THE Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated yesterday that ‘Russia has begun implementing a scenario intended to destabilise the Ukrainian economy’, adding that this was ‘despite warnings about the danger of such actions for the atmosphere of Ukrainian-Russian relations and their perception in Ukrainian society.’
Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is that the regime of President Yushchenko, supported by the US and the EU after its western assisted ‘orange’ coup, has set its course towards NATO and a capitalist economy. This will mean destabilising closure for Ukrainian heavy industry, including the steel and mining industry, and mass unemployment.
Russia is merely defending itself. It has been selling gas to the Ukraine for £29 per 1,000 cubic metres, as against the bourgeois market rate of £139 per 1,000 cubic metres. This is one of the benefits that flowed directly from the USSR.
The Ukrainian nationalist regime wants to have the best of both worlds. It wants to be subsidised by the Russian workers, and at the same time have a western market economy and ally itself with the imperialists.
It already knows that there is not the slightest chance of the US or the EU giving away gas and oil to the Ukraine, since the US and EU believe in the survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle, and did not back the ‘Orange’ counter revolution to carry the Ukraine on their backs, rather, their intention was, and is, to loot it.
The Western powers have meanwhile moved their NATO war alliance right up to the borders of the Russian Federation. They are now routinely threatening Belarus, and US troops are now stationed in Georgia, bordering Chechnya, as well as having a number of bases in central Asia within striking distance of the oil and gas rich Caspian Sea region.
What is being spelt out by the gas crisis is that an independent Ukrainian state is dependent on cheap Russian gas and oil, and that as a satellite of the Western Powers it will rapidly be de-industrialised and become just a supplier of cheap labour and cheap food for the EU.
The way forward for the Ukraine, after the debacle of the ‘Orange’ counter-revolution, whose leaders immediately came to blows over the spoils of victory, is for the Ukrainian workers to call a general strike to bring down the regime, and to reconstitute the USSR through revolutionary means, reuniting Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan to begin with.
And what of the British statesmen who are now talking about the chill wind that they say they can see blowing in from the east.
These are the ‘leaders’ who made themselves completely dependent on foreign oil and gas supplies after their decision to spend billions of pounds shutting down the entire British mining industry – all in order to get rid of the National Union of Mineworkers and weaken the British workers.
They now do not dare to even think about the level that gas and oil prices will reach this year. All that the CBI can do is imitate Cassandra with its prophesies of the disasters that 2006 will bring.
Their only solution now is the building of a large number of nuclear power stations, all potential nuclear bombs and sources of limitless cancers.
In fact, it will be the NUM that has the last laugh when a desperate ruling class is forced to re-open the mining industry.
However, there is only one way forward for the working class of the entire world, and that is to get rid of bankrupt, crisis-ridden, war-driven capitalism and replace it with socialism and a worldwide planned economy, based on the satisfaction of people’s needs. This can only be achieved by building sections of the Fourth International all over the world to lead the world socialist revolution to its victory.
