PM Boris Johnson said yesterday that Ukrainians are ‘fighting heroically’ and with ‘great success’ in some places against Russian troops who have intervened to prevent NATO recruiting the Ukraine, and are acting with great moderation.
Following a phone call with the Ukrainian president, the Prime Minister said things ‘are not going all the way of President Putin’. But he said more had to be done to ‘change the heavy odds that Ukraine faces’ from the Russian invasion. Tougher sanctions, including a move to shut Russia out of the global payments system Swift, were needed, he said.
Johnson is currently attacking Russia with great vigour to avoid police charges that are hanging over him after he breached repeatedly his own anti-Covid laws. So he has a personal interest in this war,
However at the same time as he was speaking a Russian oil tanker was unloading in the Orkneys! In fact the UK ruling class and the Tory Party has had a close and continuous relationship with the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy since Putin came to office.
The Tory Party has recruited and accepted millions of pounds from Russian oligarchs, many of whom were given Tory Party membership cards. For all Johnson’s now anti-Putin demagogy, alongside the Thatcher clone Truss in competition with him, British capitalism is knee-deep in its relationship with Russia.
Detaching from Russia will cost the ruling class billions, as it will have to pay much more for the oil and gas and wheat that it consumes in abundance and is currently provided by Russia.
The cost of the Truss and Johnson abuse of Russia will be in billions added to the energy charges of British workers and a massive rise in food and bread prices.
Johnson is set to bite the hand that feeds him! The reason why is that capitalism on a worldscale has been eclipsed by the development of Russia and China.
Even the US under Biden insists that its troops will not fight in the Ukraine. With worldwide debt and prices rising rapidly the UK and US ruling classes know that they are going to have to make the UK and US workers pay with high prices for their crisis. This situation is sharpening the class struggle all over the capitalist world.
Meanwhile, the US and UK militaries are getting ready for a war on two fronts, for the inevitable clash with Russia and China, and for war with their own working classes as inflation wipes out the value of wages and benefits.
Shortly after PM Johnson’s comments on Saturday night, the European Commission alongside the US, Canada and UK announced that selected Russian banks would be removed from the Swift messaging system.
This in itself will bankrupt a whole section of the UK bosses and push prices up sky high.
Their only solution to this crisis is to go to war with the Russian and Chinese degenerated and deformed workers states to try and resolve the crisis at their expense, and at the same time begin pauperising the working classes of the US the UK and the EU with massive rises in the cost of living.
This is why the NATO war chiefs are interested to see whether they can bring the Ukraine into NATO without a war, in order to prepare the great war against Russia. This is the source of PM Johnson’s and Foreign Secretary Truss’ baiting of the Russian leaders, calling them thugs and criminals.
This class hatred has seen Truss support the formation of an International Brigade to fight in the Ukraine. This will certainly resolve the unemployment crisis, by killing off large numbers of the unemployed and homeless!
The issue that faces the working class of the US and the UK is not how to defeat Russia, but how to bring down the ruling classes of the US and the UK in defence of their jobs wages and living standards.
The way forward is for the workers of Europe and the Americas to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International to lead the US, UK and EU socialist revolutions to smash capitalism and create the conditions for the Russian and Chinese workers to remove the Stalinist bureaucracy. This is the struggle that is now emerging.
