THE US and the EU are set to stiffen and widen their sanctions against Russia. Their intention is to target its finances, energy and defence sectors so as to remove Putin from the right.
All hands are on deck to wage this struggle, from the UK ambassador to the US, Sir Peter Westmacott, to the EU Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The former said in the US that President Putin was a ‘thug’ and a ‘liar’. At the same time the Hague court has fined Russia $50bn for the crime of expropriating the property of the ex-Oligarch and US agent Khodorkovsky.
Russia is to appeal against the $50bn Yukos shareholder payout instead of telling the imperialist court to ‘go to hell’. Bourgeois Lawyers commented that if Russia does not voluntarily accept the ruling, it can be forcibly enforced by shareholders seizing assets abroad.
Leonid Nevzlin, former deputy chairman of Yukos told a Moscow radio station: ‘I think shareholders are ready for the next stage, if Russia refuses to pay them, to search for and seize Russian assets all around the world.’As well the US is accusing Russia of violating the 1987 nuclear missile treaty
What are Russia’s dreadful crimes.
Under Putin it had sought to work with its western ‘colleagues and partners’, but could not allow the US and the UK to destroy Syria in the way that they had destroyed Libya. Russia refused to vote for a Libya style mass murder intervention on the UN Security Council.
It was then forced to support Syria, as it came under violent assault. This action won the support of the working class in the UK, to the point where the Labour Party in the House of Commons could not vote for a war with Syria. This vote drove Obama and Cameron into a fury.
The imperialists decided that the time had come to deal with Putin and the remnants of the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy.
The 2008 world crash demanded, as far as the imperialists were concerned that the world be reordered. If Putin and Co could not just stand by and just watch this happening then they would have to pay the price.
The imperialists then openly intervened in the Ukraine, to install their own regime, as a stepping stone to reordering Belarus and then Russia itself. On February 21 the fascist bands seized power on behalf of the US.
When the workers of Eastern Ukraine would not accept the coup and fought back, Putin and Co were unable to restrain them or get them to accept the new order.
This added added additional fuel on the fires of imperialist anger – and then came the providential crash of Flight 0427. Putin was immediately indicted as being responsible and was publicly denounced by the entire bourgeois media as being a mass murderer.
The decision of the BRICS states to form their own bank and contest the world wide rule of the dollar was the last straw. Economic war has now been been declared on Russia.
Putin came to power in Russia after Yeltsin was unable to restore capitalism. Putin’s regime straddles the contending parties for who is to rule Russia. He has one foot on the oligarchs, who plundered the Soviet economy, but accepted rule by the Kremlin provided their property rights were accepted.
Putin has the other foot on the working class, that defends the gains if the revolution, wants to see the Red Army intervene in the Ukraine, the oligarchs expropriated and the USSR and rule through soviets restored.
The question is which way is the Putin regime going to fall, to the right and to capitalist restoration, or the left through a political revolution and the renewal of soviet power as part of the world socialist revolution.
The current world situation is dominated by the world crisis of capitalism. In every country the working class is under the most vicious attacks in its history and has begun to hit back at the bosses and bankers.
The only way forward for the working class of the world is through the building of sections of the Fourth International in every country, to lead the world socialist revolution that the capitalist crisis is driving forward to its victory and the ending of capitalism and imperialism all over the planet.
