WE are currently witnessing the greatest eruption of vilification against Russia and its leadership since the Fulton speech by Winston Churchill on March 5 1946, when Western imperialism detached itself from its Russian allies, who had smashed Hitlerism, and Churchill declared that an Iron Curtain had fallen across Europe. He warned about the ‘Communist fifth columns’ that were operating throughout southern and western Europe, and began the ‘cold war’.
As if under a single conductor, the British capitalist press last Saturday morning condemned ‘Putin the murderer’ and ‘Murdering Russian gangsters’ after Malaysia Airlines Flight MHI7 came down in eastern Ukraine with all 298 passengers and crew dead.
This media barrage was followed up by statements from Cameron and Obama that Russia would pay a very heavy price for the crime.
Without having to bother about producing a single shred of evidence, the bourgeois media declared that the destruction of the plane – in a war zone in which the Ukrainian army has killed, and is killing hundreds of Ukrainian workers, many with air attacks, and has driven over 100,000 into exile – was the work of the pro-Russian self defence forces.
In fact the self defence forces had nothing to gain at all from shooting down an international aircraft passing over their territory at 30,000 feet, even if they had the means to do it, which they do not.
Such an action would obviously play into the hands of the Kiev regime, and its Western backers.
It is the US, and the EU, including the UK ruling classes, that are responsible for the loss of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine.
They are the ‘murdering gangsters’. It was the US and the EU that openly boasted of the billions that they spent organising a coup d’etat in the Ukraine, hiring fascist mobs to overthrow the Yanukovych government, which had committed the crime of refusing to sign an Associate Agreement with the EU.
Even when Yanukovych, on February 21, agreed to call new presidential elections in August, and agreed to order the recall to barracks of all riot police, the EU and US gave the go ahead for the coup, despite the fact that they had signed the deal!
Yanukovych was driven out of the country and the current regime took power by force of arms in an illegal coup, with the full support of the US, and EU (including the UK).
The coupists then began to wage war on the east of the country and organised the fascists in the National Guard to do so.
They have burned and bombed their way all over the east and led to the situation where the the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were formed, while over 100,000 people have been driven over the border into Russia.
It was the EU and the US that organised the coup. They organised the illegal regime to make war in the east, including the despatch of Buk anti-aircraft missile systems.
Now after Malaysian Flight MH17 has been brought down, as a consequence of their coup and their war, they are seeking to force Putin and Russia to take action against the Donetsk and Lugansk Soviets – or else face major economic sanctions. If Putin complies they will be able to butcher the peoples of the east as they wish.
In fact the imperialist powers have a record of murderous attacks, mass murder, including terrorist crimes, such as drone strikes.
It was the US and the UK that invaded and destroyed Iraq in a bloody onslaught that was based on lies, lies and more lies. It was the US, and the EU that invaded Libya and overthrew and murdered Gadaffi to drive Libya back into the ‘dark ages’.
They tried to do the same to Syria and now they are driving into the Ukraine, with Belarus and then Moscow in their sights.
What is driving them forward is the world crisis of the capitalist system, and their need to reorder the world, using any means necessary. They have also taken the announcement that the BRIC states are to have their own bank and will attempt to stand up to the dollar as a declaration of war on themselves.
This is why they are going furiously for Putin and Russia.
We urge British and US workers to defend Russia from imperialist attacks and to support the struggling workers of eastern Ukraine.
Capitalism in crisis threatens every worker on the planet. The only way to defeat it is to build sections of the Fourth International in every country to mobilise the workers of the world to smash capitalism and imperialism through the victory of the world socialist revolution
