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.

Syria: The fall of the regime, the future of the country & Turkey’s war on the Kurds

 

[Educational given to the Melbourne branch of Socialist Alliance, December 17, 2024.]

The extremely rapid and unexpected fall of Syria’s Assad dictatorship is a political earthquake in the Middle East. A regime (father and son) that had endured since 1970 is gone.

There were hardly any battles; the regime’s forces didn’t want to fight and just melted away (deserted, defected). Assad’s long-time backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — had all been weakened by recent events but in any case they couldn’t support the regime if its own forces had lost all will to fight.