ARES Belgian Government Scholarships 2025

Application Deadline:

The application deadline for the ARES Belgian Government Scholarships 2025 for Masters and Continuing Education (Fully Funded) is 18 October 2024 at noon.

Tell Me About The ARES Belgian Government Scholarships 2025:

The ARES scholarships provide nationals from ARES partner countries with the opportunity to enhance their skills in development-related fields. Eligible candidates who hold a higher education degree and have relevant professional experience can pursue a one-year advanced bachelor’s or master’s degree, or a 2-to-6-month continuing education program at a higher education institution in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Belgium.

Which Fields are Eligible?

The following fields are eligible:

Specialized Bachelors degree

• Bachelier de spécialisation en Business Data Analysis

Specialized Masters

• Master de spécialisation en droits humains
• Master de spécialisation en gestion des risques et des catastrophes à l’ère de l’anthropocène
• Master de spécialisation en gestion intégrée des risques sanitaires
• Specialized Master in International and Development Economics
• European Microfinance Programme
• Specialized Master in Public Health Methodology
• Master de spécialisation en sciences de la santé publique – analyse et évaluation des politiques programmes et systèmes de santé internationale
• Master de spécialisation en transport et logistique
• Master de spécialisation – Design d’innovation sociale
• Master de spécialisation en Nexus Eau-Énergie-Alimentation

Continuing Training Courses

• Certificat d’Université en Science des Données pour la Santé Mondiale
• Formation internationale en pédagogie universitaire numérique
• Certificat interuniversitaire et interdisciplinaire en justices transitionnelles
• Formation continue – Comprendre et gérer les dimensions humaines des projets de changement en développement durable
• Formations continues en assurance qualité et contrôle en qualité des médicaments et produits de santé
• Formation continue en système d’information géographique libre

Type:

Scholarship

Who can Apply For The ARES Belgian Government Scholarships 2025?

Also, applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Be a national of, reside in and work in one of the 31 eligible countries (list below);
• Be a holder of:
  • a diploma comparable to a 2nd cycle diploma (300 ECTS credits) from a Belgian university for specialised masters and continuing education courses;
  • a diploma comparable to a 1st cycle diploma (180 ECTS credits) from Belgian higher education for specialisation baccalaureates.
• Demonstrate at least two years of relevant professional experience in an ARES partner country.

Which Countries Are Eligible?

The following countries are eligible:

• Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, DR Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
• South America and the Caribbean: Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, Peru.
• Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Vietnam.
• Asia: Palestinian territory.

Where will the Award be Taken?

Belgium

How Many Awards?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of the Award?

Additionally, successful applicants will benefit the following:

• International travel expenses;
• Subsistence allowance;
• Exceptional costs associated with visa applications (only for bachelor’s degrees and specialised master’s degrees);
• Tuition fees (only for bachelor’s degrees and specialised master’s degrees);
• Indirect mission expenses (for continuing education only);
• Insurance costs.

How Long Will the Award Last?

12 months 

How to Apply:

1. Have a Giraf account (create one or use your account if it has already been made and validated by ARES).
2. Access the application form by clicking on Application for international training > My Tasks> Competitive calls.
3. Fill in the form (it can be filled in several times. You can find it in Competitive calls > My tasks).
4. Submit your application by clicking on Submit my application. Once submitted, you can consult your file in the My Submitted Files table. However, you will no longer be able to modify it.

Visit the Award Webpage for Details

The Economics Behind the Fall of Autocracy in Bangladesh

Tarique Niazi

Photograph Source: Rayhan9d – CC BY-SA 4.0

Naheed Islam was not yet born in 1996, when prime minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh began her first term in office. In 2009, when she was elected to her second term, Islam had just turned 11. On August 5, he brought an abrupt end to Hasina’s 15-year long autocracy.

The 26-year-old Islam, a sociology major at Dhaka University, led the democratic uprising against Hasina’s patronage hires that had solidified her power base. Ostensibly, this patronage was meant to reward the relatives of those who fought for the country’s independence in 1971, when Bangladesh broke away from the mother country Pakistan. Over the years, however, this pretense thinned out as a fig leaf for stacking the government with party loyalists. The Awami League, which Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman founded, and she led, dished out jobs to those who pledged fealty to the party. Patronage hires, in turn, helped suppress dissent and accelerate concentration of power in the ever-grasping hands of Hasina.

During the democratic uprising, Hasina called on her party loyalists government-wide to crush the protesters whom she contemptuously slurred as Razakars (hired assassins). Those beholden to her answered the call with ardor, swarming the streets confronting, bullying, and even slaughtering protesters. Dhaka University, which was the epicenter of the uprising and Naheed Islam’s headquarters, saw countless bloody encounters in which party loyalists unleashed brutality against protesters. Similarly, security services were merciless to protesting students and their allies. Yet, in the face of lethal violence, protesters stood their ground while dying in the hundreds.

What fortified protesters’ determination to push back against state violence was their uncertain economic future. College and university students who swelled the ranks of protesters were dejected at ever-scarce jobs in the private sector, which was dominated by textiles that account for 80 percent of the country’s exports. Despite its staggering contribution to the GDP, the textile industry cannot soak up thousands of freshly minted graduates each year. The textile sector employs around 4 million workers, but it is a highly gendered sector: 80 percent of all textile workers are women. That’s why public-sector employment became ever more attractive. But to land such jobs, college and university graduates had to grease the party machine with party loyalty.

As many as 30 percent of government jobs were reserved for patronage hires that party bosses would distribute to those who swore fidelity to the party, i.e., the Awami League. This led to the political capture of government by one party and one person who brooked no dissent, which she ruled unpatriotic. Dissidents found themselves jailed or exiled. Khaleda Zia, leader of the main opposition party, Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the political nemesis of Hasina, had to spend the past 15 years in jail or house arrest. She was released the day after Hasina fled into exile.

Zia’s freedom owes itself to mass disaffection over quota jobs, which had been simmering for years. Hasina had been see-sawing with protesters: suppressing them when she could, retreating when she couldn’t. In 2018, she suspended the quota after mass protests by students. But in June this year, she had the Supreme Court restore the same on appeal that ignited a new round of protests in July through early August.

A month of democratic uprising brought Hasina to heel. She was, however, hopeful of surviving the mass revolt, as she did in the past. Hours before her motorcade of over a dozen vehicles headed for a nearby military airbase to fly her out of Dhaka, Hasina was still huddling with her defense and security chiefs. She was instructing military leaders to follow the example of her police and paramilitary forces that had sternly dealt with protesters. By then, they had already slain over 400 of them. The chief of army staff, who is Hasina’s relation by marriage, pleaded with her that violence was not the answer to a mass movement that had swept the country and whose advancing throngs were within striking distance of her residence. Hasina was adamant that the protest movement could be tamed by the strategic deployment of violence. As this back and forth continued, Hasina’s sister, who was visiting her, intervened and called her sibling out of the huddle to have a word in private.

Minutes after, Hasina returned to the meeting unpersuaded. By then, the chief of army staff had Hasina’s son, who lives in the United States, on the phone to speak with her. The son politely told his mother that it was over. By the time Hasina came around to the chief of army staff’s pleading, she didn’t even have time to write her resignation. She hurriedly gathered what came to hand and left her residence. Her motorcade had to make several detours to evade the frightening surge of protesters. Hours after her departure, protesters were swarming her palace, helping themselves to food, flowerpots, fans, and wall clocks ripped off the mansion’s walls. A young woman was seen getting a workout on a treadmill. The chaotic scenes evoked the images in 2022 of protesters breaching the mansion of the Sri Lankan president, who also had to flee the country in the face of public protests.

Hasina, however, presided over a booming economy that quadrupled on her watch from $102 billion in 2009 to $437 billion in 2023, making Bangladesh the second largest economy in south Asia, next only to India. The country’s per capita GDP of $2,529 in 2023 was highest in the entire south Asia. More importantly, she saw the poverty rate slashed from 44 percent in 1991 to 18.7 percent in 2022. The unemployment rate, at 5.1 percent in 2023, was the lowest on the subcontinent.

What, then, caused the mass eruption against her and her government?

It began with the pandemic in 2020 that put immense pressure on the household economies. Bangladesh, having been a textile-dominated economy, endured a dramatic dip in garment orders. About a million workers, one-fourth of the entire textile sector’s workforce, were rendered jobless. On top of that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a steep spike in fuel prices that Bangladesh massively subsidized. To make matters worse, multilateral institutions forced the government to cut fuel subsidies in half. This cut raised the price of everything that needs fuel to operate: electricity, food, transportation, groceries, and all manner of everyday staples. Remittances that finance the current account (trade balance) and keep the foreign exchange reserves replenished dropped as well. This sent food and fuel prices soaring. Faced with a gathering financial drought, the government went to the IMF in 2022 to seek $4.5 billions in loans to pay the bills.

It is tempting to paint former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as the villain of the piece. But in the grand scheme of things it is the neoliberal economic order that felled her. Similar trends are sweeping across south Asia. In 2022, Sri Lanka, once a prosperous economy, suffered the collapse of government after going into default. The same year, the Pakistani government fell, again over fears of default. This year, India’s ruling Bhartiya Janta Party was humbled at the ballot box, losing its absolute majority in parliament because it courted crony capitalism.

And now Hasina’s government. She suspects that the United States played a role in her ouster since she refused to give it St. Martin Island, whose strategic location could help surveille the Bay of Bengal and the entire Indian Ocean. The State Department laughed off the suggestion. It seems that every fallen leader finds it seductive to claim cheap martyrdom by blaming their fall on the United States. True to this pattern, Imran Khan, a former prime minister of Pakistan, accused the United States of toppling his government in 2022 because he denied it military bases, a canard that even Noam Chomsky debunked as nonsense. That said, Hasina is as much victim of the neoliberal reality as she is a villain to her detractors.

The bottom line is that the bottom line led to Hasina’s ouster.

The global mpox emergency and the destruction of public health

Benjamin Mateus

The declaration by the World Health Organization of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) for the more lethal variant of mpox (clade 1b, also designated 1 MPXV) underscores the dangers facing the world’s population from the systematic destruction of public health services under capitalism.

The mpox emergency comes amid a blistering ninth COVID-19 wave that has driven up infection rates the world over, while at the same time the rapidly evolving H5N1 bird flu virus threatens human populations.

There has been barely a word mentioned by the leaders of the major capitalist countries on the threat posed by yet another deadly virus, on top of outbreaks of polio, cholera, dengue, measles and other diseases in many parts of the world.

In the US elections, neither Democrat Kamala Harris nor Republican Donald Trump has said one word about the mpox emergency declaration and its implications. Both treat COVID-19 as a thing of the past, except as a weapon in their efforts to demonize China.

Meanwhile, the WHO has yet to find the paltry $15 million in funding to address the most acute needs of bringing trained personnel and supplies to a conflict region, the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to suppress the mpox outbreak. 

This is the third PHEIC since the WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the COVID-19 emergency on January 30, 2020. The second was in July 2022, when a multi-country outbreak of mpox occurred with the less deadly strain of the virus, which began in May of that year in conjunction with the complete lifting of all social precautions against COVID-19. The emergency declarations for both COVID-19 and the mpox clade 2b were prematurely ended in May 2023 despite ongoing infections and the threat to the safety of the public. 

The first mpox outbreak led to 100,000 confirmed cases across 116 countries, with 208 reported deaths, according to the latest figures. But the more virulent strain of mpox which has now spread outside the DRC to neighboring countries in Africa, as well as through travelers outside the continent, could have far more dire consequences.

Although health authorities have repeated that the mpox virus is spread only through direct and close contact, recommendations by the European and US CDC have suggested that respiratory precautions be taken and that only healthcare workers vaccinated against mpox should care for patients. Whether this particular strain is capable of airborne transmission or may be able to become so needs to be disclosed and appropriate precautions taken in the firmest manner possible.

The public health response to the more virulent mpox strain shows the same troubling pattern as with coronavirus and the previous mpox outbreak: worsening situation reports, punctuated by continued inaction and a laissez faire attitude about the dangers posed by these pathogens, both to the local population immediately at risk and to the global population.

Since the beginning of 2022, health authorities have identified 37,583 confirmed and suspected cases of mpox clade 1b with 1,451 deaths, a case fatality rate (CFR) of 3.9 percent across 15 African Union member states. This figure is well above the 2-3 percent CFR worldwide from COVID-19 first cited in 2020. A further review in 2021 placed that figure even lower at 1 percent for the general population. Mpox could thus be three or four times as lethal as COVID-19.

Unlike COVID-19, where the fatality index is higher among the oldest patients, the reverse is true with the current virulent strain of mpox. As WHO data shows, children are nearly four times more likely to die from the virus than adults. While the case fatality rate is 2.4 percent for adults, it jumps to 8.6 percent among those 15 and younger. Of the mpox deaths reported in 2024, 62 percent were among children under five.

Once infected, there is an incubation period of 2-3 weeks before symptoms, when patients experience fevers, aches, fatigue and enlarged lymph nodes; then a few days later, the characteristic rash develops. Additionally, patients with confirmed or suspected infection or exposure must also be isolated for at least four to eight weeks until they are cleared of harboring the virus, or the disease is allowed to run its course, and they are no longer infectious. Depending on their symptoms, they need constant evaluation and monitoring by medical professionals.

In the war-torn region of eastern DRC, in the capital of North Kivu, Goma, where the population of 2 million is predominately composed of refugees and internally displaced people seeking safety from the rebel militias, there are ample opportunities for the mpox virus to run through the makeshift camps and infect people. The healthcare centers are flooded with patients beyond any normal capacity.

As one epidemiologist and mpox expert said to Save the Children, “The worst case I’ve seen is that of a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when he contracted mpox and has now been in our care for four weeks. He got infected because hospital overcrowding meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with someone else who had the virus, which was undiagnosed at the time. He had rashes all over his body, his skin was starting to blacken, and he had a high fever. His parents were stunned by his condition and were scared he was dying.”

For the whole of 2023, there were close to 15,000 mpox cases reported in African countries, a 78.5 percent increase compared to 2022. In the first seven months of 2024, health authorities have identified 14,250 cases, nearly as many as in the entire previous year, and representing a 160 percent increase over the same period in 2023. The number of deaths, 456, is up 19 percent from the same period last year. So far, 96 percent of all cases and deaths have occurred in the DRC.

With last week’s confirmation of mpox clade 1b in a person, who sought care in Stockholm a day after the PHEIC declaration, it is reminiscent of the same scenario that played out two years earlier, when authorities offered assurances that the threat posed to the public was minimal before mpox spread quickly to every corner of the globe. Even though the European CDC has stated that they expect more cases with the deadlier strain, they continue to assert the overall risk remains low.  

This completely turns on its head the precautionary principle in public health, a fundamental tenet that asserts the need to prevent disease rather than adopting a passive wait-and-see approach.

The driving force of public health policy under capitalism is not saving lives or preventing debilitating illness, but minimizing the impact on capitalist profit-making. This has produced devastating consequences in the still-raging coronavirus pandemic: deaths of tens of millions, hundreds of millions becoming infected and re-infected with SARS-CoV-2 each year, and the emergence of Long COVID as a mass disabling disease that has become as common as heart and circulatory disorders combined. Estimates at the end of 2023 place the number of Long COVID cases at a staggering 410 million people.

The long-term consequences on the generations of working class people who continue to face the brunt of Long COVID remains unknown, but early indications suggest that things can continue to worsen. There exists a very real possibility of higher rates of chronic respiratory, cardiac and neurological disorders not only for the elderly or immunocompromised, but for even the youngest patients and those who suffered only asymptomatic infections. There is also growing evidence that cancers are appearing at an earlier age and assume more aggressive characteristics.

25,000 jobs at risk at Stellantis plants in Italy

Marianne Arens

Planned job cuts at Stellantis in Italy next year will lead to the destruction of up to 25,000 jobs in car production. This was announced on August 8. Ferdinando Uliano, chairman of the Christian Metalworkers’ Union FIM/CISL, said that Stellantis wants to eliminate at least 12,000 jobs in its Italian plants, and this will also mean the loss of an additional 12,000 to 13,000 jobs at parts suppliers.

The announcement was preceded by a round table (tavolo automotivo) in Rome led by the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy (Mimit) Adolfo Urso, who belongs to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s fascist ruling party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). In addition to Stellantis representatives, all three major metal unions—Fiom/Cgil, Fim/Cisl and Uilm—participated. Speaking to Italian TV station La7, Stellantis HR chief Giuseppe Manca said: “Stellantis has communicated to the unions the Group’s plan for Italy, which assigns a mission to each plant by the end of the decade.”

Stellantis Italy was created in spring 2021 through the merger of Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) with the French PSA group (Peugeot, Citroën). Since then, jobs at Fiat have been systematically reduced. Shortly before the merger, Fiat had about 55,000 employees; today there are only about 43,000, of which about 15,000 are in the Turin region.

Stellantis’s plans in Italy are part of a global jobs massacre affecting plants across Europe and the US. “If the brands don’t bring in money, we will shut them down,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares threatened a few weeks ago. For example, another 1,000 jobs at Opel in Germany are in acute danger. Again and again, production is interrupted by phases of short-time work. In Austria, the Opel plant in Aspern was closed last month, affecting 220 employees. In France, Stellantis has cut 600 jobs at its Mulhouse plant.

In the US, 2,450 workers are to be laid off at the beginning of October at the truck assembly plant in Warren, Michigan. Previously, 2,000 temporary workers and hundreds of employees were laid off from other American plants.

In Italy, the job massacre by Stellantis is aimed at the heart of the Fiat Group, which also includes Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Maserati. Fiat (short for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino), was synonymous with Italian car production 50 years ago, with over 2 million vehicles rolling off the assembly line annually in Turin alone. Today, Fiat has been systematically dismantled by Stellantis, and new models such as the E-Fiat 600 are being built in Poland and elsewhere.

This relocation of Fiat models to Eastern Europe sparked a heated argument earlier this year between Meloni and Stellantis, or the Agnelli family, the former owner of Fiat. Meloni explained, “If you want to sell a car advertised as an Italian jewel, this car has to be made in Italy.” She demanded to increase domestic car production to 1 million vehicles per year.

Stellantis boss Tavares, on the other hand, demanded better conditions from the Italian state in the form of incentives for the purchase of electric cars and the subsidising of its energy costs. This will enable him to increase his annual production from about 750,000 vehicles (2023) to 1 million.

Relations between the Meloni government and the Agnelli family have been strained for some time. The daily La Repubblica, which is controlled by the Agnelli family, is more politically supportive of the former ruling Democratic Party (PD). The newspaper has long accused Meloni of privatizing important state-owned companies, such as the energy company Eni, although the former PD heads of government also privatized state-owned companies.

Meloni has countered with the accusation that the Agnelli family, or its holding company Exor, “sold Fiat to the French.” Exor is Stellantis’s largest single shareholder at 15 percent, and Agnelli’s grandson John Elkann holds the position of co-chairman alongside Tavares at Stellantis.

The conflicts mainly revolve around how the Italian ruling class can safeguard its profit interests in a world market that is increasingly in crisis. While Tavares and Elkann are shifting production to countries with low wages and costs, Meloni is fomenting nationalism to divide the working class. However, the jobs can only be defended if the workers unite internationally and fight together.

This is what the trade unions, which are themselves nationalist and deeply integrated into Italy’s capitalist economy, are trying to prevent. They are part of the conspiracy against the workers. Their entirely toothless protests against the job cuts at Stellantis cannot hide this fact. Their main objective is to prevent a working class uprising.

Rocco Palombella, chairman of the metal union Uilm, described the clear-cut plans as “hypothetical” and addressed Stellantis with a warning: “Factories also have a social role to play in the country.”

Fim General Secretary Uliano also only publicly warned of the massacre of 25,000 jobs next year in order to appeal to the government. He said: “In 2025, both the related industries and Stellantis will exhaust the social safety nets. If action is not taken in time, there will be mass redundancies.”

He called for the welfare benefit for short-time work, which the state grants to workers under the so-called “Cassa Integrazione,” to be extended. Currently, payments from the Cassa Integrazione are limited to three years.

Michele De Palma (Fiom/Cgil) argued that the government and Stellantis should jointly draw up a “strategic and extraordinary plan for the Italian automotive industry” and lamely demanded that the transition to electric vehicles must also be just for workers.

All three unions already signed an agreement with Stellantis on March 27, 2024 to cut around 5,000 jobs. It is supposed to run through “voluntary redundancies,” which merely means that workers give up their jobs under pressure and for a meager severance pay.

In Turin, 1,500 employees are to go “voluntarily,” and both assembly line workers, technicians and white collar workers are affected. For months, over 2,000 workers involved in the production of the E-Fiat 500 and the Maserati in Mirafiori have been repeatedly affected by short-time work. In order to avert an imminent closure, the workers occupied the traditional Mirafiori plant in Turin for three days in February.

The Pomigliano d’Arco plant near Naples, the former Alfasud production site, is also threatened with closure. In July, a strike for several hours took place against the unbearable heat in the workplace. In Pratola Serra, Fiat workers went on strike for a day in February after a 52-year-old colleague was crushed and killed by a machine.

Hundreds of jobs are currently being cut in Pomigliano, Melfi (Basilicata), Termoli (Molise), Cassino (Lazio) and Pratola Serra (Campania). Again and again, workers are temporarily—sometimes for months—released from work and put on short-time work benefits.

Ukraine continues offensive inside Russia

Clara Weiss

The Ukrainian military’s offensive into two Russian border regions, Kursk and Belgorod, is entering its second week. Kiev claims to have captured 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles), including at least 74 settlements and hundreds of prisoners of war. The troops carrying out the first invasion of Russia since the end of World War II were trained in the UK, and are using American and German battle tanks as well as American-supplied HIMARS rockets. 

A destroyed Russian tank lies on a roadside near Sudzha, Kursk region, Russia, Friday, Aug. 16, 2024. [AP Photo]

So far, Ukraine has blown up two bridges in the region and has interdicted a key rail line that the Russian army used to deliver supplies and troops to the front in Ukraine. 

The destruction of the bridges has also disrupted ongoing efforts to evacuate residents from the combat zones in both Kursk and Belgorod. Over 180,000 people have already been evacuated, and the continuing evacuations indicate that the Kremlin is not anticipating a quick end to the fighting.

Nevertheless, according to Russian news reports, a significant number of civilians still remain in areas now occupied by Ukrainian forces. The Russian paper Nezavisimaya Gazeta cited Russian pro-Kremlin war journalist Aleksandr Kharchenko as saying, “A large number of our citizens are under the control of the Ukrainian forces.”

On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that the goal of the incursion was to create “a buffer zone.” He stated, “it is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions.”

Russian authorities also claim that Kiev is preparing an attack on the nuclear power plants in the Russian region of Kursk and Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine, currently controlled by Russian forces. Fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, is ongoing.

Underscoring both the involvement of the US in the operation and its predatory character, retired general David Petraeus, one of the greatest war criminals of the US invasion of Iraq, and later head of the CIA, praised the Ukrainian invasion on the BBC Global News Podcast. “This is not unlike when we did the invasion of Iraq, a great armored brigade did the thunder run through Baghdad and ends up on the airfield and they said, ‘Hey, let’s just gonna stay here’. Let’s develop the situation, let’s see what happens from here, how does the enemy respond. I think that’s where they are.”

Whatever the immediate military and political calculations behind the incursion, its underlying strategy and goals reveal the imperialist character of the war waged by the imperialist powers against Russia. NATO deliberately provoked the invasion by the Putin regime in order to use Ukraine as a staging ground for a much broader war whose ultimate goal is the carve-up of the entire region. 

No one has been more open about these goals than Ukraine’s military leadership. Both the ex-head of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny, and the head of military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, have repeatedly been photographed with a map of a carved-up Russia, divided up between different powers. Based on this map, a substantial portion of what is now southeastern Russia, including the Kursk, Belgorod and Rostov regions, would fall to Ukraine in a modern-day version of the long-standing aim of the fascists of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) to establish a “Greater Ukraine”.  

A map of a carved-up Russia. Both the former head of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny, and the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, have been photographed with this map in their offices since 2022.

This strategy includes not only military offensives into Russian territory but also terrorist attacks within Russia, such as the March Moscow Crocus City Hall attack, which killed over 140 people, and political assassinations. From the standpoint of the imperialist powers, the ultimate aim is to weaken the Putin regime militarily and politically, in order to create conditions for its overthrow by NATO-backed sections of the Russian oligarchy and state apparatus as part of an effort to bring the entire region under their direct control. 

The Putin regime, which has emerged as a Bonapartist regime out of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism, is, by its very class and political nature, extremely vulnerable to such pressures. As the WSWS has explained, its principal function consists of  safeguarding the vast social privileges of the oligarchy. It has sought to do so by balancing, first, between different sections of the oligarchy, second, between the oligarchy and imperialism, and third, between the oligarchy and the working class. But the entire strategy of imperialism and its proxy in Ukraine, which consists of both ever more aggressive military offensives and systematic efforts to fuel tensions within the oligarchy, is undermining the Kremlin’s policies.

So far, the Putin regime’s response to the first imperialist-backed invasion of the country since the defeat of the Nazis by the Red Army in World War II has been markedly muted, itself one of many indicators that conflicts are indeed raging behind the scenes. The incursion came shortly after the Putin regime initiated a major purge of its army leadership. Moreover, just days before the incursion, the Kremlin had negotiated a prisoner swap with Washington, in which it released several of the most prominent representatives of the NATO-backed opposition, most notably Vladimir Kara-Murza and several members of the team of the late Alexei Navalny, long the central stooge of imperialism in the oligarchy.

A lengthy interview aired by Russia’s leading state TV channel, “Rossiia,” with the president of Belarus and one of the principal allies of Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, on Saturday, provided some insight into the considerations and heated discussions within the oligarchy. Lukashenko reiterated Putin’s warnings that NATO was preparing a direct entry into the war which would mean “World War III”. He stated that with the invasion of Kursk, Ukraine was trying to provoke Russia into a general mobilization to “destabilize society from within, we are not prepared to do this, we don’t want this.” Lukashenko also claimed that Ukraine had amassed 120,000 troops on its border with Belarus and that Minsk had responded by mobilizing a third of its military—some 65,000 men—to the already heavily mined border. He then spoke at length about Belarus’s preparations for a potential war with NATO member Poland and threatened that Ukraine’s Kursk invasion could end in its own “destruction.”

He insisted repeatedly, “We don’t want escalation. We don’t want this war against all of NATO. We don’t want it. But if they go for it, then we won’t have a choice.” Lukashenko then discussed the stationing of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia on Belarusian territory. When asked whether he was prepared to “press the red button,” he emphatically declared that he was, as soon as the borders of Belarus were violated. “If you don’t want this, then let’s sit down at the negotiating table and let’s end this little fight [i.e., the war in Ukraine].” He went on to claim that there are “no Nazis” in Ukraine anymore and that the Kremlin’s supposed goal of the “de-Nazification of Ukraine” had been effectively accomplished.  

Of course, the Putin regime, which is itself steeped in Great Russian chauvinism and maintains extensive ties to the far-right, never wanted, nor could it undertake, a serious struggle against fascism. Nevertheless, these statements by Lukashenko, made on Russian state television as Ukrainian troops on Russian soil are using Nazi insignia on their uniforms, suggest that significant sections of the state and oligarchy are responding to the invasion by intensifying discussions on how to reach a negotiated settlement with imperialism as fast as possible. 

At the same time, other sections in the oligarchy warn that the country must prepare for a protracted war and a potential second mobilization. One characteristic comment on the right-wing pro-Kremlin website Vzglyad.Ru evoked the memory of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which claimed the lives of 27 million Soviet citizens, and warned that “Victory will require a protracted war.”

Record temperatures spread wildfires in Greece and southern Europe

John Vassilopoulos

Wildfires have again taken hold this summer in Greece, Italy, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria and other south-eastern European countries.

Nearly 10,000 hectares (approx. 40 square miles) of mostly forest land was burnt in northeastern Attica in a fire that erupted on August 11 in the village of Varnavas, 30km north-east of the Greek capital Athens.

Flames burn a vehicle at a business during a fire in northern Athens, August 12, 2024 [AP Photo/Aggelos Barai]

Aided by gale force winds and high temperatures approaching 40 degrees Celsius, a wall of flames over 25 metres high and covering a 30km radius spread south and reached Athens’ northern suburbs of Nea Penteli, Patima Halandriou and Vrilissia—just 14km away from the centre of Athens.

This is the first time since 1981 that a fire has reached an urban area in the outskirts of the capital. The sky of Attica was covered with black smoke with the Hellenic Thoracic Society advising those suffering with lung and heart problems to avoid going outside.

The blaze was the second largest the Attica region has experienced since 2009, when just over 13,000 hectares of forest land were burnt. Last year Greece saw the biggest fire in the European Union since 2000 when around 90,000 hectares were burnt in the Evros region of northern Greece near the land border with Turkey, resulting in the death of 18 refugees.

Due to this week’s fires, thousands were evacuated including patients and staff from a children hospital and a military hospital, both near Mount Penteli. The body of a 65-year-old worker was discovered in the bathroom of a burnt out factory in Patima Halandriou, where she was seeking shelter. She had been employed at the factory for 20 years.

The blaze raged for more than 40 hours with firefighters still putting out remnants of the fire three days later. It led to extensive power cuts, after at least 120 power poles were damaged.

The increasing frequency of fires in Greece are the result of climate change, which has led to record high temperatures, with June and July this year the hottest since records began. Temperatures approaching and even above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) are becoming the norm during the summer in large parts of Europe.

This is part of a wider trend across the continent, which is sweltering under a heatwave with fires also breaking out in Italy’s Latina Province and in the north of Portugal. Record temperatures in Spain prompted the government to declare a drought emergency with water restrictions imposed on the island of Tenerife. The Mediterranean is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which according to the United Nations Environment Programme is heating up 20 percent faster than the global average.

In July, wildfires ripped through Albania, beginning in the south of the country and travelling north. Further fires broke out in recent weeks in Albania, Bulgaria and Sardinia. At the end of July, an elderly man in North Macedonia was killed in a forest fire burning since early July.

Research by the Barcelona-based Institute for Global Health found there were more than 47,000 heat related deaths across Europe because of high temperatures last year, the warmest year on record globally and the second warmest in Europe. Greece had the worst heat related mortality rate in Europe, with 393 deaths per million compared with the European average of 88.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said: “We constantly have to become better. And from any mistakes and any fire that gets out of control we always we always have to see what we can learn and what we can do better.”

The reality is that the conservative New Democracy (ND) government has learned nothing since it came to power in 2019. In the last eight years 13 major fires have burnt more than 45,000 hectares of forest land within Attica, 37 percent of the region’s total.

Scientists have raised concerns about the long-term effects on the health of Attica’s inhabitants—nearly 40 percent of Greece’s total population. With only 0.96 sq. metres of green space per inhabitant, Athens already has one of the worst ratios of green spaces per capita in the world—well below the minimum of 9 square metres per capita recommended by the World Health Organisation.

In April, Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias announced a 2.1 billion programme to combat natural disasters caused by climate change with a view to upgrade its crumbling fire service fleet of planes, helicopters and fires engines. None of this will be available in the next two years.

Between 2020 and 2010, €1.1 billion was cut from forest protection and forest fire service due to successive austerity packages imposed at the behest of the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The trend has continued. The national park in Mount Parnitha north of Athens only has seven rangers to cover an area of 35,000 hectares of forest land. Speaking to Documento in April Forestry and Environmental Scientist Eleftherios Stamatopoulos said: “If we invested in the management of forests with the 145 million euros that [fire fighting] Air Tractors cost we could have covered the needs of forests for twenty years.”

Greece’s fire service is understaffed by 4,000, while fire-fighters have an average age of 47 and most fire engines are more than 20 years old. Fire-fighters are routinely shipped all over the country to fight blazes. Speaking to Documento last month the president of the Panhellenic Union of Temporary Firefighters recounted his recent experience of being shipped from Thessaloniki in Northern Greece to fight a fire in Keratea in Southern Attica: “They sent personnel from Thessaloniki with five vehicles and 20 of us crammed in a small space. We got to Keratea and I was dropped off in an area where I knew none of the roads. We arrived at 4pm after an eight-hour road-trip in a 25-year-old vehicle with no air conditioning”.

Greece’s population is often left to their own devices to fight fires that break out. On the Mega Channel, Dimitris Megagiannis, a livestock farmer in Penteli, said following the recent fire in Attica: “Nothing’s left of my farm. There have been many fires here since 1995 and we have put all of them out with a fire engine that was always here. Today we are at the mercy of God: Not one firefighting plane or fire engine. It was just me with my son and two buckets of water the whole time. Until I couldn’t take any more at some point and I passed out and don’t know what happened afterwards. When I came to after 10-15 minutes I heard my animals bleating and dying.”

Financial support offered to those affected by fires is risible. Owners of burnt homes are offered between €5,000-10,000 and small businesses between €2,000-4,000.

In a tweet with the hashtag #EUSolidarity, Janez Lenarčič, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, boasted of the EU’s in fact minimal assistance to Greece which consisted of “2 planes from the rescEU fleet from Italy, one rescEU helicopter from France and ground firefighting teams from Romania and Czechia.”

Cuts to the fire service are an EU-wide phenomenon, despite the increase of wildfires across the continent due to climate change. According to Eurostat, 10 countries cut firefighting jobs between 2021 and 2022, with the largest drops recorded in France, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Belgium. France cut its firefighters by 5,400, while Romania and Portugal slashed their firefighters by 4,250 and 2,907 respectively.

The pseudo-left Syriza, now Greece’s official opposition, has tried to make political capital of the Attica fires. In a statement the party denounced “the audacity and irresponsibility of Mr Mitsotakis, which is unprecedented.”

But having governed the country between 2015 and 2019 Syriza bears as much responsibility as ND for the devastations wrought by forest fires in Greece over the last years. After betraying its massive popular mandate to end austerity in the summer of 2015, the Syriza government signed a third austerity package from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank. This imposed even deeper spending cuts, decimating the living standards of millions. Syriza, which presented itself as a fervent defender of the environment, presided over the forest fire in the summer of 2018 at Mati, a small coastal town outside Athens, in which over 100 lost their lives.