What’s really at stake in Ukraine

For many years the mainstream media has been full of relentless, wall-to-wall propaganda against Russia and China. As the US-NATO defeat in Ukraine becomes impossible to deny, the campaign against Russia and its ally China has intensified.

Recently, for instance, former Victorian Labor premier Daniel Andrews was excoriated by the media because he appeared in a photo in Beijing with “rogues and dictators” (ABC News), namely, Putin, Xi and Kim Jong-un — currently the top hate figures for the West. If he had appeared in a photo with, say, Trump, Starmer, Macron and Merz — lying Western capitalist politicians who specialise in blighting the lives of ordinary people in the interests of the corporate rich — nothing would have been said.

The wheels are falling off the system

 

Under intense pressure from the Trump administration, at its June 25 meeting NATO agreed to massively boost “defence” (I.e., military) spending. Along with the turn to war, an intense Russophobia has gripped the European political elite. To justify its existence NATO needs enemies and Russia fits the bill. Fear and loathing of Russia is both cause and consequence of the NATO countries’ plans to dramatically increase military budgets. The failure of the West’s proxy war in Ukraine has stoked anti-Russia sentiment to unprecedented levels.

The Ukraine war & Trump

1. The Ukraine war was actively and persistently prepared by the West. The work began years before Ukraine became independent in 1991 following the breakup of the USSR, dating from the point where it became possible for Western NGOs to operate on Soviet territory under perestroika. As key US operative Victoria Nuland notoriously boasted in 2013, the sums spent were of the order of $5 billion.

This process took a huge step forward with the Maidan events in 2014 and the coming to power of anti-Russian chauvinist and far right forces (many ideologically inspired by World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera), determined to crush the ethnic Russian population and “Ukrainise” the whole country. They began a civil war against the Donbass.