By David Sole
In a public posting on Tuesday, September 23, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a sea change that promises continued US war against Russia in Ukraine. Trump reversed months of policies that pointed toward withdrawal of US support for the Zelensky proxy war, now in its fourth year.
Trump had come under attack from the neocon faction of the US ruling class for recognizing that Ukraine was losing the war and that negotiations with Russia might have to involve ceding territory to Russia which had been lost in combat. Trump now proclaimed that Ukraine was “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” He also called for NATO countries to shoot down Russian aircraft should they cross into those nations’ airspace.
Of course, Ukraine has been steadily pushed back by Russian forces across a long line of contact and is unable to fill its ranks due to severe and steady losses. Over the past years the US and its NATO allies have provided hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware, training and cash to keep its government working, but Ukraine has not been able to succeed militarily.
Whichever position Trump adopts on a day-to-day basis, the reality is that he is serving Wall Street’s goals of world political, economic and military domination.
The European Union is also looking to prolong the Ukraine war. Since the beginning of the Ukraine war in February 2022 Western powers have frozen Russian state assets under their economic control. European leaders are “advancing a proposal to issue an interest-free ‘reparations loan’ of … about $165 billion to Ukraine, financially engineered to make use of the Russian assets.”
Russia has denounced the plan as “theft.” Russian President Vladimir Putin just signed decree where “Russia could respond to the European proposal by seizing the assets of foreign companies and individuals from nations backing the loan.” Previously, Russia had “seized the operations of multiple Western companies” in measured retaliation for misuse of Russian frozen assets amounting to an estimated $300 billion.
President Putin warned such moves by Europe “would completely destroy all principles of international economic and financial activity and would undoubtedly cause enormous harm to the entire global economy.”
The European imperialist powers are facing serious economic crises at the same time they are seeking to increase their military spending, urged on by Donald Trump. This bodes ill for the working class in those nations whose standard of living is being pushed down to finance the proxy Ukraine war.
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