THE RELEASE last Friday of a video call between senior German military leaders has caused a massive row within the NATO countries with its explosive confirmation that Britain has ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine and that the German air force is actively planning for missile attacks on Russian territory.
The audio recording of the discussion, which took place on an unsecured video conference platform, was ‘intercepted’ by Russian intelligence and then published by the Russian media. German officials have since confirmed that the published recording is authentic.
What has caused a crisis amongst the NATO powers is that during the course of the discussion between four senior German military officials, including Air Force chief Ingo Gerhartz, they can be heard discussing supplying Ukraine with long range cruise missiles and that these missiles could be used to hit Kerch Bridge which links Russia to Crimea.
While discussing the deployment of German long range missiles – something that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly ruled out – to be used directly on targets within Russia, they talk approvingly of the involvement of British troops on the ground in Ukraine.
Scholtz, in a statement last week, emphasised that he would not authorise the deployment of Taurus missiles to Ukraine because that would require German forces to match the British and French who were engaged in ‘target control’ and that risked making Germany a ‘participant in the war’.
Being an active participant in the war against Russia is exactly what the UK is doing behind the scenes.
Gerhartz can be heard saying that Britain ‘have a few people on the ground (operating) in reachback’. Reachback is a military term that describes how equipment and support from the rear is brought forward to be deployed on the front line.
The clear inference is that UK forces are not just composed of a small number of troops training Ukrainians how to operate these missiles but are right at the front involved in firing them.
This flies in the face of all the assurances from the Tories that only a ‘small number of troops’ providing protection for British diplomats and training for Ukrainian forces are involved in the increasingly desperate war being waged by NATO against Russia in Ukraine.
This latest revelation of combat troops being directly involved in Ukraine, follows the report last week in the Financial Times that a senior European defence official has acknowledged that ‘Western special forces’ are unofficially on the ground in Ukraine despite all the denials of NATO governments.
This comment was in response to French President Emmanuel Macron who told reporters that ‘nothing should be ruled out’ to ‘prevent Russia from winning this war.’ Macron refused to rule out the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly warned NATO’s European member states of a potential escalation of the war if they deploy troops to Ukraine, and said this latest leak demonstrates the direct involvement of the ‘collective west’. Putin warned last week that this risked a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
What is clear, is that the strategy of imperialism to defeat Russia militarily in Ukraine while simultaneously destroying it economically through sanctions to the point where regime change can be effected and Russia opened up once more for capitalist exploitation, has failed spectacularly.
Far from being crippled by sanctions the Russian economy has grown in the past year, while the economies of the UK and Europe have crashed into recession.
At the same time, despite all the billions in military aid handed to the Ukrainian regime, their forces have suffered devastating defeats.
Now in desperation, driven by the acute world crisis of capitalism, the imperialist nations are prepared to risk plunging the world into a nuclear war.
The only way to put an end to imperialist war is for the working class in Europe, Britain and the US to mobilise its strength by immediately organising general strikes to bring down their governments, and going forward to workers’ governments and socialism. This is the way to end imperialist war, by putting an end to imperialism with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
