ON MONDAY evening Russia invited Ukrainian border guards and international observers to oversee the Russian side of the border with Ukraine, in an 11th-hour move to try to get Kiev to extend a ‘ceasefire’ and to deter the EU from imposing wider economic sanctions onto Russia.
Moscow made this concession after Russian president Vladimir Putin discussed the crisis by telephone with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and President François Hollande of France and Petro Poroshenko, their Ukrainian EU counterpart.
‘President Vladimir Putin has proposed that Ukrainian border guards be granted access to those crossing points from the Russian side as observers for joint control of the border, and that observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe also be admitted to those crossing points from the Russian side,’ said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
‘We hope that this initiative of the Russian president will allow all responsible parties to take a decision to extend the ceasefire, to extend the truce.
The US then stepped in to tell their Ukrainian puppet to reject the Russian proposal and to go for all out war on the people of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian National Guard forces on Tuesday morning began to actively fight on the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Lugansk region. The border control zones of Donetsk-Izvarino and Krasnoparizansk-Gukovo have been closed, the head of Russia’s Federal Customs Service, Andrei Belyaninov reported.
He said: ‘Fighting began at around 9am. The border patrol stations are currently closed. Russian border guards and employees of the Federal Customs Service have retreated to a safe distance,’ Belyaninov said.
He commented ominously: ‘After closing these humanitarian corridors, which about 90% of all Ukrainian refugees cross into Russia, there is no more possibility for others – women and children have nowhere to run,’ he said.
Russia has criticized Kiev’s ending of the ceasefire, saying that it undermined efforts by Moscow, Berlin and Paris to launch diplomatic action to resolve the Ukrainian crisis peacefully.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Kiev of reneging on plans for a peaceful resolution of the crisis discussed during negotiations, which also involved representatives of Eastern Ukraine, the OSCE and Russia, alleging that it was done ‘not without foreign influence, which went against the position of leading members of the European Union.’
It continued: ‘Once again we are calling on parties to stop using Ukraine as a bargaining chip in geopolitical games and to cease enforcing the criminal line towards suppression of the protest movement through force.’
With this position Putin is acting like King Canute trying to stop the tide coming in. The US is being driven by the deepening world capitalist crisis to war in the Ukraine. It aims to turn it into a puppet state from which it can overthrow the Lukashenka regime in neighbouring Belarus, before advancing to organise regime change in the Russian Federation. It sees it not only as a vast storehouse of oil, gas and precious metals but also a major barrier to its plans for reordering the world.
No amount of concessions to the US, or pretences that Obama is a misguided ‘partner’ will deflect the US the US imperialists from this strategic course, which is entirely necessary for the survival of the US ruling class and capitalism and imperialism. In fact the situation is favourable for Russian intervention.
The US is up to its neck in an economic crisis and facing a working class at home that has had enough of military adventures. The EU is dependent on the Russian gas supply while its bosses fear losing billions of investment in Russia ‘if things go wrong’.
Russia must intervene with its army to actively support the self defence forces in the south and to remove the coupist regime in Kiev from power.
This action will be supported by the working people of the world who can see perfectly clearly what the EU-US is doing in the Ukraine.
In fact the workers of the world are now rising up in the EU and the US and throughout Asia against capitalism. They realise that it is a world system and that it has to be fought in every part of the world.
This is therefore the time for fighting capitalism and imperialism and for building the Fourth International in every country to lead the world socialist revolution, that is being driven forward by the world crisis to its victory. This is no time to allow the imperialists to butcher the Ukrainian workers.