Russia

The Kremlin line on the Ukraine war

Vladimir Kikadze’s “Special Operation: The Ukrainian Front of the War Against Russia“, published in Moscow earlier this year, is a truly dismal book

Against Putin: victory to Ukraine!

Some supporters of Ukraine at Durham Miners' Gala (8 July). On the right are Ukrainian trade unionists Oksana and Pavlo Holota with an NGPU miners' union flag brought specially from Ukraine It is now slightly more than 500 days since Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s imperialist war, launched with the intention of abolishing Ukraine as an independent entity, to subordinate Ukraine to Russian political power, has been a disaster for not only the Ukrainian people, but for the Russians too. The war has also broken down important global economic bonds, especially in...

Prigozhin future unclear, but Putin weaker

The Prigozhin-Wagner mutiny of 23-24 June failed. Nevertheless, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries — only 2,500 to 5,000 troops in total — managed to overrun two major southern Russian cities and get to within 200km of Moscow before a deal was struck and Wagner returned to their bases. Putin felt obliged to come to terms with the rebels. Prigozhin is an advocate of a harsher Russian war in Ukraine and his rebels were demanding the Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the head of the army, Valery Gerasimov, be removed for incompetently prosecuting Russia’s war. Prigozhin objected to an...

Putin, Prigozhin, and the coup

The immediate crisis for Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime is over. A deal was reached with the Wagner coup leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. He turned his Moscow-bound troop convoy around, late on Saturday 24 June, and sent his fighters back towards their bases in southern Russia and occupied Ukraine. As we go to press on 27 June, there are hints the deal may not hold, but we don’t know. The Wagner troops had killed a dozen Russian helicopter crew, shot down after attacking the Wagner insurgency. Wagner fighters, who had overrun the Russian cities of Rostov and Voronezh, evacuated their positions and...

Free Russian internationalist Igor Kuznetsov!

John McDonnell MP and other protesters demand release of jailed labour movement activists outside the Russian embassy in London, 2022 In September 2021 Russian socialist and trade unionist Igor Kuznetsov was arrested for “inciting mass disorder” (though the Telegram messenger system!) Two months he was also charged with participation in an “extremist community”, the socialist organisation Left Resistance. Now, in a move reminiscent of the treatment of dissidents in the late Soviet Union , Kuznetsov has been sent to a psychiatric institution. The Serbsky Centre to which he has been sent is the...

Ukraine: behind the Belgorod incident

The two-day incursion (22-23 May) into the Russian region of Belgorod by the Freedom for Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps — military units made up of Russian citizens who are fighting for Ukraine — caused panic amongst Russian officials and was widely covered across the media. The Russian militias claim they briefly occupied up to 42sqkm of Russian territory, and had two fighters killed. While some details remain obscure the broad politics of the matter are now clear. It is inconceivable that such an operation, involving scores of Russian fighters, carried in tanks and armoured...

We are not nationalists

Michael Baker misses the point a little, I think (letters, Solidarity 673 ), when he criticises my quoting of a Ukrainian poll which asked a question of Ukrainian attitudes towards Russians. Indeed, Ukrainian attitudes towards Russians have changed, which is my point. I didn’t write the polling question, just used it as evidence to back the case. Putin’s imperialism has pushed the peoples apart. However, if our eventual goal is to see the removal of barriers between peoples — borders, suspicion, hostility and other more benign features of national differences, too — then the assertion of...

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