Russia’s debacle in Kharkiv
By all indications, Russia has suffered a catastrophic military defeat near Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, located in the country’s northeast.
In the course of six days, the Ukrainian military, armed and financed by the United States and NATO, has taken dozens of miles of territory. The Institute for the Study of War reports: “Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to 70 kilometers in some places and captured over 3,000 square kilometers of territory in the past five days since September 6—more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April.”
Borrowing the methods of the Stalinist Soviet bureaucracy, the Kremlin is responding to this catastrophe with lies and evasions. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian forces are “regrouping,” a statement that is obviously false. It is impossible to deny that what is taking place is a rout and a massive military and political debacle.
The disaster in Kharkiv is the product of not only incompetent military leadership, but also, and more fundamentally, the bankrupt political strategy upon which Putin based his “Special Operation.”
Whatever the short term results of the defeats of the past week, the events continue the course of unending disasters produced by the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR and restoration of capitalism.
It will further intensify the crisis of the Russian regime, riven by factions that are arguing for a reckless escalation and those who are calling for concessions to be made to the US and NATO.
The Putin government’s decision to invade Ukraine was a desperate and reactionary response to the intensifying pressure of the US and NATO on Russia. Putin’s strategy, to the extent there was one, was to create the circumstances for a favorable negotiation of terms with the United States and its NATO allies.
Putin’s entire strategy in waging the war is bound up with the social outlook of the Russian oligarchic bourgeoisie, whose primary concern is to retain for itself control over the mineral and energy resources that the imperialists wish to plunder.
Putin sought to make an agreement with US imperialism that the Russian oligarchy could live with. Speaking for Russia’s capitalist oligarchy, Putin is far more concerned with domestic social opposition.
The US and NATO have shown, however, that they are uninterested in negotiation. They view the complete subjugation of Russia, including its carve-up into multiple statelets, as a critical strategic goal. Time and time again, the Kremlin has underestimated the determination of the US and its European imperialist allies.
The rapid breakthrough by Ukrainian forces is the result of the massive escalation of the conflict by the United States and NATO. American paramilitary forces are on the ground, directly coordinating the offensive. Ukrainian missile strikes are directed by the US intelligence agencies, which designate targets.
Increasingly, the rifles borne by Ukrainian troops, the armor they wear and the vehicles that transport them are all NATO-standard weapons, paid for by the US and its European allies. Most importantly, Ukraine has been provided with the forces to strike dozens of miles behind Russian lines in the form of the HIMARS guided missile system and M777 long-range howitzer, as well as the HARM anti-radar missile and the Harpoon anti-ship missile. Ukrainian troops are backed by the NASAMS anti-aircraft system, the same system that guards the White House.
The American media no longer seeks to conceal the extent of direct US involvement in the war. In the words of The Hill, the US has become “brazen” in its intervention in the war. “Over time, the administration has recognized that they can provide larger, more capable, longer-distance, heavier weapons to the Ukrainians and the Russians have not reacted,” former US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told the newspaper.
The New York Times, ecstatic over the Ukrainian advance, wrote: “Senior Ukrainian officials stepped up intelligence sharing with their American counterparts over the summer as they began to plan the counteroffensive that allowed them to make dramatic gains in the northeast in recent days, a shift that allowed the United States to provide better and more relevant information about Russian weaknesses.”
The Times quoted Evelyn Farkas, a top Pentagon official for Ukraine and Russia in the Obama administration, as saying, “These guys have been trained for eight years by [US] Special Ops. They’ve been taught about irregular warfare. They’ve been taught by our intelligence operators about deception and psychological operations.”
To refer to the conflict as a “proxy war” is an understatement. The Ukrainian army has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US military, which has armed, funded and trained it to the standards of the US Armed Forces.
The US-led offensive has resulted in a catastrophic loss of life, both for Ukrainian forces and for Russia, with reports of more than a thousand people dying per day in recent fighting.
The capitalist governments of the United States and Europe are absolutely determined to carry out their goal of subjugating Russia. The consequences, in terms of the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, along with the disastrous economic and social impact on workers throughout the world, amount to nothing in comparison to the geopolitical imperatives of the ruling class.
It is not ruled out that the Kremlin will conclude from this military catastrophe that it is necessary to wage a massive military escalation, which would itself only lead to an escalation by NATO. Paradoxically, the desperate efforts by the Kremlin to reach an accommodation with imperialism do not preclude a series of actions that could trigger a thermonuclear war.
In a letter to a Russian socialist published on the World Socialist Web Site on April 2, World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board chairperson David North wrote:
What is surprising is that Putin and his military command appear not to have fully grasped the extent to which NATO had armed and trained Ukraine’s military. But this failure of their intelligence services is rooted in the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was based on wildly unrealistic, almost childishly naïve, conceptions of the imperialist system. While repudiating all association with Marxism, the Kremlin retained its faith in the possibility of “peaceful coexistence” with its Western Partners. Putin, shortly before ordering the invasion, complained pathetically that Russia had been “played” by the West.
North concluded:
The defense of the Russian masses against imperialism cannot be undertaken on the basis of bourgeois nation-state geopolitics. Rather, the struggle against imperialism requires the rebirth of the proletarian strategy of world socialist revolution. The Russian working class must repudiate the entire criminal enterprise of capitalist restoration, which has led to disaster, and re-establish its political, social and intellectual connection with its great revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist heritage.
Putin opened the Russian offensive against Ukraine with a condemnation of Vladimir Lenin. But for all Putin’s bluster, the world we inhabit today is the world Lenin described in his 1916 work, Imperialism, which demonstrated that war and colonial domination express the essential characteristics of the capitalist system.
The Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union based on the false belief that imperialism was merely an invention of Lenin, and that a capitalist Russia could reach a modus vivendi with European and American imperialism. The ensuing three decades have shown, however, that this was a colossal delusion.
The central task is to mobilize the working class in opposition to imperialist war. This requires a break not only with all of the forces of the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left that defend the US/NATO war drive, but those who claim that Russian nationalism offers a solution to the catastrophe created by the dissolution of the USSR.
It is necessary to make a warning: The debacle suffered by the Russian military over the past week only presages a further and even more bloody escalation of the war. The imperialist powers smell blood in the water, and they will redouble their efforts to conquer and subjugate Russia.
Russia’s debacle will only further embolden the most reactionary forces within Ukrainian society, as well as the US war planners, to believe they can reproduce this success by triggering a war with China over Taiwan.
But this escalation will at the same time intensify the war on the populations of the United States and Europe, who will pay the cost of the war in the form of surging prices and falling living standards. Already, the war has triggered a collapse in workers’ living standards amid a staggering escalation of military budgets, as prices for natural gas have surged ten-fold in Europe.
The 20th century witnessed the most destructive wars in human history. In the 21st century, capitalism now threatens disasters on an even greater scale.
The only social force capable of stopping the imperialist war drive is the international working class. It must combine its economic demands in opposition to the surging cost of living with the struggle against war and the fight to unite the workers of Europe, Asia and the Americas in a common struggle against the capitalist system.
Could This Be What Putin and the Mullahs Are Cooking Up?
On July 19, Russian president Vladimir Putin arrived in Iran on an official visit and held meetings with its president, Ebrahim Raisi, and its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. There are substantial grounds to believe that during those meetings, a plot was hatched to upend the West's "maximum pressure" strategy, which involves the levying of heavy economic sanctions on the two countries as well as on their ability to procure new armaments.
The plot, it now appears, is driven by two main elements. First, the weaponization of Gazprom — the Russian state-owned multinational energy behemoth — as the primary tool employed to realize its goals. Second, intensifying pressure on Western countries to conclude a new nuclear deal with Iran, which would also involve the lifting of sanctions on the exportation of Iranian oil and gas.
Apparently, the initial grounds for the plot were being laid already in May. That month, Russian deputy prime minister Alexander Novak arrived for talks in Tehran. The Russian news agency Interfax quoted him as saying, "We discussed the issue of supplying energy resources to the north of Iran so that logistically, Iran (since all its production facilities are located in the south) would not need to supply the north of the country. In turn, it will be easier for us to use for sales their products that are formed in the south, which is closer to our markets."
Accordingly, Iran would import Russian crude off its northern Caspian coast and then sell an equivalent amount of crude in Iranian tankers originating from the Persian Gulf to Asia-Pacific markets. Iran will refine the Russian oil to meet its domestic demand, and once a nuclear deal is reached, Iranian oil exported from the south will be exempt from sanctions.
Once this framework was put in place, implementation of the plot began in earnest. Within a week of Putin's visit to Iran, on July 25, Gazprom announced that it would reduce "the daily throughput" of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany to 33 million cubic meters, alleging that it was shutting down for equipment repairs. The net impact was to cut gas supplies to Europe to 20% of capacity.
German officials were clear-eyed in assessing the Russian move: "Putin is playing a perfidious game," German economy minister Robert Habeck told the European news agency dpa. "He is trying to weaken the great support for Ukraine and drive a wedge into our society. To do this, he stirs up uncertainty and drives up prices."
The Russian coup de grâce followed soon after. On August 30, Gazprom announced the indefinite suspension of all gas deliveries to Europe, citing an oil leak it supposedly detected at the Nord Stream 1 Portovaya compressor station.
When Russia announced its intention to restrict supply in July, within a day, it had pushed up the wholesale price of gas in Europe by 10%. Gas prices are now approximately 450% higher than they were this time last year. Not surprisingly, the Euro zone inflation rate hit a new record high in August at 9.1%, with a 38.3% increase in energy prices constituting the largest component of this rise. A slowdown in European economies looks inevitable, and an accelerated pace toward a continental recession may have begun and may take effect this winter. The only question remaining may be how deep it will be and how long it will last.
Putin certainly is having his revenge. Not only is he punishing the European Union (E.U.) for its support for Ukraine, but he may expect some of its members (Hungary in particular) to peel off and search for a separate energy deal with Moscow. Undoubtedly, he aims to force the West to cease or at least curtail its indispensable military and financial aid to Ukraine after Russia's nuclear saber-rattling had failed in doing so. As energy scarcity continues to grow, Putin may even hope for civil unrest to erupt in some countries, particularly in Germany, the continent's largest economy, whose reliance on Russian gas amounts to just over half (55%) of the gas consumed there — the heaviest among the European countries.
However, for now, this has been a win only for Putin. For the plot to work and the grand scheme to succeed, the mullahs in Tehran have to win as well. The Russo-Iranian stratagem fully envisions that as the energy and economic crises in Europe worsen pressures among the Union's members and on Washington to reach forthwith a nuclear deal with Iran would mount dramatically. European nations would see a new agreement as their best hope for lifting the Iran sanctions and for Iranian gas and oil exports to resume in full volume, thus alleviating their predicament. Such an outcome will not only boost the Iranian economy, with billions of dollars flowing in, but enable the Russian-Iranian swap deal to finally materialize.
Little wonder that the Russian permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna (where the negotiations over the nuclear deal have taken place), Mikhail Ulyanov, noted in a tweet on August 17 that "this time more than ever we have a great chance to cross the finish line at the #ViennaTalks. The final result depends on how the #US reacts to the last Iranian reasonable suggestions. Let's hope that it doesn't take long for Washington to consider these proposals."
The Iranians could now sit back and wait for Gazprom to deliver the West, instead of its usual cargo, to the negotiating table to sign a nuclear deal to Tehran's liking. No wonder that the latest Iranian offer was less forthcoming than earlier versions.
A State Department spokesman was quoted in the Washington Post on September 1 as saying, "We are studying it [the new Iranian proposal] and will respond through the EU but unfortunately it is not constructive."
According to the Israeli paper Yisrael Hayom on September 8, deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman in a meeting with Democratic congressmen expressed frustration as to Iran's negotiations' stand and reportedly complained that despite the Biden administration's earnest efforts, "Tehran was still using various maneuvers which prevent reaching an agreement." Consequently, she assessed that there would be no deal before the November 8 midterm elections if at all.
But there is no mystery as to Iran's tactics. The U.S. secretary's consternation is surprising, given that Tehran's calculations were recently articulated openly. In an interview in the Qatar-based international radio and TV broadcaster Al Jazeera on September 4, an adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiating team, Mohammad Marandi, all but confirmed the Russo-Iranian plot when he reacted to the State Department spokesman's comments by saying, "Iran will be patient. ... Winter is approaching and the EU is facing a crippling energy crisis. ... The Americans [also] know they will have domestic problems if the energy crisis continues."
Marandi is on firm grounds. The Iranians know full well how eager the E.U. is for a nuclear deal, so sanctions were lifted, and Iranian gas and oil reach its markets. If they missed the signals, the E.U.'s foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrel, certainly alerted them to the Union's energy distress during his June visit to the Islamic Republic. On that occasion, Borrel termed the Iranian response to the E.U.'s latest proposal "reasonable." In turn, Reuters cited him on August 22 as saying he hoped the U.S. would respond "positively as soon as this week" to an E.U. proposal that aims to " save" the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. It would not be inconceivable to posit therefore that the E.U. top diplomat's longing for a nuclear deal acted as a powerful catalyst for hatching the plot during Putin's July visit to the mullahs. Further, Marandi's disclosure that some European governments have already "asked Iran about oil as well as natural gas exports" certainly suggests the two countries had ample reason to believe their plot would work.
Thus, if the Russo-Iranian plot succeeds, not only will the West's "maximum pressure" strategy be overturned, but both Russia and Iran's geopolitical interests will be substantially advanced to the detriment of the free world. Of greatest concern, once the plot ends up forcing the West to sign the "reasonable" Iranian-offered nuclear deal, it would amount to a de facto endorsement of the mullahs' scheme to acquire nuclear weapons a few years down the road.
Dr. Avigdor Haselkorn is a strategic analyst and the author of books, articles, and op-eds on national security issues.
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