Ukraine sentences Russian soldier to life in prison

Jason Melanovski & Andrea Peters

A Ukrainian court sentenced a Russian soldier to life in prison on Monday in what can only be described as a politically motivated show trial conducted by Kiev for its propaganda value.

Twenty-one-year-old Russian tank commander Vadim Shishimarin pled guilty to the killing of 62-year-old civilian Oleksandr Shelipov, but said he was ordered to carry out the shooting. The soldier claims that his commander was worried that the man, who was talking on his cell phone, was reporting the position of Russian forces to Ukraine’s military. 

The trial was not intended to, nor could it have, established the real guilt or innocence of the young soldier. The Ukrainian regime, nationalist and ferociously anti-Russian, is dominated militarily by far-right forces that have been tormenting Russian soldiers and Russian Ukrainians they accuse of aiding the enemy. It is carrying out its own war crimes, which, while receiving little coverage in the Western press, are documented.

There is no reason to believe that Shishimarin’s confession was given voluntarily, as the Ukrainian state is known for systematically violating prisoners’ rights and subjecting them to cruel treatment. A 2015 report by Amnesty International about the torment of detainees by Kiev as well as separatists in the Donbass, reported, “Former prisoners described being beaten until their bones broke, tortured with electric shocks, kicked, stabbed, hung from the ceiling, deprived of sleep for days, threatened with death, denied urgent medical care and subjected to mock executions.” It made clear that Kiev was as guilty as its opponents of the brutality.

While Shishimarin appeared to be in decent health at the trial, the psychological and physical treatment he was subjected to beforehand and the threats made against him are completely unknown. There would have been no way for him to bring such evidence into a courtroom stacked with prosecutors, judges, government officials and witnesses seeking only one outcome—a guilty verdict.

Even if he was not mistreated, he would have no doubt been terrified, locked up in a Ukrainian prison without any access to Russian diplomatic officials or human rights monitors. Under these conditions, he would have been unable to resist the self-declaration of guilt expected of him.

That Shishimarin’s trial took place in a totally undemocratic and partial forum was made clear by his attorney, Viktor Ovsyannikov, who himself is hated by Ukraine’s far right because he defended former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych against charges of high treason leveled against him in absentia.

Ovsyannikov noted to the Guardian that Shishimarin was already widely presumed to be a war criminal before the trial. The attorney said that he was threatened for representing the Russian soldier.

“How can you defend a war criminal?” Ovsyannikov says he was repeatedly asked, adding, “My family, friends and colleagues support me. They know someone has to do it. But there are other people who ‘invited’ me to go to Moscow or Donbas [the area in eastern Ukraine claimed by Russia-backed separatists].”

Furthermore, the trial itself was of highly questionable legality under international law. First, the Geneva Conventions state that “in no circumstances whatever shall a prisoner of war be tried by a court of any kind which does not offer the essential guarantees of independence and impartiality as generally recognized.” This was clearly not the case in Shishimarin’s trial.

Second, according to the third Geneva Convention, prisoners of war like Shishimarin should be tried in a military court and not a civilian one. The reason for this, according to American University Law Professor Robert Goldman, is that the laws governing these issues are highly complex and specialized, and only military courts are trained in this area. Holding war crimes trials in civilian courts is “unprecedented.”

In a recently published statement in The Conversation, Goldman explains, “[A]n issue central to the Russian soldier’s case—whether the civilian killed could be seen as a legitimate target—is a highly technical area that only an expert of the law of war will understand.

“Under protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, a treaty added in 1977, a civilian loses immunity when he or she directly participates in hostilities.

“And this is where it gets tricky. If the Russian soldier believed that the civilian he shot posed an immediate threat, say by reporting his position to Ukrainian military, then it would not be unreasonable for the defense to argue that the civilian was a legitimate target. Indeed, in the current trial, the court heard that the Russian soldier was ordered to shoot the man for that very reason—his superior believed the civilian may have been using a cellphone to give away their location.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross has also expressly warned against the holding of war crimes trials during hostilities, as an accused person like Shishimarin can be given no meaningful chance to “to prepare his defense.”

Moscow, for its part, called the charges “outrageous” and “staged.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov noted, however, 'We do not have many opportunities to protect his interests on the ground, as foreign institutions actually have no activity [in Kiev]. But this does not mean that we will not consider the possibility of making attempts through other channels.”

Shishimarin’s trial was entirely motivated by a political agenda. The US and NATO are preparing for all-out, direct war with Russia. Justifications have to be found, particularly under circumstances where 90 percent and more of the world’s population do not want a third world war and do not want to see all of Europe and beyond transformed into a killing field. Russia and its soldiers must be seen as war criminals and Ukraine’s forces must be viewed as virtuous defenders of freedom and democracy, or the war propaganda project falls apart.

Shishimarin’s sentence was announced as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was appearing virtually at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In his remarks, he accused Russia of “becoming a state of war criminals.” The world’s financial elites applauded.

Following the announcement of Shishimarin’s life-long imprisonment, Ukrainian Prosecutor Andriy Sunyuk made clear that the trial was carried out as part of Kiev’s ongoing military efforts and for its publicity value on the international stage.

Making clear that the authorities are preparing similar show trials in order to send a message, Sunyuk stated, 'I think that all other law enforcement agencies will move along the path that we have traveled.”

'This will be a good example for other occupiers who may not yet be on our territory but are planning to come, or for those who are here now and plan to stay and fight. Or maybe they will think that it's time to leave here for their own territory,” he said.

Kiev is moving quickly to charge other captured Russian soldiers with war crimes as it loses territory in the country’s eastern Donbass region. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said that this month she is preparing more than 40 cases for trial and that there are more than 11,000 ongoing investigations.

Shishimarin’s trial and sentencing has been celebrated in the Western media and subject to no criticism by press outlets housed in states guilty of the most savage brutalization of the innocent—Abu Ghraib; Guantanamo Bay; extraordinary rendition; the bombing of schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure, and on and on. Not a single high-level individual who ordered any of these crimes has ever been held responsible. When the working masses of the world take power, the court dockets will be filled not by 11,000 cases as in Ukraine today, but hundreds of thousands.

The only limited political objection raised in the press to Shishimarin’s trial is that holding it during wartime is of questionable strategical value, as Moscow will likely respond in kind by prosecuting Ukrainian soldiers. According to Goldman, Russia is now holding “around 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers.” Many of these are members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has committed documented war crimes against both Russian forces and Ukrainian civilians.

As France’s Le Monde newspaper confirmed on May 16, in a video widely shared on social media, Azov members can be identified shooting the knees of defenseless Russian soldiers. Former French soldier Adrien Bocquet, who traveled to Ukraine to serve as a volunteer medic with the Azov Battalion in Kiev and then Lviv, has said that he witnessed Azov troops shelling civilian areas in Bucha, where Russian forces have been accused of killing ordinary people.

Civilians in the recently captured city of Mariupol have also accused Azov of deliberately shooting at fleeing cars and kidnapping residents in order to have them serve as human shields at the Azovstal plant.

The Ukrainian military broadcasts and celebrates its own violations of international law on social media. In a sympathetic report, the Washington Post recently revealed that Kiev is tormenting the families of dead Russian troops, with the aid of US-made facial recognition technology, by sending them photos of their sons’ blood-soaked bodies.

But should Russia prosecute captured Ukrainian troops as war criminals, the trials will be denounced. The hypocrisy of these objections will be so blatantly obvious that some, as expressed in the recent observations of American University Law Professor Goldman, are concerned. Nonetheless, the groundwork is already being laid for an attempted cover-up of the hypocrisy by the promotion of the line that while Russia’s courts are known for their violations of modern judicial standards, Ukraine’s are a shining example of a well-functioning liberal democracy.

This is completely untrue, and those painting this portrait know it. Western powers have long identified Ukraine’s judiciary as dishonest, crooked and dysfunctional, and demanded that Kiev clean up its act in order to receive foreign loans and make the country business-friendly.

In December 2020, the Atlantic Council published an editorial describing Ukraine’s “corrupt judiciary as a criminal syndicate.” In September 2021, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, hardly a pro-Russian outlet, published an article detailing the frustrations of Western diplomats over the Zelensky government’s failure to implement judicial reforms. In January 2022, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 123rd out of 180 countries on its corruption scale, giving Kiev a score of just 32 out of 100.

The grotesque character of Ukraine’s courts is a problem for the US and the EU only when it cuts across their financial interests. When it comes to preparing for war against Russia, it is highly useful.

It must be said, however, that the Russian government is also responsible for Shishimarin’s life-long imprisonment. The young man from Ust Illyinsk, a town of about 87,000 in Irkutsk Oblast in Siberia, was described by his Ukrainian attorney as “an ordinary person, just like you or me,” who “began to understand what he had done.”

“The only thing he desires now is to go back home. I am under this impression that he perceives this as some kind of a dream,” he added.

Shishimarin was sent by the Kremlin to kill or be killed in an invasion that, albeit provoked by the US and NATO, is itself a criminal act with no progressive content. It is serving only to further divide the working masses of the two countries, spreading death and destruction in the process. The Russian troops dying and being captured in Ukraine are cannon fodder in the desperate effort of the Russian capitalist elite to maintain its stranglehold over an important portion of the highly valuable Eurasian landmass.

US arms Taiwan to prepare a Ukraine-style quagmire for China

Peter Symonds

US President Biden’s trip to Asia has brought the mounting tensions with China over Taiwan into sharp focus. For a third time since taking office, Biden emphatically declared that the US had a “commitment” to back Taiwan militarily in the event of a conflict with China—overturning decades of US policy.

From left: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the Quad leaders summit at Kantei Palace, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

When the US established diplomatic relations with China in 1979, and ended all formal ties with Taiwan, it adopted the One China policy—de facto recognising Beijing to be the legitimate government of all China, including the island of Taiwan. The corollary was “strategic ambiguity”—refusing to categorically commit to siding with Taiwan in a war with China. That policy was aimed not only at warding off aggression by China, but also at blocking provocative actions by Taiwan.

While the White House has insisted that there has been no change of policy, the US, first under Trump and now under Biden, has been deliberately undermining the status quo over Taiwan, the most potentially explosive flashpoint in Asia. Top-level visits to Taiwan, the open presence of US military trainers on the island, stepped-up arms sales and increased transits through the Taiwan Strait amount to calculated provocations against China.

Now having transformed Ukraine into a military quagmire to weaken and destabilise Russia, US imperialism is deliberately setting and baiting a similar trap for China in Taiwan. Drawing on the Ukraine war, open discussion is taking place in the media and in strategic and military circles about arming Taiwan for a protracted conflict with China.

An article in the New York Times yesterday reported: “US officials are taking lessons learned from arming Ukraine to work with Taiwan in molding a stronger force that could repel a seaborne invasion by China, which has one of the world’s largest militaries. The aim is to turn Taiwan into what some officials call a ‘porcupine’— a territory bristling with armaments and other forms of US-led support that appears too painful to attack.”

As in the conflict between Russian and Ukraine, US war planning is dressed up as the defence of “democratic Taiwan” from Chinese aggression. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a reactionary response, the US armed Ukraine over years and then goaded and provoked a Russian attack. In the case of Taiwan, which Washington itself recognises as part of China, the US has any number of triggers that could provoke a conflict.

Any step by the government in Taipei to declare formal independence from China, and/or the growing incorporation of the island into the US sphere of influence poses a direct threat to Beijing. Taiwan is not only strategically located just off the Chinese mainland but its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has a virtual global monopoly on the production of high-end computer chips.

Buoyed by “success” in Ukraine, US plans for a protracted military conflict on Taiwan against the Chinese military are being rapidly advanced. As the New York Times explained: “American officials have been quietly pressing their Taiwanese counterparts to buy weapons suitable for asymmetric warfare, a conflict in which a smaller military uses mobile systems to conduct lethal strikes on a much bigger force, US and Taiwanese officials say.”

The article added: “The American-made weapons that it has recently bought—mobile rocket platforms, F-16 fighter jets and anti-ship projectiles—are better suited for repelling an invading force. Some military analysts say Taiwan might buy sea mines and armed drones later. And as it has in Ukraine, the US government could also supply intelligence to enhance the lethality of the weapons, even if it refrains from sending troops.”

Washington is not only “pressing” but insisting that Taipei buy weapons in line with the Pentagon’s war planning.

The Financial Times reported earlier this month that US deputy assistant secretary of state Mira Resnick told defence industry executives in March that the Biden administration wanted to “steer Taiwan more strongly” to buying weaponry for asymmetric warfare and would not allow US manufacturers to sell arms outside those parameters.

According to the article: “Washington has subsequently told Taipei that it would not approve the sale of 12 MH-60R anti-submarine helicopters if they were requested. The US has also blocked a Taiwanese plan to acquire E2-D early-warning aircraft.”

The mounting drumbeat in the US media and official circles over the acute “threat” of Chinese invasion speaks more to the timetable that the Pentagon war planners are working to than it does to any evidence of Chinese aggressive intentions. Taiwanese military analyst Su Tzu-yun told the Financial Times: “I believe that currently the possibility of China taking military action is very low.”

Nevertheless, war planning and debate is recklessly proceeding apace, not only on the military front but also for economic warfare against China. As the New York Times reported: “US officials are already discussing to what extent they could replicate the economic penalties and the military aid deployed in defense of Ukraine in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.”

The New York Times pointed out that the number of transits through the Taiwan Straits by US warships has increased to 30 since the start of 2020, supplemented by transits by allied warships from Australia, Britain, Canada and France. US arms sales to Taiwan also have increased, with more than $23 billion in purchases announced since 2010, including $5 billion in 2020 alone.

Those in US strategic circles are well aware that the steps taken by Washington over Taiwan are highly provocative and could precipitate conflict. In comments to the New York Times, analyst Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the US German Marshall Fund, in a convoluted way, admitted as much. “Are we clear about what deters China and what provokes China?” she asked. “The answer to that is ‘no,’ and that’s dangerous territory.”

In the words of the New York Times: “President Biden’s strong language during a visit to Tokyo this week tiptoed up to provocation, Ms Glaser and other analysts in Washington said.” In other words, it is well understood in Washington that overturning “strategic ambiguity” could tip Asia into a war that, as in the case of Ukraine, has the potential to blow up into a conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

Washington’s deliberate baiting of China over Taiwan is part of its escalating confrontation with China that began with Obama’s “pivot to Asia.” For over a decade the US has sought to undermine Beijing diplomatically and economically, hand-in-hand with a massive military build-up throughout the region in preparation for war.

In its historic decline, US imperialism is desperate to weaken and destabilise potential challengers to its global position—Russia and above all China—and gain unfettered access to the immense resources and strategic position of the Eurasian landmass. As is demonstrated in Ukraine, it is doing so with criminal indifference to the devastation and huge loss of life that the war has produced so far. Now the US is preparing to do the same in Taiwan.

Australia surges past seven million COVID-19 infections, 8,000 deaths

Martin Scott

The official infection total across Australia has soared past seven million, with more than 995,000 cases recorded in the last three weeks. Australia has now registered a total of 8,264 COVID-19 deaths.

More than 290 people died from the virus in the past week alone, an average of almost 42 per day. An additional 47 “historic” deaths were reported in Victoria yesterday.

Staff prepare to collect samples at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

An average of more than 46,000 new infections are recorded each day and there are currently over 340,000 active cases across the country, higher than on all but 76 days of the pandemic.

There is a vast chasm between this objective reality and the lies promoted by the entire political establishment that the pandemic is over. This was a striking feature of the recent election campaign, in which COVID-19 barely rated a mention, because all the parliamentary parties are in total agreement with the homicidal “let it rip” program demanded by big business.

Labor was silent on the pandemic during the campaign despite the infection of leader Anthony Albanese and numerous senior party members and mass opposition to outgoing prime minister Scott Morrison over his government’s handling of the crisis. This, along with the critical role of state Labor governments in spearheading the reopening drive responsible for almost 6,000 deaths this year alone, makes clear that the newly elected government will do nothing to stem the tide of mass infection, illness and death.

Despite the efforts of the parliamentary parties to keep COVID-19 off the official campaign agenda, the impact of mass infection was undeniable. Less than 24 hours before polling day, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and the federal government were compelled to expand phone voting eligibility after public opposition to the possible disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of people who had tested positive in the week before the election.

The AEC also reported staff shortages of up to 15 percent due to COVID-19 infection, forcing reduced operating hours at many polling stations. Days before the election, it was unclear whether dozens of booths in regional areas would operate at all.

The record-high rate of pre-poll and postal voting, which together made up more than half the vote, reflected widespread concern among workers that the election, held under conditions where masking requirements and capacity limits have been abolished across the country, would be a national “superspreader” event.

The current situation is particularly stark in Western Australia (WA), the last state to adopt the “let it rip” strategy. On Saturday, there were 91,162 active COVID-19 cases in WA, more than 3 percent of the state’s population. Since the WA Labor government reopened the border on March 3, the state has recorded over 660,000 infections. All but 11 of the 222 COVID-19 deaths recorded in WA since the start of the pandemic have occurred since the reopening.

Australia’s infection figures, among the highest recorded in the country at any stage of the pandemic, likely reflect only a fraction of the true rate, due to the the dismantling of organised COVID-19 testing, including the abandonment of regular surveillance tests in schools and workplaces.

As in Australia, capitalist governments around the world, with the exception of China, have increasingly moved to shut down testing and suppress reporting of infection numbers. As a result, only limited conclusions can be drawn from international comparisons.

Nevertheless, the fact that Australia consistently appears among the ten countries with the highest official weekly case numbers, according to Worldometer, reflects the devastating impact of the bipartisan adoption by Australian governments of the “let it rip” agenda. Worldometer also lists Australia as having the world’s 11th-highest COVID-19 death toll over the past seven days.

The COVID-19 surge continues as scientists and health authorities warn that that this year’s flu season promises to be among the worst in recent memory. In New South Wales (NSW), almost 12,000 people have tested positive for influenza this month, four times the figure recorded in April.

Across the state, 150 people were admitted to hospital with influenza last week. With health systems already in crisis due to COVID-19, the additional impact of widespread influenza threatens to catastrophically overwhelm the country’s hospitals.

The dangers are demonstrated by the breakdown of healthcare during the Omicron wave that began in December. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) mortality figures, the country recorded 5,052 more deaths than average—a 20.5 percent increase—in the first two months of 2022.

Already, almost 2,400 health workers in NSW and more than 3,500 in WA are unable to work due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.

Also adding to the mounting crisis is the low rate of COVID-19 “booster” vaccination. State, territory and federal governments and health authorities continue to downplay the threat of the virus and proclaim it a thing of the past, partly as a result of Australia’s high initial vaccination rate. However, this campaign of lies has contributed to a slow take-up of third doses. Just 53 percent of the population have received a third dose, although 70 percent of second doses were administered more than six months ago, meaning a growing number of “fully-vaccinated” people have little or no protection from serious illness and death.

A survey conducted by the ABS in late April found that 62 percent of respondents across the country reported that a member of their household had taken a COVID-19 test in the previous four weeks, up from 46 percent in March and 47 percent in February. Of those who said a household member had taken a test, 23 percent reported a positive result, up from 14 percent in March and 17 percent in February.

In other words, around 14 percent of households surveyed reported positive COVID-19 tests. Given the propensity of the virus to spread throughout homes, this would indicate that at least 1.5 million and up to 3.6 million people tested positive to COVID-19 during the four-week period.

One third of surveyed households with children reported that attendance at school, preschool or childcare was affected by COVID-19 in April, up from 23 percent the previous month. Almost half of these households said that this was because the child had tested positive for COVID-19.

Of the 18 percent of respondents that reported a household member’s job situation had changed due to COVID-19, 32 percent said that this was because the worker had contracted the virus, up from 13 percent in March. By contrast, the number who reported changed work circumstances because they were a close contact or because colleagues were absent remained at similar levels to the previous month.

This exposes the false and dangerous character of the slashing of close contact rules in schools, workplaces and the broader community, carried out in recent months by all state, territory and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike. These anti-scientific measures, eagerly enforced by the unions, were taken in response to the assertions of employers that healthy workers were being forced to stay at home by overzealous isolation rules.

Far from resolving the labour shortage, the herding back of possibly infectious workers and children has only deepened the crisis by massively increasing the spread of the virus.

Contrary to the criminal mantra of the ruling elite, ordinary people in Australia and globally cannot “live with the virus.” COVID-19 can and must be eliminated, but this requires that the international working class take matters into its own hands.

Sri Lankan central bank governor warns of unprecedented economic contraction in 2022

Pradeep Ramanayake

Addressing the Sri Lanka Press Club on Monday, Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe warned that the country’s economy “will contract at the highest rate than any other year in history.”

Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe [Image: CBSL Twitter]

While Weerasinghe did not provide an exact figure, the Central Bank’s annual report noted on April 30 that the estimated gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate for 2022 had dropped to 1 percent. The Central Bank governor’s remarks indicate that growth will fall into the negative.

In 2020, Sri Lanka recorded a 3.6 percent negative growth rate, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country hard with the collapse of tourism, falling remittances and declining exports. In 2020, the poverty rate, calculated at $US3.20 per person, increased to 11.7 percent of the population, up from 9.7 percent in 2019, according to the World Bank. Another 500,000 more people fell into poverty.

Twenty-one years ago, in 2001, Sri Lanka recorded 1.2 percent negative growth, as a result of the devastation caused by Colombo’s anti-Tamil communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that began in 1983.

This year’s predicted unprecedented negative growth is the result of two factors: the deepening global economic crisis, and the impact of the harsh International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies being imposed on Sri Lanka. These entail restructuring the economy, including the public sector, sharp fiscal deficit cuts, privatisation and a market-driven flexible rupee exchange rate, which saw the currency free fall earlier this year.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed finance minister, immediately declaring that a new “interim budget” would be announced in six weeks, and in line with the IMF’s austerity measures. The interim budget, he said, “is just about cutting down expenditure, cutting to the bone where possible, and transferring it to welfare. For instance, the ministry of health, we just can’t cut down its expenditure, and the ministry of education, it’s a limited cut down, but there are many other ministries where we can cut.”

The measures will include the slashing of infrastructure projects and other cuts that will shrink the economy with catastrophic consequences for jobs, wages and living conditions.

Explaining the deepening crisis, Central Bank Governor Weerasinghe told the Press Club that Sri Lanka could not pay for “normal imports for the next three to six months,” despite industries reporting that they had “no raw materials.”

Without dollars, the Central Bank has had to drastically curb imports, threatening the collapse of industries and huge job losses. Free trade zone investors have already warned about the plight of their investments.

The Joint Apparel Association Forum has previously reported that Sri Lanka’s apparel sector was losing around 10 to 20 percent of its orders to neighbouring India and Bangladesh, with buyers voicing “concerns over the country’s economic and political situation.” Sri Lanka’s apparel sector currently has orders only until June 2022.

Yesterday, the Sri Lanka United National Businesses Alliance warned about their increasing inability to pay wages.

“Nearly 4.5 million workers belonging to 4,500 small and medium enterprises will be in the streets protesting in the coming months over the non-payment of wages,” the lobby group declared. It also complained that the Central Bank has told the business group that it could not grant extensions on loan repayments.

On Tuesday, the Sri Lanka Petroleum Corporation and Lanka-India Oil Company, with government approval, announced a record increase in fuel prices—petrol up by 24.3 percent and diesel by 38.4 percent. These increases are in line with IMF recommendations, which wants fuel subsidies slashed and prices determined solely by the market.

The latest fuel increases saw bus fares rise by 19.5 percent, port container transport charges up by 65 percent, three-wheel taxies fares by around 20 percent and other increases to come.

These rises will drastically worsen inflation. On Monday, the Department of Census and Statistics reported that the National Consumer Price Index jumped to 33.8 percent in April, up from 21.5 percent recorded in March 2022 on a year-on-year basis. Food inflation rose more steeply to 45.1 percent in April.

Hyperinflation has drastically increased the daily living costs to dire levels. The cost of rice, Sri Lanka’s main food item, has risen by 100 percent in almost two months, making it unaffordable for many. The prices of most essential food items have increased by at least 50 percent since the beginning of the year with the cost bread nearly tripling.

Significantly, the Central Bank governor’s speech noted that “the economic crisis has also spilled into a political crisis and social unrest,” a reference to the mass protests and two general strikes over the two past months demanding the resignation of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

Hundreds of health workers in Kandy march in protest against thug attacks on Galle Face Green demonstrators.

Referring to the governor’s remarks about the sharp economic decline and rising social unrest, Economy Next drew similarities with the 1953 general strike and hartal (small business shutdown) in Sri Lanka. The mass industrial action and protests by the working class and rural poor was in response sharp cost of living increases, including the price of rice. While the Lanka Sama Samaja Party called the hartal, it limited the action to one-day and abandoned the continuing struggles.

Economy Next also referred to the revolutionary uprisings in Europe in 1848, describing it as a “Springtime of peoples, where monarchs were driven out and constitutional restraint established.”

The February 1848 revolutionary uprising in France resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy, spread to Germany in March, and rapidly expanded across Europe. The feudal rulers of the German states were forced to accept parliaments and constitutions. References to these uprisings are yet another indication that Sri Lanka’s ruling elite is acutely aware that the new IMF austerity measures will deepen the popular opposition and see a massive eruption of the working-class struggle that draws in the rural and urban poor.

Yesterday, Wickremesinghe declared: “Looking at the hard days ahead, there has to be protests. It’s natural when people suffer, they must protest… But we want to ensure that it does not destabilise the political system.”

President Rajapakse and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe will not hesitate to unleash brutal state repression. Although the state of emergency was allowed to lapse last week, Rajapakse ordered the military mobilised in 25 districts in the country and its territorial waters. Two anti-government demonstrations by the university students last week were viciously attacked by the police using teargas and water cannons.

Above all, the ruling elite and its government is utterly dependent on the trade unions to stop any destabilisation of “the political system.” The unions are playing a politically criminal role, betraying one struggle after another since April. The general strikes in April and May were only called to dissipate the seething anger over price hikes and daily power cuts.

The trade unions are desperately seeking to tie workers to the opposition capitalist parties—who all support the IMF cuts—and their calls for an interim government to replace Rajapakse regime.

German imperialism sets its sights on Africa

Johannes Stern

Germany’s coalition government is systematically working to increase the country’s economic, political, and military weight in Africa. Currently, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) is visiting Senegal, Niger and South Africa along with a high-level business delegation.

Scholz’s trip centred on a visit to Bundeswehr soldiers in Niger on Monday. It was the Chancellor’s first troop visit abroad. “The Bundeswehr is doing extraordinary things here and has also achieved extraordinary things under very difficult conditions,” Scholz said at the military base in Tillia.

Officially, 200 German soldiers are deployed in the resource-rich and geostrategically important country. The Bundeswehr is training Nigerian special forces as part of Operation Gazelle, which has been running since 2018 and is part of the EU’s EUTM mission.

NH90 multi-purpose helicopter of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) transports German soldiers in Mali (Photo: Defensie, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Last Friday, the Bundestag (federal parliament) decided to extend the German war missions in the Sahel. Niger is playing an increasingly central role in this, with the EUTM mission being transferred almost entirely from Mali to Niger. “The focus of Germany’s participation in the EU’s capability building in the Sahel is Niger,” read the motion passed by the federal government.

According to the new mandate, up to 300 Bundeswehr soldiers are meant to be helping improve the “operational capabilities of the security forces of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger and the Joint Task Force of the G5 Sahel states.' This involves “military advice and training, including pre-deployment training” and “support.” In other words, German war policy is being extended to the entire Sahel via Niger.

Scholz made it clear in Tillia that German troops were there to stay. The mission should also be continued beyond the mandate that has just been extended, he said. The task now, was to identify “a good follow-up project.”

“Seeing the motivation of our soldiers,” Scholz said, he had the feeling they were all looking forward to it. The mission so far had been “very successful and driven forward with great passion.”

The crimes committed by the Malian army in cooperation with Russian units is cited by Berlin as the reason for the shift of focus to Niger. In this way, the German government also wants to conceal the criminal character of its own intervention. In reality, the massacres of the civilian population are being perpetrated by the same troops that the Bundeswehr has trained for years. The imperialist occupation forces are directly or indirectly involved in these crimes and have engulfed the entire region with terror and war.

Berlin also plans to continue cooperating with the publicly criticised Malian coup regime. It was “devastating that Russian mercenaries are now in Mali”, Scholz said at a joint press conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall on the first day of his trip to Dakar. Germany would continue to “live up to its responsibility” and had “therefore also decided that we will continue to support the UN mission MINUSMA.”

In fact, the Bundeswehr is increasing its MINUSMA troops in Mali from 1,100 to 1,400 soldiers, preparing for an escalation of the fighting. According to the mandate text, even more troops may be mobilised “for phases of redeployment as well as in the context of troop rotations and in emergency situations.” In doing so, MINUSMA was “authorised to take all necessary measures, including the use of military force, to accomplish the mission.”

The offensive in Africa is not, as the official propaganda would have one believe, about “the fight against terrorism” or “human rights” and “democracy.” It is about naked imperialist interests. Already during the Bundestag debate on the extension of the mandate, numerous speakers stressed that Germany must also assert its interests in the region militarily.

Germany’s presence in the Sahel is “a sign of new responsibility, a response to geostrategic challenges,” claimed the Green Party member of parliament, Merle Spellerberg. “When French troops withdraw from Mali in late summer, we will be the largest provider of troops from the global North.” With “300 new soldiers,” Germany is “closing the gap left by the French.”

Leading members of the government, such as Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), explicitly emphasised that the aim is to contain other powers, first and foremost Russia. “If MINUSMA were to withdraw from Mali, the vacuum would be filled even more by other forces,” Baerbock warned in the Bundestag. This applied “to Islamist fighters,” but “also to Russian forces.”

Why Germany wants to fill the vacuum is clear. Mali and Niger are not only geostrategically important, but also rich in raw materials. Niger is the largest uranium producer in Africa and the fifth largest worldwide. Since 2011, the country has also been one of the oil-exporting states. Other raw materials that are mined and processed locally are phosphate, gypsum, and limestone. Mali is Africa’s third-largest gold producer after South Africa and Ghana, and it has large deposits of bauxite, phosphate, and iron ore, among other minerals.

Scholz’s visit to Senegal highlights Germany’s hunger for African mineral resources and raw materials, which has been intensified by the conflict with Russia. In Senegal, it is above all the country’s gas deposits that Germany wants to secure as quickly as possible.

“I want to be very clear about this,” Scholz stressed in Dakar. “Of course, we want to cooperate with Senegal in particular not only on the issue of the future generation of energy from renewable sources ... but we also want to do so with regard to the LNG issue and gas production here in Senegal.” The two countries had begun to “exchange views on this,” he said, and would “continue this very intensively at the technical level following these talks.”

In South Africa, too, where Scholz was welcomed with military honours by President Cyril Ramaphosa in Johannesburg on Tuesday, energy interests are at stake. The trip included a visit to Sasol. The transnational petroleum and chemical company is South Africa’s second largest industrial enterprise, with more than 30,000 employees and 17 plants in different countries. Sasol is known for the construction of gas-to-liquid plants, especially in Qatar. A few days ago, Scholz agreed a comprehensive energy partnership with the emirate and the world’s largest exporter of liquefied gas.

Another motive behind the German offensive in Africa is undoubtedly the fear of revolutionary unrest. We are facing “dramatic global challenges,” warned Scholz in Dakar. The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis would have “devastating consequences for the African states” and “on the reality of our lives.” They endangered “the social and economic achievements that the global South has worked for.” So that “these crises do not fan new flames,” he said, Germany must “act decisively.”

Scholz’s brash posturing in Africa, like NATO’s proxy war against Russia, which Berlin fully supports, stands in the tradition of Germany’s murderous colonial and world power policies. The warmongers in the media say so openly and are demanding an even more aggressive showing by Germany in the new scramble for Africa, at the expense of the nominally allied imperialist powers.

“Germany must catch up,” is the headline of a commentary by Nikolas Busse in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Although Germany itself was once a colonial power,” “other Western countries [were] gladly given precedence, above all France,” he enthused. This can no longer be tolerated “if one wants to be a leading European power.”

Elisabeth Borne named French Prime Minister: Macron launches assault on the workers

Alex Lantier

On May 16, President Emmanuel Macron named Elisabeth Borne prime minister. Friday evening, Borne announced the composition of her government, in continuity with Macron’s first term. While the bourgeois media is predictably hailing the nomination of a woman to the post, it is a sign that Macron is planning an all-out attack against the working class in his second term.

Elisabeth Borne [Photo by Jacques Parquier]

In her previous role as director of strategy under Macron for the French National Railways (SNCF) and earning more than 25,000 euros a month, she tore up the regulatory statutes of rail workers. She thus sabotaged rail workers’ wages, who were paid ten times less than her remuneration. And above all, it was as Minister of Labour during the COVID-19 pandemic that she elaborated the health protocols in July 2020 put in place after France’s first lockdown.

These politically criminal protocols have been a disaster. Whilst the pandemic was largely under control at the end of the lockdown, with only a few hundred daily cases, the protocols allowed a massive resurgence of the virus. The cost in lives of this policy, replicated throughout the EU, has been monumental. More than 117,000 of the 148,000 deaths from Covid-19 in France and 1.6 million out of 1.8 million in Europe date from after the adoption of the protocols drafted by Borne.

The nomination of Borne constitutes a pledge by Macron to the financial aristocracy to continue with his socially regressive policies, even as she lines up behind the war policy of NATO in the Ukraine against Russia, threatening an escalation into a Third World War. Unsurprisingly, the ruling class is concentrating public attention on Borne’s identity as a woman, as political cover under which to pursue this reactionary policy.

During the handover ceremony of power from her predecessor Jean Castex, Borne tried to attract support from the middle-class feminist milieu. “I dedicate this nomination to all the little girls”, she declared. “Nothing must stop the fight for women’s place in society.” Borne added that she was “very moved” and that she “saved a thought for Edith Cresson,” the only other woman to have occupied the post of prime minister in France.

Since then, Borne has issued a policy based on ecology and modernization. She has renewed most of the senior right-wing ministers, with Bruno Le Maire at the Finance Ministry (2nd highest ranking in the order of precedence among ministers) and Gérard Darmanin third at the Interior Ministry. Former Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is being replaced by Catherine Colonna, a right-wing diplomat who reportedly played a role in formulating policy during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and on Brexit.

For the Ministry of Education, Borne tapped Pap Ndiaye, a Franco-Senegalese historian of the United States’ black population who teaches at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences(EHESS) and supports the Black Lives Matter movement financed by corporate America.

In the second round of the presidential elections, the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) called for a working class campaign to boycott both candidates, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, rejecting both candidates. The PES declared that a government formed by Macron would not be a democratic alternative to Le Pen. The decisive question was to arm workers with an irreconcilable opposition to both candidates in order to prepare them for the struggles they will have to lead against the next government.

The reactionary social and health policies announced by Borne, within the framework of the military foreign policy promoted by Macron and NATO, vindicate the position of the PES. Moreover, it is clear that the nomination of Borne and Ndiaye, hailed by the media as a sign of openness, will not stop or even significantly slow the accelerating slide of Macron to extreme right positions.

As Macron installed Borne as prime minister, Darmanin continued his repressive anti-Muslim campaign. As a sympathizer of the far right Action française who sponsored the “anti-separatism law” targeting Muslim associations, he wants to legally invalidate a local bylaw of the city of Grenoble allowing women to wear burkini swim-suits.

The half-hearted attempts by the media to present Borne as a sympathetic personality based on feminism only reveal how racial and gender politics serve as a cover for anti-democratic and authoritarian policies.

The media is promoting the difficult childhood of Borne, the daughter of a couple of pharmacists in Paris who received state support after the suicide of her father when she was 11 years old. This tragic experience in Borne’s life arouses much more sympathy, however, than the conclusions she seems to have drawn from that event.

In effect, she used the Ecole Polytechnique and the Socialist Party (PS) as mechanisms for social climbing at the expense of the workers. Having joined the PS in 1987, she made a career on the boards of major corporations, notably the SNCF railways and Eiffage. During a TV program in 2021, she explained that she was concerned about her “financial independence” after the death of her father: “I hung on and was able to get admission to an engineering school where I was paid by the State, and that was a real relief.”

Thus the feminist media promotion of Borne is centered on an attempt to calm workers’ anger and strangle the class struggle by selling the illusions of wealthy technocrats like Borne struggling to get their place in the sun.

Edith Cresson, the PS prime minister under the presidency of François Mitterrand in 1991-1992 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, declared on BFM-TV that it was “high time” to name another woman prime minister. She thanked Borne for referring to her, saying, “In a very short speech, she found the means to express something that really moved me.”

In fact, the role of Cresson only underlines the reactionary character of the PS and the attempts of pseudo-left forces like Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “New Popular Union “ with the PS to sell the latter as a progressive party on feminist grounds.

Cresson was an activist in the Convention of Republican Institutions (CIR), a party led in the 1960s by the ex-Vichy collaborators François Mitterrand and Charles Hernu, which played a central role in founding the PS in 1971. She was in office during the first Gulf War against Iraq and the launching of the European Union with the Mastricht Treaty. Cresson was hated by workers due to her policy of wage freezes. She also was criticized for denouncing homosexuality as “different and marginal” and dismissing the Japanese people as “ants.”

Today, Cresson saluted Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, right-wing female politicians who imposed draconian austerity on the workers. The nomination of Borne, Cresson said, is “an event because France is what France is, the political establishment is what it is, but in another country this is not an event. Neither about Mrs. Thatcher nor Mrs. Merkel nor in Portugal, where a woman was named prime minister long before me, did anyone cry out that it was something extraordinary.”

In truth, the nomination of Borne as prime minister is not extraordinary and changes nothing fundamentally. While NATO intensifies its war against Russia in Ukraine, Macron is launching an offensive at home against the working class, to slash pensions, and unemployment benefits and to undermine publicly funded universities, while leaving workers continually exposed to COVID-19. This is preparing ever more explosive confrontations between Macron and the working class.

Who is responsible for starvation and rising food prices?

Eric London

At the prompting of the Biden administration, the world’s capitalist politicians, CEOs and bought-off journalists have let flow a deluge of crocodile tears over the global food crisis, which they claim was singlehandedly created by Vladimir Putin.

Addressing a well-fed crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen professed a newfound concern for the “fragile countries and vulnerable populations” that will “suffer most” from rising food prices. The crowd of billionaires applauded self-righteously when the former German defense minister blamed Russia for “shamefully” profiting off of hunger. Heads nodded gravely when she urged the audience to provide “the World Food Program with the supplies it badly needs” to alleviate the threat of mass starvation.

Rank hypocrisy. Six months ago, UN World Food Program President David Beasley issued a “one time appeal to billionaires to help fight famine,” which explained that if the world’s richest people donated a mere $6.6 billion of their collective $13.1 trillion in wealth (or 0.04 percent of the total), world hunger could be eliminated in 2022 and millions of lives could be saved.

This request predictably fell on deaf ears, and in the next six months, in a modern world of breathtaking technological progress, 4.5 million human beings died in the most ancient way imaginable. Every year 9 million people starve to death with hardly any attention from the capitalist media, which only drags up the dead when trawling for war propaganda.

The real source of mass starvation and world hunger is capitalism. This week, Oxfam issued a report detailing the massive growth of social inequality over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 20 million people. Oxfam reported that one new billionaire “has been minted on average every 30 hours during the pandemic,” including 62 individuals who made their money profiting off of rising food prices in the agribusiness industry. “Corporations and the billionaire dynasties who control so much of our food system are seeing their profits soar,” the report read.

For example, when von der Leyen denounced Vladimir Putin for “using hunger and grain to wield power,” there were two men in attendance—David MacLennan, CEO of Cargill, and Brian Sikes, the company’s COO—who may have joined in the applause. But according to the Oxfam report, the combined wealth of the Cargill family increased by $14.4 billion since the start of the pandemic, enough to feed the world’s hungry twice and still have billions left over.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, there is no limit to the number of lives the capitalist class will sacrifice rather than part with even the smallest fraction of its wealth. The architects of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia are similarly prepared to sacrifice the lives of billions of working people—both through hunger and nuclear catastrophe—in order to subjugate Russia and conquer its wealth.

As for the present rise in food prices, the US government and its imperialist allies are primarily responsible. Joe Biden has repeatedly stated the US government’s aim is to ensure a “long and painful war,” and the spike in food prices is in large part a response to US-led sanctions. As a result of the prolongation of the war, as the foreign minister of Egypt told the Financial Times, “millions will die.”

One industry expert told the UN Security Council last week, “This is seismic. We stand the risk of an extraordinary amount of human suffering.” According to a May 23 report by the Eurasia Group, 400 million people have been made food insecure in just 90 days, bringing the total to a staggering 1.6 billion. The same report explains that if the war continues, global food prices will rise 45 percent this year, an unprecedented increase.

The $40 billion military aid bill passed by the US Congress this month is intentionally aimed at prolonging the war and will massively intensify the food crisis by interrupting planting seasons. The pennies that the bill directs for “humanitarian” aid are mere window dressing. Almost all of it will end up in the pockets of corrupt officials and criminals, just like the “aid” provided by the US during the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Every politician and every organization which supported this bill has voted to take food out of the mouths of millions of working people across the world. This includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic Socialists of America, and international “left” groups like the International Socialist League, the French New Anti-Capitalist Party and the world’s Green parties. In their support for the war, they have indelibly marked themselves as enemies of the working class, for whom the war is having a catastrophic impact.

The intensification of the food crisis is throwing masses of workers into the class struggle. Massive levels of social inequality and the constant pumping of money into the financial markets have created runaway inflation that are driving up the costs of all products and basic necessities.

David Beasley, the director of the World Food Program, recently warned, “We are already seeing riots and protesting taking place as we speak—Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru. We’ve seen destabilizing dynamics already in the Sahel from Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad. These are only signs of things to come.”

Mass protests have now broken out across Iran, where a 300 percent hike in flour-based staples has provoked demonstrations coinciding with strikes of workers in cities like Tehran, with a population of 8.5 million. Ongoing protests and strikes of a nationwide character continue to take place in Sri Lanka, Peru and elsewhere.

In every country, the trade unions serve to brake the class struggle and bar workers from waging a united struggle to meet urgent social needs.

In Tunisia, the main union confederation was forced to announce preparations for a general strike in order to stave off the specter of mass wildcat action. Health care workers across the Eastern Cape of South Africa went on strike without the approval of the trade unions this month as a result of rising food prices and the disastrous impact of the pandemic on the health care system. Bus drivers in Cordoba, Argentina initiated a wildcat strike over food and other living costs.

This movement is not isolated to the developing world. Baggage handlers in Copenhagen launched a wildcat strike last weekend over the rising cost of food and other basic necessities. According to the Danish press, “The Danish labor court on Sunday ruled that baggage staff must resume work again on Monday, but that was not complied with.” Aircraft workers in Saint-Nazaire, France have launched wildcat walkouts on a daily basis over wages and increases to the cost of living.

In Britain, the Bank of England has called the cost-of-living crisis “apocalyptic.” Workers are grappling with 9 percent inflation and a record 54 percent rise in gas and electricity bills. According to an Ipsos poll, 85 percent of Britons are concerned about the impact of rising living costs in the next six months.

In this explosive context, the wildcat strike by 1,000 workers at several oil and gas rigs in the North Sea demanding massive pay increases to account for the rising cost of living is a powerful sign that workers view the trade unions as obstacles—not facilitators—in the fight against the rising cost of living. Though the strike was subjected to a corporate media blackout, one industry news report noted, “The wage revolution has started—we are not singling out one company but industry world-wide as a whole.”

French media reports document war crimes by NATO-backed Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias

Alex Lantier

Devastating eyewitness reports are revealing the broad scope of war crimes by Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias armed by NATO against Russia. They expose the criminal character of the US-NATO war on Russia and the pro-war propaganda of the entire French political establishment.

These revelations come from reports on France’s Sud Radio by Adrien Bocquet, a handicapped former French soldier who traveled to Ukraine during the war as a medic, and from Le Monde. This newspaper’s analysis of a video, which was widely seen on social media but initially dismissed by the media as Russian propaganda, supports Bocquet’s eyewitness statements.

Le Monde is politically close to President Emmanuel Macron and, like the rest of the official press, has supported NATO against Russia in Ukraine. Yet, on May 16, it confirmed the authenticity of a video published on social media showing Ukrainian militiamen firing rifles into the knees of Russian prisoners of war who were tied up and defenseless. This took place on March 25 in the village of Mala Rohan, near Kharkov.

According to Le Monde, this video was made while a unit of the Ukrainian army and three far-right nationalist militias—the Azov Battalion, Fraikor and the Slobojanshchyna Battalion—took Mala Rohan from Russian troops.

Andri Ianholenko, the leader of the Slobojanshchyna Battalion, is visible and identifiable on the video. On other videos Le Monde found on Ianholenko’s social media accounts, he publishes the traditional slogan of the Ukrainian fascists, “Glory to Ukraine,” and poses with the three Russian prisoners of war shot in the March 25 video.

Le Monde thus reluctantly admitted the authenticity of a video previously dismissed by French and NATO media as “Russian propaganda.” It treats the Slobojanshchyna fascists quite mildly, euphemistically describing the war crime documented on the video as “probable abuse committed by Ukrainian volunteers against Russian prisoners of war.” But what the video shows is a war crime by Ukrainian neo-fascism against defenseless prisoners.

Le Monde, which has been in contact with the Ukrainian far-right volunteers since April about this video, only published its analysis after Bocquet spoke to André Bercoff’s show on Sud Radio on May 10. Le Monde, like the rest of the mainstream French media, has to date been deafeningly silent on Bocquet’s claims. But it is evident that its authentication of this video retroactively lends credibility to Bocquet’s interview on Sud Radio.

Bocquet, a former soldier who was made paraplegic after an accident when he was 21 but subsequently partially healed thanks to implants on his spinal cord, briefly went to Ukraine to treat wounded Ukrainian fighters. Assigned to the Azov Battalion in Kiev and then Lviv, he returned to France to give a shattering report on this battalion and the broader Ukrainian war. He told Sud Radio:

I saw many war crimes. The only war crimes I saw during the days I was there were perpetrated by Ukrainian forces, and not by Russian forces. This does not mean that there were no Russian war crimes, but there are also war crimes on the Ukrainian side, yet no one talks about them. When I returned to France, I was really shocked. ... Between what I saw and heard on TV news reports and what I saw on the ground, it was night and day.

About the Azov Battalion, whose flag bears the Wolfsangel symbol of the Nazi SS division Das Reich that committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine and France during World War II, Bocquet said: “They are 20,000 men spread here, there and everywhere with their super neo-Nazi logo across Ukraine, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. And they are getting weapons from Europe.” He added:

You know what they talked about, in front of me because I understand a bit of Ukrainian and Russian, and many of them spoke English? They would crack up saying that if they ran across Jews or black people, that they would cut them up. That is what they talked about, and it really gave them a good laugh.

Bocquet stated that the March 25 torturing of Russian troops by the head of the Slobojanshchyna Battalion is in fact a regular practice of Ukrainian far-right militias against Russian prisoners. He said:

I saw captured Russian soldiers who had already been really roughed up and who were tied up. We were in a sort of hangar, and the captured Russian soldiers were arriving in little vans in groups of three or four. Each time they made the soldiers get out of the vans, the Azov fighters would ask: “Who are the officers, who are the officers?”

Each soldier who got out of the van got a bullet to the knee from an assault rifle, whereas they were defenseless and tied up. I have videos showing this. Otherwise, I would not allow myself to make such allegations, showing Russian soldiers getting bullets in the knee. ... And the ones who unfortunately decided to say, “I am an officer,” they got a bullet to the head.

Bocquet, who was with the Azov Battalion during the massacre in Bucha, denounced the cynical media propaganda that attributes the deaths only to Russian forces. He told of a confrontation he had with US journalists in Bucho whose reporting was falsifying events he was seeing. Bocquet said:

These Americans were shooting videos and saying, these are Russian bombardments and it’s landing in a park and it’s unacceptable. I went to see them, and I asked, why are you saying that? And they said, oh, don’t worry, it makes good images. Do you know what these bombings really were? In fact, there was a Russian target and a team of Azov fighters I was with who were inputting settings on a little mortar to fire off bombs. And they put in the wrong range. ... So these bombs, instead of landing 100 meters further off on the Russian equipment, landed in a little park. And they were passing this off as Russian shells.

French media have since then neither commented upon nor sought to invalidate Bocquet’s widely seen report. It underscores, however, the lack of any critical reporting on the war in Ukraine in the official media in France or other NATO countries and their downplaying of the role of Ukrainian neo-Nazism in the war.

These revelations vindicate the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site on the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the close ties between NATO and the far-right Ukrainian regime ever since the NATO-backed putsch in Kiev in 2014. Not only Washington but also Paris and the other major European imperialist powers, who are pouring billions of euros in weapons into the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi militias, are using the neo-Nazis to wage a dirty war against Russia.

This does not in any way change the reactionary character of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, though it does factually confirm some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims on NATO’s ties to Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Putin’s war is founded on Russian nationalism, his explicit rejection of communism and on the Stalinist bureaucracy’s 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. As Putin is allied to far-right forces in Russia and internationally, including the National Rally in France, one cannot call his war “anti-fascist.”

It is however, above all, an unanswerable indictment of the foreign policy of imperialism and of the establishment media and pseudo-left groups like the Pabloite New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) that support it. These petty-bourgeois circles have increasingly aligned themselves behind the NATO wars since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Especially since the wars NATO launched in 2011 against Libya and Syria, they have systematically presented CIA-backed wars as “democratic” revolutions.

The first substantial reports from on the ground that do not come from media sources that simply echo NATO propaganda are blowing the official presentation of the war apart. The now undeniable presence of neo-Nazis on the Ukrainian side testify to the politically criminal character of the war, the NATO governments who are waging it and the political parties that are supporting it.