By David Sole
February 23 will mark the end of the second year of the United States proxy war in Ukraine. State Department and CIA planning for it began in 2014 and it achieved the U.S. goal of drawing the Russian Federation into open combat starting February 22, 2022. But the results have become a disaster for U.S imperialism. and its NATO allies. It is an even bigger tragedy for the Ukrainian people.
For several decades the U.S. has been extending NATO military bases closer and closer to the border of Russia. In a 2014 coup in Kiev, Ukraine, the CIA helped overthrow the elected, pro-Russian government and installed their own choice for leader of that country which shares a land border of over 1,200 miles with Russia.
The U.S. and NATO then armed and trained the Ukrainian armed forces for 8 years. At the same time Ukraine incorporated pro-Nazi militia groups into their army and attacked the large ethnic Russian population inside of Ukraine. Ukraine also was ready to join NATO and allow western military bases on the border with Russia.
The Russian Federation finally defended itself with its “Special Military Operation” on February 24, 2022 which took military control of eastern and southern Ukraine. These regions later voted to join the Russian Federation.
What is denounced in the mass western media as Russian aggression and a Russian invasion was actually a long planned U.S. military operation. U.S. officials have admitted that the real goal was to “weaken Russia.” Their plot, however, has failed miserably.
The year 2023 saw Ukraine, armed to the teeth with the latest western missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, air defense systems and more, fielding tens of thousands of western trained Ukrainian troops. They launched the loudly touted “Spring Offensive” to drive Russian forces out of their claimed territory.
June 4, 2023 saw the beginning of this offensive. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. The Spring Offensive went through the summer and into the fall. It became a bloody and complete failure. Almost no territory was captured at the cost of over 100,000 killed and wounded Ukrainians. Much of their heavy equipment was destroyed right away. A former top Ukrainian official estimates that Ukraine has suffered over 500,000 casualties so far in the war.
The Russians, on the other hand, strengthened their forces with troops and massive amounts of equipment all along the 600 mile front lines. Now that the Ukrainians have exhausted themselves, the Russians have been steadily moving forward on all fronts, pushing the Ukrainians back. Russian tactics have favored slow and steady tactics of attrition using their superiority in air power and artillery. A major offensive, however, is not out of the question by the Russian forces in the future.
Ukraine faces a deepening crisis as it becomes harder and harder to fill the ranks of its decimated army. They are having trouble recruiting civilians to join the fight, especially with the terrible losses recently suffered. Poor Ukrainians are angry that well off neighbors have been able to pay off officials to avoid service. Thousands of youth who left Ukraine for neighboring countries are being threatened with deportation back to Ukraine to force them into military service.
Ukrainian ammunition supplies are running low. The U.S. alone provided over $100 billion in military aid for this proxy war over the past two years. However no new aid has been approved due to the split between Republicans and Democrats.
Watching their proxies in Ukraine faltering, the U.S. and their NATO allies are now providing long-range missiles to Kiev. These missiles have the capability of reaching deep into Russian territory. It is feared that providing that capability to Ukraine will escalate the conflict dangerously.
Another escalation is the threat to seize over $300 billion of frozen Russian assets in western financial institutions and hand those funds over to Ukraine. This would follow two years of the most serious sanctions against Russia which were supposed to collapse the Russian economy. The sanctions did not cripple Russia, whose economy is functioning well despite them. Seizing Russian assets would be a gross violation of international norms and could lead to serious retaliation by the Russians against western nations’ financial interests.
U.S. militarism is a tool to protect and expand Wall Street’s financial control over much of the world in pursuit of profit. Rather than send U.S. soldiers to do their dirty work they prefer using other countries to do the dying. That is the nature of the Ukraine proxy war and also the Israeli war against the Palestinians and other Arab nations.
The danger, of course, exists that these proxy wars can escalate and ultimately draw in U.S. troops. But these proxy wars, along with the nearly trillion dollar Pentagon budget, are sucking the hard earned tax dollars of the working class away from the basic needs of the people of the United States.
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