yet known about.” He did not want Fiji to experience “all the initial punitive measures that they do against countries” where a case is initially identified.

The government is pursuing the murderous “let it rip” policy, adopted by capitalist governments internationally, against its own people. With more than 92 percent of adults double-vaccinated, Fong falsely declared that this, plus “infection-induced immunity” from a large number of people previously infected, would “help to lower the number of people that develop severe disease.”

As elsewhere, public health measures are being cut back. The isolation period for COVID-19 positive persons has been reduced from 10 days to seven. “You may stop isolating if seven days have passed since the start of symptoms or since the positive test (for asymptomatic cases),” Fong declared. Close contacts are not required to isolate unless they develop symptoms.

On January 4 schools reopened early for Years 8 to 13 to make up the so-called “education gap” from closures during the last term of 2021. Parents were told to send their children to school unless they were not feeling well. Education Minister Premila Kumar said students were expected to comply with the inadequate “COVID-safe” measures, including the wearing of masks.

One parent, Savinesh Karan, told the Fiji Times on January 15 that his Year 10 child tested positive for COVID-19 after attending school for two days, then spread it to other members of the household. “We believe that he got it from school, either while he was coming home in the van or from the people in school,” Karan said, adding that it was “much safer for students to stay at home.”

Education Minister Kumar has repeated the mantra being trotted out everywhere to enforce irresponsible school re-openings. “We know that face-to-face learning is vital for the academic achievement, mental and physical health, and overall well-being of our students,” she said, without explaining how the rampant spread of Omicron will benefit children’s health.

On January 14, the first flight into Kiribati in almost two years brought 36 COVID-19 cases from Fiji to the tiny central Pacific nation, which had been virtually untouched by the virus. A security officer involved in handling the cases also tested positive for the virus. The flight carrying 54 passengers was chartered by a fundamentalist church. Kiribati had opened its international borders on January 10 after being shut since March 2020. The country previously recorded only two COVID-19 cases, from a returning ship in May 2021.

A curfew order was put in place for Kiribati’s population of 119,000 as well as mandatory mask wearing and bans on social gatherings of more than 10 people. The New Zealand website Stuff reported that residents were “frustrated” at the slow communication from the Kiribati government as well as the decision to open the border when Fiji was battling a third wave of COVID-19.

“Democracy” in Ukraine—What is NATO risking a war for?

Peter Schwarz

State commemorations and public memorials to war criminals, mass murderers, anti-Semites and Nazi collaborators such as Symon Petliura, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. The integration of fascist militias into the official armed forces and the networking and military training of neo-Nazis from all over the world under the protective hand of the state. Mafia-like struggles for state power between a handful of oligarchs and a corrupt judiciary and authorities. Screaming social inequality with an average monthly income of 412 euros (April 2021). These are the most salient features of Ukrainian “democracy,” for which the US and its European NATO allies are risking war against the nuclear power Russia.

Armored vehicles of the Azov regiment in Mariupol [Credit: Wanderer777/CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia]

“Now, as ever, it is up to Ukrainians and no one else to decide their own future and the future of this country,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday during a visit to Kiev. “The Ukrainian people chose a democratic and European path in 1991. They took to the Maidan to defend that choice in 2013. And unfortunately, ever since, you’ve faced relentless aggression from Moscow. Russia invaded territory in the Crimea, ginned up a conflict in eastern Ukraine, and has systematically sought to undermine and divide Ukraine’s democracy.” Similar expressions are coming from the capitals of Europe.

Every single word of his statement is a lie.

It was not the “Ukrainian people” who decided in 1991 to dissolve the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was an integral part, but three Stalinist officials: Boris Yeltsin (Russia), Stanislav Shushkevich (Belarus) and Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine). They met while hunting on December 7 at a dacha where, after considerable consumption of vodka, they decided without any public discussion to dissolve the state that had emerged from the October Revolution of 1917.

There followed a decade of savage privatisation in which former Communist Party functionaries and their youth organisations looted socialised property and smashed up the highly developed education and health systems.

Rule of the oligarchs

The oligarchs who made it rich in the aftermath still dominate Ukraine’s political life today. They control the economy and the media, buy up judges and MPs and maintain their own parties and militias.

Even the European Union, which has been supporting its “strategic partner” Ukraine with funds and advisers for more than two decades, concludes: “Oligarchs, high-ranking civil servants and corrupt prosecutors and judges are still dividing up the state among themselves, billions are disappearing abroad; Ukraine, with few exceptions, has made as little progress in building a constitutional state as it has in the fight against corruption.” This is how the Süddeutsche Zeitung summarises the special report of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) on “Fighting Grand Corruption in Ukraine” from September last year.

The Ukrainian oligarchs change their political orientation and their international alliances as required.

For example, the richest man in the country, Rinat Akhmetov (estimated wealth by Forbes: $7.6 billion), was long considered pro-Russian. Among other things, he controlled the Donetsk Basin’s coal and steel industry, which has since been largely destroyed, and was for a time a deputy of the “Party of Regions” of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014. This did not prevent him from continuing to increase his fortune even after Yanukovych’s fall.

The fourth richest Ukrainian, Ihor Kolomoyskyi ($1.8 billion), is considered a promoter and mastermind of the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who won the 2019 presidential election on an anti-corruption ticket. Kolomoyskyi stands accused in the US and other countries of looting a bank he owns of more than five billion euros in “the biggest financial fraud of the 21st century.” The Pandora Papers have since revealed that apparently Zelensky also profited from this fraud. He and his entourage own several shell companies in international tax havens, into which funds in the tens of millions have flowed.

Petro Poroshenko, the seventh richest Ukrainian with $1.6 billion, was the country’s president from 2014 to 2019. He made his fortune exporting sweets to Russia, was a minister for a time under President Yanukovych, and then turned ultranationalist and darling of the West. Now he stands accused of treason. He is alleged to have made lucrative deals with the separatists in eastern Ukraine while fueling the civil war against them as president. Poroshenko denies this and accuses Zelensky of wanting to get rid of a political opponent.

Nationalism always served the oligarchs as a means to an end. They have fomented national conflicts and promoted fascist currents to divert attention from social tensions and to divide the working class, which was politically disoriented after decades of Stalinist repression and falsification of history. This had been the case since the dissolution of the Soviet Union but took on new dimensions after the Maidan coup of 2014. Since then, the far-right nationalists and fascists have been systematically integrated into the state apparatus.

The Maidan coup

Contrary to what Blinken claims, the events on the Maidan were not a choice for democracy, but a right-wing coup. The elected president, Yanukovych, who had been manoeuvring between Russia and the Western powers, was hounded out of office with the help of fascist militias and with the open support of Washington and Berlin and replaced by Poroshenko.

Victoria Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and now number three in the US State Department, personally paraded on the Maidan to cheer on the protests against Yanukovych. She publicly boasted that the US had invested five billion dollars in regime change in Ukraine.

Germany’s social democratic president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then still foreign minister, also travelled to Kiev to negotiate Yanukovych’s replacement with the opposition parties and Yanukovych himself. He worked directly with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the fascist Svoboda party. Svoboda, which had little influence except in some areas of western Ukraine, stands in the tradition of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and was involved in mass murders. It maintains relations with the neo-Nazi German National Party (NP), among others.

The ink on Steinmeier's agreement was barely dry when Right Sector, a neo-fascist militia, seized the centre of Kiev and drove Yanukovych, who feared for his life, to flee.

Since then, such fascist militias have been an integral part of the country’s political life. They terrorize political opponents and keep the war going against the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. For example, on May 2, 2014, over 40 opponents of the new regime were killed in the Odessa Trade Union House when fascists set fire to the building and prevented the victims from leaving.

The Azov Regiment

A key role among the 80 or so far-right militias built and equipped to fight the eastern Ukrainian separatists is played by the Azov Regiment. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who was freed from prison during the events on the Maidan, where he was serving a sentence for murder, the Azov Regiment has never made a secret of its admiration for the Nazis. Biletsky professed his support for the “crusade of the white nations of the world against the Semitic-led subhumans.” The Azov Regiment's symbols—wolf’s hook and black sun—were used by Hitler's SS in World War II.

Nevertheless, the militia was financed and equipped by the state and oligarchs. President Poroshenko praised them at an awards ceremony in 2014, declaring, “These are our best warriors.” Biletsky was celebrated on TV talk shows and elected to parliament in 2014. Eventually, the militia was officially integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces, where it forms its own regiment.

“That status came with an arsenal that no other far-right militia in the world could claim, including crates of explosives and battle gear for up to 1,000 troops,” reports the US magazine Time, which published an extensive report on the fascist militia a year ago.

Azov is far more than a militia. “It has its own political party; two publishing houses; summer camps for children; and a vigilante force known as the National Militia, which patrols the streets of Ukrainian cities alongside the police.” Its military wing has “at least two training bases and a vast arsenal of weapons, from drones and armoured vehicles to artillery pieces.”

The state sponsorship of fascist militias has made Ukraine a centre for military training and political networking by neo-Nazis from around the world. Time quotes security expert and former FBI agent Ali Soufan as estimating that “more than 17,000 foreign fighters have come to Ukraine over the past six years from 50 countries.” Forty US congressmen and women asked the US State Department to classify Azov as a foreign terrorist organisation, but were rebuffed.

The National Corps party, Azov’s political wing, claims to have around 10,000 members and maintains intensive relations with fascist and neo-Nazi organisations around the world—including Die Rechte, The Third Path and the Identitarians in Germany, CasaPound in Italy and Groupe Union Défense in France.

The National Corps’ chief ideologue and international secretary is 34-year-old Olena Semenyaka. A study by George Washington University calls her the “First Lady of Ukrainian Nationalism.” Semenyaka studied philosophy, focusing on the models of the new right—Julius Evola, Alain de Benoist, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Armin Mohler and others. Originally a supporter of Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin, she now advocates a pan-European alliance of ethno-states, much like the Identitarians and Steve Bannon, fascist and adviser of former US President Donald Trump.

At the beginning of last year, she got a six-month job as a researcher at the Institute of Humanities in Vienna. The university only withdrew her contract when a storm of outrage arose on social media after a photo of Semenyaka with a swastika flag and a Hitler salute had gone viral.

Fascism and war

The prominent role played by neo-Nazis and fascists in the Ukrainian state is no secret. No intelligence briefing is needed to spot them, a quick Google search is enough. The politicians and journalists who are hell-bent on risking war against Russia for Ukraine know what they are advocating. They have created the brown swamp themselves to build a bulwark against Russia and against the European working class.

The US has been supplying the Ukrainian armed forces and militias with weapons and trainers for years, knowing full well that fascist militias benefit from this. When US President Barack Obama signed legislation to this effect in 2015, it explicitly did not exclude financial and military support for the Azov Regiment, although this had been widely expected.

The New York Times has several times published richly illustrated reports on the arming and military instruction of civilians being trained for guerrilla warfare.

“Civilian defence is not unfamiliar in Ukraine; volunteer brigades formed the backbone of the country's force in the east in 2014, the first year of the war against Russian separatists, when the Ukrainian military was in shambles,” reads a report from December 26, 2021. “This effort is now being formalized into units of the newly formed Territorial Defense Forces, a part of the military.” The training is carried out by both the state army and “private paramilitary groups like the Ukrainian Legion.”

It is obvious that a right-wing civil war army is being formed, which can also be used against opposition members or striking workers in their own country. Despite this—or precisely because of it—the call for arms deliveries to Ukraine is also growing louder in Germany and Europe. The German Greens in particular, who now have Annalena Baerbock as Foreign Minister, have been advocating this for a long time.

The preparations for war against Russia and the build-up of fascist militias are two sides of the same development. The capitalist system is in a hopeless crisis. Social inequality is at an all-time high. While more than 5.6 million have died of COVID-19 worldwide and hundreds of millions lost their income, the tops of society have enriched themselves enormously. This is also the case in Ukraine. According to Forbes, the wealth of the 100 richest Ukrainians grew by 42 percent in one year to $44.5 billion.

Qantas to slash wages and conditions of Australian cabin crew

Martin Scott

Australia’s largest airline, Qantas, this week applied to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) seeking the termination of an enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) covering around 2,500 long-haul flight attendants.

Qantas jet [Credit: pxfuel.com]

If successful, the move would slash wages and conditions for cabin crew on the airline’s international routes, forcing them onto the industrial award—the minimum pay and conditions legally allowed for the industry.

Under the award, hourly base pay for flight attendants would be reduced by 20–40 percent, and crew could be forced to work 48–88 more hours per 56-day roster period.

Qantas appealed to have the existing agreement torn up by the FWC after 97 percent of workers rejected an EBA proposed by the company last month.

Qantas’s proposed four-year agreement would freeze wages until June 2023, followed by sub-inflationary 2 percent annual increases in the third and fourth years. All international flight attendants would work under conditions based on the lower-tier “Part 2” of the most recent EBA, which expired in June 2021.

Making clear that the FWC application was an ultimatum to workers, Qantas International chief executive Andrew David said: “We’re open to putting the same deal that was rejected back on the table.”

In a press release issued Thursday, the Flight Attendants Association of Australia (FAAA) lamented the fact that Qantas had sought to tear up the agreement “without even contemplating asking for the assistance of the Fair Work Commission to try and reach agreement, as Virgin did when their cabin crew similarly rejected an EBA.”

In other words, the FAAA, which tried to delay the vote, has no objection to workers’ fates being decided by the federal government’s anti-worker tribunal, as long as the union has a seat at the table.

Last year, the FAAA and Transport Workers Union presented Virgin cabin crew with a similar proposition to that now issued by Qantas, urging workers to vote “yes” on an unpopular proposed EBA, as the only way to be “safe from the award.”

Making clear its service to the airline, not to workers, the FAAA statement explained the union had “facilitated extensive flexibility to the Company throughout the pandemic and beyond,” and “agreed to the majority of the Company’s claims.”

The FAAA, like all the other corporatised trade unions, has functioned as industrial police to enforce the demands of management for decades. The press release admitted the Qantas EBA had been “renewed and changed 10 times since the 90s and on each occasion with improvements in flexibility for the company.”

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Michele O’Neil weighed in, issuing a plaintive demand that “Qantas should withdraw this threat, and should be condemned by the Morrison government.”

In other words, in response to this major assault, the perspective of Australia’s peak union body is that workers should appeal to the company that is seeking to slash their pay and conditions, and the government that handed Qantas billions of dollars while dismantling the rights of workers.

Furthermore, the pandemic crisis, put forward as the justification for the attack, is the direct result of the criminal reopening drive carried out by Morrison, and Australia’s state and territory governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, at the behest of big business, with Qantas playing a leading role.

Having successfully lobbied for the opening of borders, the airline was looking to profiteer from two years of pent-up demand, predicting late last year that domestic travel would be up 17 percent on pre-COVID levels by June.

A mass surge of Omicron infections around the country, resulting in no small part from the airline’s own operations, scuppered these plans. Qantas was forced to cancel flights due to staff shortages and growing concern among would-be travelers over the threat of the virus.

Now, the company is seeking to recoup some of these missed profits by slashing the pay of its workers.

The move to tear up the EBA is in line with growing calls from the ruling elite for sweeping changes to industrial relations, with a particular focus on the enterprise bargaining system.

Major stevedoring company Patrick Terminals and tugboat operator Svitzer also appeared this week before the FWC, seeking to terminate EBAs and force workers onto minimum-wage award conditions.

Under Qantas’s proposal, it also would be able to roster all crew for up to 240 hours per 56-day period—a 20 percent increase for flight attendants currently employed under “Part 1.” The seniority-based rostering system would be abolished and all crew schedules would be allocated at the absolute discretion of the company.

This would allow all flight attendants to crew all aircraft types, overturning the current division between “Part 1” employees who crew Airbus A330s and “Part 2” employees who crew Airbus A380s and Boeing 787s. This division is a result of the introduction of a second-tier workforce, with the FAAA’s help, in 2007.

In addition, Qantas demanded changes to Available Spans (AV Spans)—the number of days that crew has to be available for work at short notice if required. The company claimed this was necessary because, “in their current form, AV Spans often result in additional roster disruption and resource coverage to manage the operation.” In other words, Qantas is seeking to increase the number of days crew members spend on standby.

These changes, the company claims, are necessary “to enable the [Qantas] Group to recover from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 crisis.”

The reality is, all these changes are aimed at reducing overall staff numbers to increase profitability, and are part of an ongoing restructuring process that was underway well before the pandemic.

Determined not to let a crisis go to waste, Qantas has slashed more than 8,000 jobs since March 2020, while receiving more than $2 billion in government bailouts. This included $726 million from the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, enabling the airline to slash its wage bill at public expense, while still carrying out profitable operations.

The groundwork for the airline’s EBA demands was laid in 2007, when the FAAA rammed through a sell-out enterprise agreement allowing the airline to establish a second-tier workforce with vastly reduced pay and conditions for new workers.

In preparation for the introduction of the Airbus A380 to the Qantas fleet, the company established a new entity, QF Cabin Crew Australia, to employ all subsequent hires.

At the time, FAAA International secretary Michael Mijatov hailed the outcome as “overwhelmingly positive.” In fact, the deal delivered new hires lower annual base salaries and allowances and a 20–30 percent increase in duty hours, effectively slashing hourly rates by more than 50 percent.

Qantas and the union negotiated a 3 percent wage rise and $3,000 sign-on bonus to sweeten the deal—essentially a bribe to ram through an agreement that ensured worse conditions for new recruits and divided the workforce, undermining future struggles.

Netflix Creative Equity Scholarship Fund (CESF) 2022

Application Deadline:

4th February 2022 at 23h59 (CAT)

Tell Me About Netflix Creative Equity Scholarship Fund:

Netflix, the world’s leading streaming entertainment service, has committed US$1 Million towards a Creative Equity Scholarship Fund (CESF) in Sub-Saharan Africa that will provide financial support to African creatives to access quality tertiary education in film and TV-focused disciplines at sought-after academic programmes/institutions. This is part of Netflix’s ongoing efforts to invest in Africa’s creative industries and for more diverse and new voices to tell African stories.

For the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, Netflix has partnered with social investment fund management and advisory firm Tshikululu Social Investments as implementing partner/fund administrator, with the responsibility of successfully executing the project in Southern Africa.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Grants

Who can apply for Netflix Creative Equity Scholarship Fund?

This scholarship opportunity is open to:

• Final year undergraduate students completing their degree in 2022; or Postgraduate students pursuing a one-year qualification in 2022
• Students wishing to study at one of the following HEIs:
  • AACA Film and Acting School
  • AFDA
  • Boston Media House
  • Cape Peninsula University of Technology
  • City Varsity
  • Durban University of Technology
  • Tshwane University of Technology
  • University of Cape Town
  • University of Johannesburg
  • University of KwaZulu-Natal
  • University of Pretoria
  • University of the Witwatersrand
• Students from a SADC region country that wish to study in South Africa, and are able to obtain the necessary permissions to do so
  • Students from the following countries will be eligible: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
• Students with a minimum academic average of 60% to date
  • For students applying for a one-year postgraduate course, undergraduate studies must have been completed between 2019 and 2021   
• Students that can demonstrate financial need and have been unable to secure meaningful financial aid from other sources (e.g. National Student Financial Aid Scheme)

Which Countries are Eligible?

Countries in SADC

Where will Award be Taken?

Countries in SADC

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

Numerous

What is the Benefit of Netflix Creative Equity Scholarship Fund?

The CESF is designed to provide financial assistance through full scholarships at partner higher educational institutions (HEI) in South Africa, as listed below, to support the formal qualification and training of aspiring creatives from the SADC region. The scholarship will cover the costs for tuition, accommodation, study materials and living expenses at institutions to which beneficiaries have gained admission to pursue a course of study in the TV & film disciplines. 

How to Apply for Netflix Creative Equity Scholarship Fund:

To apply, please click here.

Visit Award Webpage for Details