Five Corporate Strategies to Manipulate Science

Thomas Klikauer

Art by Nick Rooney

Ever since the rise of capitalism and corporations, the manipulation of science has been at the centre of the endeavors of big companies and corporations – like those related to tobacco, asbestos, chemical, pharma, sugar, fast food, and oil and gas. This is a threat to human existence as well as planet earth.

For decades, large profit-making corporations have been very busy in obscuring the harm they and their products cause to human health and to our planet.

One of the key instruments in their fight against nature – and us – has been a staunch and prolonged rejection of any sort of state regulation – often built around the ideology of neoliberalism and the ever illusive (nobody has actually ever seen it!) free market that “takes care” of everything.

Yet, what corporations do, actually reaches far beyond by simply taking part in the beloved free market – it reaches deep into the influencing of science. There are about four core instruments that corporations and their henchmen like corporate lawyers, corporate PR agencies, and lobbying organisations use to – often pretty successfully – manipulate science – and quite often rather indirectly.

All too often these corporations work behind the scenes in governmental committee rooms, research funding agencies, state and ministerial offices, and the like. These four instruments are:

1) the manipulation of scientific methods to pre-determine research outcomes;

2) he reshaping of criteria that establish what scientific proof actually is;

3) direct and indirect threats against independent scientists and scholars; and finally,

4) the promotion of policies that increase the reliance on industry-generated “evidence”.

These and other corporate methods are used to create misinformation and – more importantly – deliberate disinformation. Some of these methods are designed to create doubt in the minds of the general public. They serve as corporate propaganda – now called Public Relation.

Yet, the purpose of manipulating science is also to foster ignorance, to block out knowledge of the harms that products and corporate practices create – while simultaneously claiming to have a good ethics code, and corporate social responsibility provisions. Of course, what corporations do is often in stark opposition to what environmental science tells us.

Even the otherwise pro-corporate CNN had to – finally – admit on the 12^th of January 2023 what many knew already, Exxon accurately predicted global warming from the 1970s – but continued to cast doubt on climate science. Exxon too, has a rather beautifully crafted code of ethics and sustainability report.

Beyond all that, the corporate manipulation of science also extends to occupational and public health regulations – particularly when it jeopardizes corporate profits and power.

Today, we see an unprecedented level of corporate funded science. Worse, this has been strongly growing in recent years. Perhaps it signifies Upton Sinclair’s time honoured dictum that,

it is difficult to get a man to understand something

when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

To fight science, corporations often use very distinctive (dis)information strategies involving corporately funded science. It eliminates the Humboldtian idea that universities, science, and scientific instrument should be free of corporate-political influence.

Instead, the scientific process should be independent of outside interference. We have known this for a very long time. In fact, ever since Galileo Galilei, we know that science works best if the external power elite remains very distant.

Science should not be driven and financed by corporations. Worse, corporate-shaped science is often sold as “independent” research by the apparatchiks of corporate PR.

Such corporate PR strategies are mostly used by eight corporate sectors: alcohol; chemicals and manufacturing; extractive industries (e.g. mining); fast food and sugar drinks; fossil fuels (oil & gas); gambling; pharmaceuticals (Big Pharma) and medical technologies; as well as the most infamous tobacco corporations causing the death of millions of people.

These are no small fish. Instead, the manipulators of science are more often than not, large multi-national corporations. In the food and drink industry, for example, these companies and corporations include confectionery, sugar-sweetened beverages, breakfast cereals, meat, infant formula, food additives, and dietary supplements.

In any case, corporations use five key strategies to manipulate science and the use of science in policy and practice.

1. The Manipulation of Science

The first strategy used in the corporate manipulation of science is about influencing the conduct and publication of science to skew evidence in industry’s favour. This means the corporate manipulation of the conduct and publication of scientific evidence. It is done in an attempt to pre-empt or refute independent science which challenges corporations and their products.

One of the key aims is to distract attention away from independent evidence that threatens the profits – and in some cases, even – the future of a corporation. To secure profitability and their existence, corporations also use what they call “safe research” (read: their research) to promote corporate-favoured interventions.

It draws on a favourite ideology of neoliberalism: industry self-regulation. The idea is to smokescreen the true goal of corporations: the creation of ineffective (read: no or pro-business) regulation.

Besides giving corporations a free hand by eliminating regulation (the much-hated red tape), the second goal is to prevent mandatory regulation of industry. State regulation is feared by corporations like the plague.

Yet, corporations go to extreme length in preventing science to come to the forth. Tobacco corporation Philip Morris once even ordered a lead scientist to actually close down his laboratory, to kill the animals, to suspend all further investigation; never try to publish or discuss his work; and to find work elsewhere.

If this fails, there is always the cherry-picking of scientific papers for the inclusion or exclusion of evidence. In addition, corporations also use access, funding, and political power in order to manipulate and to undermine research conducted by truly independent organisations. These are often state-funded research organisations set up independently from corporate influence.

In any case, the ideology of neoliberalism provides a rather helpful tool for much of this, as it advocates the elimination of the state regulation in favour of the free market (no regulation). Once the free market (read: corporations) runs science, independent research goes out the window and Coca Cola becomes a health drink – miraculously.

Yet, when research conducted independently proves to be challenging to corporations, corporations and their PR agencies also put in place strategies to control access to science. In one incidence, a pharmaceutical corporation was found to be threatening legal action against researchers who attempt to publish critical results.

2. Manipulating the Interpretation of Science

The second strategy of the corporate manipulation of science seeks to influence the interpretation of scientific data and results. This is designed to undermine unfavourable science and create a distorted picture of the evidence. The corporate challenge to science is often euphemistically framed as “sound science”.

The strategy also involves raw data to be “re-analysed” from unfavourable science in order to undercut it. This extends deep by assaulting scientific findings and the deliberate misrepresentation of scientific evidence.

In the PR battle over science, this remains a useful strategy because it challenges adverse scientific findings that implicate products and manufacturing practices that cause harm to human beings and the environment.

A far more direct strategy is the direct attack on scientists and scientific bodies. Here, the corporate goal is to weaken any opposition to corporate-sponsored crypto-science.

3. Manipulating the Reach of Science

The third corporate strategy is to manipulate the reach of science. This can be done via so-called echo chambers inside which corporations can propagate corporate-sponsored science.

The goal is to create an “echo chamber effect” whereby corporations develop a communicative space in which favourable science, and its messaging about “their” science is widely disseminated and amplified. Simultaneously, unfavourable evidence is hidden or isolated.

Echo chambers give the wrong impression that there is a multitude of corporate-friendly messages and voices that represent science. Suddenly, corporate institutions such as, for example, front groups created by industry (astrofurfing), third-party organisations like corporate think tanks, so-called professional associations (read: lobbying), and corporations PR firms, etc., all seemingly push the same (corporate) version of science. Often, such appearances are enhanced by so-called “experts” set up by allied industries.

4. Public Relation

The fourth strategy is to create a corporate-friendly public policy environment capable of shaping the use of science in policy decision made in favour of corporations. British American Tobacco, for example, invented a PR campaign called “Better Regulation” or “Smart Regulation” with the goal of getting pro-business regulation put in place.

The key idea behind this was to make it harder to pass public health policies which can counter the interest of corporations. It gives highly resourced and well-financed corporations an opportunity to slow down, weaken, or – ideally – prevent public health policy that saves lives (e.g. OHS) but was bad for corporate profits.

5. Trust Corporate Science

The final and fifth strategy is the manufacturing of trust in corporate research while simultaneously engineering distrust in research findings that challenge corporations. The gist behind this strategy is to create the aura of legitimacy around corporations and their science. In other words, corporations manufacture trust in themselves and their semi-scientific findings.

Corporations do this by, for example, directly funding of academics. More often, it is done through a so-called “independent agency”. The apparatchiks that run universities like to call this: industry partnerships or third-party funding.

Here is the trick. In deliberately cash-starved universities – as supported by the free market ideology of neoliberalism – this is done by offering generous research grants, honoraria, awards, and lucrative so-called “consulting” fees.

Meanwhile, students can be enticed to work for corporations by offering lavish scholarships. The ideological goal of all this is to normalize the corporate presence in science, universities, and academia.

It creates dependence on corporations and corporately funded research. Money – not curiosity – becomes the driver of science. Here are three examples on how this works:

+ Berkeley, for example, received $50 million from Novartis – a Swiss pharmaceutical corporation, i.e. Big Pharma.

+ Worse, ExxonMobil contributed to the $225m Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University.

+ Still even more worse, tobacco corporation Philip Morris even created its very own Worldwide Scientific Affairs Programme.

In any case, based on these five key strategies, one can see that the corporate manipulation of science and scientific evidence reaches far beyond a handful of corporate-corrupt actors working nefariously to skew evidence. Generally, these five strategies of the corporate manipulation of science have three overall goals:

1) they seek to create doubt about the potential harms of the products of corporations, their practices (environmentally harmful manufacturing, for example), and about policies that might reduce sales and corporate profitability;

2) these strategies also promote corporate policy responses and techno-solutionism to complex problems – often, these problems are created by corporations in the first place; and finally,

3) it seeks to legitimize the role of corporations as valued stakeholders in science and society. This is geared to what German philosopher Habermas once called the colonization of the lifeworld, i.e. the infection of previously non-commercial areas of society (like science) with the ideological virus of commerce, i.e. money and profits

Most disturbing is actually not just the scale and consistency of the corporate manipulation of science, but that this extends beyond influencing the production, credibility, and reach of science.

In other words, corporate manipulation has taken on a political momentum. This is camouflaged by the neoliberal fairy-tale that the economy and politics are neatly separated.

Covered by this ideology, corporations and their henchmen – corporate lobbyists, PR firms, industry funding bodies, astroturfing, etc. – play a rather active role in the manipulative shaping of science, research policies, and actual scientific practices. This has far-reaching implications.

Potentially one possible solution might be – as introduced in Italy, California, and Thailand – is the setting up of a levy, particularly on pharmaceutical, tobacco, alcohol, fast food, oil & gas, etc. corporations, to be used to fund independent research on their harmful products and their destruction of the natural environment.

World Economic Forum’s global risk report

Nick Beams

Down through the years, the ideologists of the ruling classes have repeatedly accused Marxists of exaggeration and even “catastrophitis,” as they drew out the deepening contradictions of capitalism, which threaten the very future of civilisation.

Those who agree with such assessments, endlessly regurgitated through media and academic outlets, would do well to examine the “Global Risks Report 2023” of the World Economic Forum (WEF) prepared for the annual gathering that is taking place this week in Davos, Switzerland.

The report paints a devastating picture of a socioeconomic system hurtling towards disaster, outside of the control of the ruling elites for which the WEF speaks.

FILE -A police security guard patrols on the roof of a hotel ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber,file)

The executive summary begins by noting that the first years of the present decade “have heralded a particularly disruptive period in human history.”

Then follows a paragraph worth quoting in full:

As 2023 begins, the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen the return of “older risks”—inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflow from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare—which few of this generation’s business leaders and public policy-makers have experienced. These are being amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape, including unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and de-globalisation, a decline in human development after decades of progress, rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions in an ever-shrinking window for a transition to a 1.5C world. Together, these are converging to shape a unique and uncertain and turbulent decade to come.

The Marxist analysis of the present situation is presented in the New Year’s Perspective of the World Socialist Web Site (2023: The global capitalist crisis and the growing offensive of the international working class), which notes that the accumulating pressures of the world capitalist crisis have “attained the equivalent of critical mass: that is, they have reached the point where the dynamic of crisis has passed beyond the ability of governments to control the movement toward a social cataclysm.”

Everything in the Global Risks Report confirms, in its own way, the veracity of this analysis, which is probably why the WEF document has received little or no coverage in the so-called mainstream media.

The report traces out a series of deepening crises, including the ever-worsening economic outlook, the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and tensions that are not confined to Ukraine, but extend far more broadly, the rapid deterioration of health and health care, and the effects of climate change, both in terms of the weather and the decline in biodiversity.

One of the most significant shifts in 2022 was the ending of the ultra-low interest rate regime initiated in response to the global financial crisis in 2008 and extended after the financial crisis of March 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The monetary tightening implemented by the Fed and other major central banks to suppress the global wages upsurge by the working class is driving the world economy into recession.

But according to the WEF report:

Even if some economies experience a softer-than-expected landing, the end of the low-interest rate era will have significant ramifications for governments, businesses and individuals. The knock-on effects will be felt most acutely by the most vulnerable parts of society and already-fragile states, contributing to rising poverty, hunger, violent protests, political instability and even state collapse. ... Governments will continue to face a dangerous balancing act between protecting a broad swathe of their citizens from an elongated cost-of-living crisis without embedding inflation—and meeting debt and servicing costs as revenues come under pressure from an economic downturn, an increasingly urgent transition to new energy systems, and a less stable geopolitical environment.

The report warns that social unrest and political instability will not be confined to emerging markets, as economic pressures hit the middle-income bracket:

Mounting citizen frustration at losses in human development and declining social mobility, together with a widening gap in values and equality, are posing existential challenges to political systems around the world.

The global slowdown and the development of recession in many parts of the world will increase geopolitical tensions and conflicts:

Economic warfare is becoming the norm with increasing clashes between global powers and state intervention in markets over the next two years.

Economic policies will not only be used defensively, but “increasingly offensively to constrain the rise of others.”

The report also points to the increase of military spending as a proportion of GDP by the US, along with others, and notes the decision by Japan to double its military spending:

Widespread defence spending, particularly on research and development, could deepen insecurity and promote a race between global and regional powers towards more advanced weaponry.

This will be accompanied by the rise of blocs that tie together countries across security, trade, innovation and investment.

The report does not raise it, but this assessment blows out of the water the World Economic Forum’s earlier pronouncements that the globalisation of production and finance through the operation of the “free market” would lead to peace and prosperity.

That analysis, advanced in the years following the dissolution of the USSR, ignored the fact, emphasised by the Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, that such organic peaceful development was impossible because the world is riven by the contradiction between global economy and the nation-state system in which capitalism is rooted.

The WEF report contains little analysis of the extent of the pandemic, apparently subscribing to the view, contrary to the evidence, that COVID is in the past. But it does point to the crisis in health care and the threat of further pandemics, under conditions where health care systems are facing “intensifying financial pressure.”

It states:

As COVID-19 recedes from the headlines, complacency appears to be setting in on preparing for future pandemics and other global health threats. Healthcare systems face worker burnout and continued shortages at a time when fiscal consolidation risks deflecting attention and resources elsewhere. More frequent and widespread infectious disease outbreaks amidst a background of chronic diseases over the next decade risks pushing exhausted healthcare systems to the brink of failure around the world.

Health problems will also continue to mount because of the effects of climate change and the disintegration of ecosystems, leading to an increased occurrence of zoonotic diseases—those which, as with SARS and COVID, start in animals but then leap over into the human population.

An objective measure of human progress is the increase in life expectancy. Today, for the first time since World War II, it is starting to decline. According to the report: “People are living more years in poor health, and we may soon face a more sustained reversal in life expectancy gains beyond the influence of the pandemic.”

On the issue of climate change, as the prospect of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius fades into the distance, the report notes that climate and environmental issues are a core source of risks over the next decade, but are at the same time “the risks for which we are seen to be the least prepared.”

It adds:

The lack of deep, concerted progress on climate targets has exposed the divergence between what is scientifically necessary to achieve net zero and what is politically feasible.

The same point could be made on the question of COVID elimination, which, however, the WEF chooses to evade. It does not even approach an explanation for the policy of mass infection pursued by governments all over the world because that would mean touching on the “holy of holies”— capitalist property relations, on which the global economy is based, and which make impossible the application of science where it conflicts with the interests of private profit.

Summing up the situation, the report says that present and future risks

interact with each other to form a “polycrisis”—a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part.

Microsoft announces 10,000 layoffs as jobs bloodbath in US accelerates

Jerry White

Tech giant Microsoft announced Wednesday that it will lay off 10,000 workers, or 5 percent of its global workforce, as the wave job cuts in the US tech, banking and retail sectors accelerates.

Microsoft made its job cutting plan public the same day that Amazon began sending out layoff notices to 18,000 workers in the US, Canada and Costa Rica as part of its previously announced move to cut 6 percent of its global workforce.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the job cuts were needed due to the reduction in demand for computers, software and digital services and the growing global economic downturn. “We are aligning our cost structure with where we see demand,” he said. “We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.” 

Bloomberg reported that the Redmond, Washington-based company would eliminate positions at several engineering divisions. The cuts will also hit the HoloLens military goggle division, Xbox Entertainment and Bethesda Game Studios and 343 Industries, the developers of popular video games Starfield and Halo. Some of those who lost their jobs were veterans who had been with Xbox for more than a decade, Bloomberg cited co-workers saying. Nearly 900 jobs are being cut in Washington state alone, according to a state employment filing. 

Nadella, whose net worth is estimated at $950 million, was a guest speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week. He told the Wall Street Journal, “We in the tech industry will have to get more efficient—it’s not about everyone else doing more with less, we will have to do more with less. We will have to show our own productivity gains.” 

The job-cutting was hailed by Wall Street analysts after a year of declining share values, which has seen Microsoft’s market capitalization fall by 30 percent. “It was a rip-the-Band-Aid-off moment from Nadella and Microsoft, and we’re seeing it across tech,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Yahoo Finance Live. “These companies were spending like 1980’s rock stars at a pace that was unsustainable.” 

The company’s stock fell nearly 2 percent after the layoff announcements. It took place a day after Guggenheim Securities downgraded the stock from neutral to sell, the “first bearish analyst rating on the software maker in more than three years,” the Wall Street Journal reported.  

On the web-based forum thelayoff.com, Microsoft and other workers denounced the job cuts. 

“My heart goes out to everyone at Microsoft today. This sucks, plain and simple.”

“It actually started last week. I can confirm this. Microsoft started to get rid of ‘underperforming’ employees last week, as I was one of them. No severance.”

“[Microsoft] currently has $100b cash on hand. It’s gotta be a little... frustrating to get be part of a 5% cut when there’s so much free cash sitting around. I know, it’s a narrow view of corporate finance, and I don’t have the ‘big picture,’ but... still doesn’t sit right with me.”

The job cuts also threaten many workers who are part of the H1-B visa program, which allows companies to hire skilled immigrant workers. They now have just 60 days to secure a new job or risk deportation. “It’s not just one person’s life at stake,” Tahmina Watson, founding attorney for Watson Immigration Law in Seattle, told Yahoo Finance Live. “It’s their spouses. It’s the children who were probably born in the United States—children who came here when they were young, and they know nothing but America as their homes. It’s going to be uprooting entire families.”

Microsoft and Amazon are only latest tech companies to announce massive job cuts. According to the job placement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, the sector announced 52,771 cuts in November 2022—the latest data available—and a total of 80,978 jobs over the course of the year. This was the highest monthly total for the sector since Challenger began keeping data in 2000 and even larger than when the dot.com bubble burst in 2000-01.  

• Google parent Alphabet is considering 10,000 job cuts, or 6 percent of its global workforce. The company has already announced hundreds of job cuts at its Intrinsic robotics division and Verily Life Science unit.
• Facebook parent Meta Platforms is cutting 11,000 jobs, or about 13% of the workforce, and will extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023. 
• Cloud-service company Salesforce executives announced earlier this month that they were cutting 8,000 jobs because “we hired too many people.” 
• HP will cut as many as 6,000 jobs, or 10 percent, over the next three years as declining demand for personal computers has hit profits. 
• Cisco Systems is cutting 4,000 jobs, or 5 percent of its workforce.
• Twitter cut 3,700 jobs after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.
• Seagate Technology Holdings, the biggest maker of computer hard drives, is cutting about 3,000 jobs due to a slowdown in hardware spending. 
• Chipmaker Intel is slowing spending on new plants and is planning job cuts that “could number in the thousands,” according to Bloomberg News. The plan to save $10 billion by 2025 “went over well with investors, who sent the shares up more than 10% on Oct. 28,” Bloomberg reported. 

Other job cuts in tech and Internet related companies include: Carvana (4,000), DoorDash (1,250), Payments company Stripe (1,000 jobs), Lyft (683), home “flipping” app Opendoor Technologies (550), Peloton Interactive (500), digital banking start up Chime (160), Adobe (100) and thousands of jobs at cryptocurrency companies Coinbase Global, Kraken, Coinbase, Galaxy Digital, Genesis and Silvergate Capital Corp. In addition, banking and other financial firms are being hit with major job cuts, including Goldman Sachs (3,200), BNY Mellon (1,500) and BlackRock (500).

Over the last year, the Federal Reserve has shifted from its decades-long policy of providing trillions of dollars in virtually free credit for financial speculation to a regime of rising interest rates. Its aim is to drive up unemployment to beat back the growing struggles of workers to increase their wages to keep up with record high living expenses, fueled by the inflation of the stock market, price-gouging by big business, the criminal response of capitalist governments to the pandemic and the exploding costs of the military buildup against Russia and China.   

The Fed’s policy of inflicting “economic pain” of the population is spreading beyond the tech sector. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that retail sales fell 1.1 percent in December because inflation cut into paychecks, leading to lower consumer spending during the peak holiday buying season. Retailer Bed, Bath and Beyond is seeking prospective buyers and lenders and has begun a second round of layoffs among its 32,000-employee workforce. After losing $1.2 billion over the last nine months, the company is expected to file for bankruptcy soon.

Layoffs are also spreading into manufacturing. In late December, US Steel announced 244 layoffs at its tin operation at the Gary Works in northwestern Indiana. Last year, the company idled its entire tin operation at the flagship plant, blaming “market conditions.” This followed the announcement by Stellantis that it would “indefinitely idle” its assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois and 1,325 workers on February 28. 

The brutal attack on jobs by corporations, which made record profits while more than a million people died during the pandemic, along with rising living costs, is fueling growing anger in the working class. The number of strikes last year rose to the highest level in 17 years last year, according to Bloomberg, and involved more than 222,000 workers. In 2023, the contracts of 1.6 million workers are expiring, including at Caterpillar, UPS, the Big Three automakers and Mack Trucks.

Top Ukrainian interior ministry officials die in helicopter crash

Clara Weiss

At least 14 people, including one child, have been confirmed dead on Wednesday after a helicopter carrying the top leadership of Ukraine’s interior ministry crashed over a kindergarten in Brovary, a town near the capital Kiev. Another 25 people were injured and hospitalized, among them 11 children. The crash occurred around 8:20 a.m. local time, as parents were dropping off their children at the kindergarten. According to Ukrainian officials, the helicopter was on its way to a “hot spot” on the frontline of the war. The rescue operation took almost nine hours.

All people on board the helicopter were killed, among them Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, his first deputy Yevhen Yenin and the Ministry’s State Secretary Yurii Lubkovych. Monastyrsky’s bodyguards and aides were also killed. In total, five officials of the Interior Ministry and one official of the National Police died in the crash. The pilot and the crew were killed as well.

Monastyrsky was the highest ranking Ukrainian government official yet to have died since the beginning of the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in February 2022. As both Interior Minister and a member of the National Security and Defense Council, which is responsible for setting wartime goals, Monastyrsky was one of the most important figures in the military leadership and responsible for overseeing domestic security, including the police. He was a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party and considered one of Zelensky’s closest allies. 

Monastyrsky, Yenin and Lubkovych all assumed their positions in the Interior Ministry in the immediate lead-up to the war in the second half of 2021, as part of a major reshuffle at the Interor Ministry that followed the resignation of Monastyrsky’s predecessor, Arseny Avakov. They counted among the most prominent government representatives during the war and frequently visited the troops on the frontline.

As of this writing, there has been no official explanation for the crash. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky described it as a “terrible tragedy.” In an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos later that day, Zelensky appealed again for more Western military support for Ukraine and declared that “there are no accidents at war time. These are all war results absolutely.”

Zelensky ordered the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) to initiate a criminal investigation. The SBU is reportedly focusing on three possible causes: technical malfunction, the violation of flight rules and sabotage.

Igor Klimenko, the head of Ukraine’s National Police, has been appointed acting interior minister by Zelensky. 

Whatever the causes of the crash, the sudden death of three of the country’s most important government officials is set to further destabilize the already tense political situation in the country and deepen Ukraine’s political crisis. The crash comes amidst a rapid escalation of the war against Russia by NATO and reports suggesting that Ukraine may be preparing an offensive.

Over the past few weeks, NATO has taken major steps to intensify its involvement in the war. Several countries, including Germany, are now sending tanks and other offensive weaponry to Ukraine. The US alone has delivered 210 howitzers, and Ukraine has received more than 400 self-propelled artillery pieces from Britain, Poland, Germany and the US. Last Friday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov bluntly stated in an interview with the BBC that Ukraine is a “member of NATO de facto.” 

On Monday, leading officials of the White House, the US State Department and the Pentagon were in Kiev for discussions with Zelensky, Reznikov and other top Ukrainian officials. Among them were Wendy Sherman, the US Deputy Secretary of State; Jonathan Finer, Biden’s Deputy National Security Advisor, and Colin Kahl, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon. According to the official press release, the goal of the meeting was to “reaffirm the United States’ strong and steadfast commitment to Ukraine and its defense against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.” 

On Friday, the head of the US Chiefs of Staff, Mike Milley and Defense Minister Lloyd Austin will conduct the first in-person meeting with the Ukrainian Defense Contact group, which comprises 50 nations, at the US military base in Ramstein, Germany.

On Monday, Milley already visited a new US military training site for Ukrainian troops in Grafenwöhr, Germany. According to the Associated Press, over 600 Ukrainian troops have just started receiving training from the US army there. 

In the Russian press, military figures are arguing that the Russian army must be prepared for a renewed Ukrainian offensive within the next couple of weeks. Speaking to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, retired Lieutenant General Yuri Netkachev stated, “There should be no illusions that the Americans are only training one battalion of the Ukrainian army with 500 troops in Germany. Judging by comments from Mark Milley, the elite of the Ukrainian army is concentrated in Grafenwöhr. These are commanders of formations, strike units, crews, IT specialists. These are the people who already by the end of February, according to the plans of the Pentagon, will be organizing future offensive actions by the Ukrainian armed forces.” 

Netkachev added that with the massive deliveries of heavy weaponry to Ukraine, NATO “is helping Kiev to form several mechanized and motorized infantry brigades. And in general [the weapons serve] to complete the three army corps, which are now being formed in the Ukrainian armed forces for the general offensive in a few weeks. The Russian army must be prepared for this.”

A recent report by the Institute for Strategic Studies noted that the Kremlin is now “belatedly taking personnel mobilization, reorganization and industrial actions … steps to conduct the ‘special military operation’ as a major conventional war.”

Already, the NATO-led escalation of the war has significantly deepened the political crisis in Ukraine. On Tuesday, one of Zelensky’s top advisors and one of the most prominent faces of the war, Oleksiy Arestovych, was forced to resign. In remarks on live television on Saturday shortly after a missile strike on the city of Dnipro, Arestovych had suggested that the Russian missile hit a residential area after being shot down by the Ukrainian air defense. Arestovych’s remarks prompted bitter denunciations, including by the far right, Zelensky and the head of the Ukrainian air defense, and he was forced to publicly apologize and resign within days. 

Forty-five people were reportedly killed and 79 wounded in the incident, the highest civilian casualty figures in months. The Ukrainian government has used the incident to call on NATO to further step up its deliveries of heavy weaponry. Russian officials have denied responsibility for the strike, insisting that the Russian army was not targeting civilian infrastructure.

US “likely” to send long-range missiles to Ukraine

Andre Damon

The United States will “likely” announce that it is sending long-range missiles with a range of over 100 miles to Ukraine this week, US officials told Politico.

The weapons system, known as the ground-launched Small Diameter Bomb, is a rocket-launched maneuverable glide bomb with double the range of the HIMARS missiles that Washington has already provided.

Seeming to confirm Politico’s report, Ben Hodges, former Commanding General of US Army Europe, wrote on Twitter. “GLSDB (ground launched small diameter bombs) will reduce sanctuary for Russians. Life is about to start getting very uncomfortable for Russian navy, air force and ammunition handlers on Crimea, along the ‘land bridge’ ... and hopefully soon for repair crews on Kerch Bridge.”

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Hodges’ statement implies that the missiles would be used to attack the Crimean Peninsula.

The announcement would mark a repudiation of Biden’s pledge in May that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” and his declaration that “We’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia.”

The US is expected to announce the weapons system alongside an additional 100 Stryker and 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in a $2.6 billion weapons package, Politico and the Associated Press reported.

The announcement is expected to be made Friday at the meeting of the imperialist powers funding, arming and directing the Ukrainian military, which will be held at America’s Ramstein air force base in Germany.

While details are still being worked out, Poland, the US and Germany are expected to announce at the meeting the deployment of some combination of Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 main battle tanks, as well as hundreds of additional armored personnel carriers.

“We believe the provision of modern tanks will significantly help and improve the Ukrainians’ ability to fight where they are fighting now and fight more effectively going forward,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday.

“What’s really important at this point is providing Ukraine with armor capabilities, and in particular, maneuver armor capabilities,” said an unnamed defense official, according to a Department of Defense news report.

The official continued, “We’re looking at modern, mechanized armored capabilities. And that’s why the focus on tanks, and Germany is the key to that capability.”

The Pentagon claimed that the United States and its allies have already sent approximately 900 armored vehicles to Ukraine.

The expected announcement of the new long-range weapons comes as press reports indicate that the Biden administration is discussing openly endorsing a Ukrainian assault on the predominantly Russian-speaking peninsula of Crimea, which Russia has claimed as its territory since 2014.

In an article headlined, “U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea,” the New York Times reports, “(T)he Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.”

The Times writes, “the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula.”

The report adds, “American officials are discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target Mr. Putin’s hard-fought control over a land bridge that functions as a critical supply route connecting Crimea to Russia via the Russian-occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol.”

It continues, “In deciding to give the Bradleys to Ukraine, the Biden administration moved closer to providing Kyiv with something for which senior Ukrainian officials have been imploring the United States for months: direct American help for Ukraine to go on the offense—including targeting Crimea.”

The article quotes Seth G. Jones, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as saying, “Ukraine could use Bradleys to move forces down major roads, such as the M14, which connects Kherson, Melitopol and Mariupol. ... Any Ukrainian infantry advancing through these areas would face significant fire from Russian positions, and Bradleys offer helpful firepower and protection for troops.”

It adds, “The Bradleys, along with British tanks and the armored combat vehicles that France and Germany have agreed to send, could be the vanguard of an armored force that Ukraine could employ in a counteroffensive this winter or spring, government and independent analysts say.”

In order to hide the massively escalatory character of its planned war with Russia, the Biden administration had not explicitly endorsed Ukrainian plans to conquer Crimea, which is the official war aim of the Zelensky government. 

Demanding an explicit US endorsement of attacks on Russia, Philip Breedlove, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, told the Times, “We have in essence put limits on Ukraine, saying this war is going to be fought on your soil and not on Russian soil. … To give Russia sanctuary from which to fight, without fear of reproach, is absolutely absurd. It makes no military sense.”

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley meets with U.S. Army leaders responsible for the collective training of Ukrainians at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Grafenwoehr, Germany, on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (Staff Sgt. Jordan Sivayavirojna/U.S. Army via AP) [AP Photo]

On Monday, Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Grafenwöhr training area in Germany, which began training hundreds of Ukrainian troops on Sunday, including how to operate NATO armored vehicles.

On Tuesday, Milley met in person with Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the head of the Ukrainian armed forces, near the Polish border with Ukraine.

On Thursday, General Llyod Austin will meet with the new German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to discuss securing Germany’s agreement to allow the export of the Leopard 2 main battle tank to Ukraine.

Explaining the US demand for sending the Leopard 2, the DOD News, the official Pentagon news service, wrote, “The most immediately accessible and usable tank capability is the German Leopard 2. The Leopard 2 has digital fire control, laser rangefinders, a fully stabilized main gun and advanced night vision and sighting equipment. Its main gun is a 120 mm smoothbore, and it can fire on the move over rough terrain.”

On Wednesday, Pistorius all but declared that Germany is at war with Russia, saying, “the Federal Republic of Germany is involved in a war, indirectly.”