It didn’t take long: from the moment the Assad regime collapsed and the rebels entered Damascus, Israel’s massive land and air attack began. As long as all these arms depots, military airports, intelligence centres, scientific research centres, air bases, air defence systems, ammunition manufacturing facilities, “small stockpiles of chemical weapons,” and Syria’s entire naval force were safely in the hands of the Assad regime, Israel never touched them. As Syrian revolutionary commentator Rami puts it, Israel has “known their location the whole time but felt safe knowing that they were in Assad’s hands, who uses them exclusively on Syrians,” and certainly never against Israel. “Now that Free Syrians are in control Israel panics and starts bombing them all,” in order to prevent, as countless Israeli leaders have declared, these weapons falling into the hands of the former rebels, who Israeli leaders have described as a “hostile entity.”
According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, since the rebels took control of Syria, “Israel says it has attacked some 500 regime targets, dropped 1,800 precision bombs, destroyed about half of Assad’s air force, much of the regime’s tanks and missile launch capabilities, 80% of its air defense systems, all its explosive UAVs and 90% of its radar systems as well as the chemical weapons still held in Syria.” The open source intelligence monitor OSINTdefender claims the IDF has eliminated some 70-80 percent of Syria’s military capacity, the locations including “anti-aircraft batteries, Syrian Air Force airfields, naval bases, and dozens of weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra,” resulting in the destruction of “Scud Tactical-Ballistic Missiles, Cruise Missiles, Surface-to-Sea, Sea-to-Sea, Surface-to-Air and Surface-to-Surface Missiles, UAVs, Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, Ships, Radars, Tanks, Hangars, and more.”
“Israeli warplanes bombed the intelligence and customs buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus.” The intelligence buildings? Wonder what deals between Israel and the Assad regime they did not want anyone to find there? The Golan sale, perhaps? The dealings between Israel and the Assad regime over Israel’s bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah targets? Indeed, it is feared that Israel may be destroying evidence against Assad that could be used by the new authorities to place charges against him in the International Criminal Court.
Israel then went right on to completely destroy Syria’s naval fleet, under the nose of Russia’s still present air and naval bases in Tartous and Latakia. The massive strikes Israel launched on Tartous on December 15 were described by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the “most violent strikes” in the region since 2012. A gigantic mushroom cloud fireball blew up over the region, “the explosion was so powerful that it was measured as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the seismic sensor.”
Mushroom cloud from massive Israeli bombardment of Tartous December 15.
Israel expands into the Golan
Israel has also invaded further into the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan to create a “buffer zone” (for its already Golan “buffer zone” 57-year occupation) against the Syrian rebel forces. While it is unclear exactly how much territory has been seized, this map from The New York Times shows the territory held by the IDF as of December 13.
It is clear Israel intends to keep much of the new territory it has conquered. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF would stay on “the Syrian side” of Mount Hermon “during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands.” For Israel, a “temporary” stay has traditionally meant forever, as with the main part of Syria’s Golan Heights which Israel conquered in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981. According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, a senior Israeli military source said that Israeli troops “will not retreat until the threat to Israel’s border is removed, which could take “between four days and four years.”
According to Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Abou Nabout, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have also destroyed roads, power lines, and water networks in Quneitra province (the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan) when people refused to evacuate. “Israeli tanks are now stationed in towns and villages in Syria’s southwest as the Israeli military expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”
In the villages of the al-Rafid region of Quneitra, Israel cut water and electricity to pressure the people to leave, but they refused, and demanded all weapons be handed over. According to one local interviewed by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, “no one knows what their aim is, but for sure they have created a new enemy in the future for themselves.” The local also claimed “they [the IDF] removed the people of the village of Rasm al-Rawadhi under threats, and they prevented those who left the village of al-Hamidiya from returning.”
The IDF also invaded Daraa province, troops deploying in Ma’aryah village in Al-Yarmouk Basin, “patrolling and searching some residents.” They also attempted to enter Abdeen village, “but the residents confronted them and prevented them from entering the village.”
Arab League condemns, US supports Israel; Russia hands over posts to Israel
On December 13, the Arab League strongly condemned this Israeli aggression, and separately Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia Egypt and the UAE have issued strong statements.
Not surprisingly, the US has supported Israel’s aggression, National Security Adviser Sullivan claiming “what Israel is doing is trying to identify potential threats, both conventional and weapons of mass destruction, that could threaten Israel and, frankly, threaten others as well, and neutralize those threats,” as Israel destroys virtually the entire Syrian arsenal with its US-supplied weaponry. The US also supported Israel’s expansion into the Syrian Golan, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller explaining the collapse of the Assad regime “created a potential vacuum that could’ve been filled by terror organizations that threaten Israel.” Sure, he stressed that Israel’s stay should be “temporary,” but the world knows that US words mean nothing in relation to Israel’s actions – indeed Israel’s occupation of the rest of the Golan in 1967 was also supposed to be temporary.
Meanwhile, it was reported on December 9, just as the Israeli attack was mounting, that Russia, as it withdrew from the south, handed over to Israel two facilities in Daraa, and an observatory on Mount Tel Al-Hara. As Russian forces have been based in the Golan region since 2018 under a Putin-Trump-Netanyahu-Assad agreement to keep both Syrian rebels and Iran-backed forces away – to protect both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation concurrently – this story rings likely.
Most memes did not go past Israeli propaganda such as Netanyahu’s claim that these events are a “direct result” of Israel’s military campaign against Iran and Hezbollah and his assertion that “this is a historic day in the history of the Middle East.” Sure, who wouldn’t want to feign happiness and try to take credit for the collapse of such a monstrous regime. More important however was what Netanyahu also said: “We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.” On December 15, Netanyahu followed this up claiming that Israel’s actions in Syria were intended to “thwart the potential threats from Syria and to prevent the takeover of terrorist elements near our border”.
Katz also doubled down, declaring on December 15 that “The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the recent developments in Syria are increasing the intensity of the threat, despite the rebel leaders seeking to present a semblance of moderation.” On December 18, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel described HTS as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and stated “we are not going to be fooled by nice talk,” claiming “these rebel groups are in fact terrorist groups” and went on to remind about Jolani’s past al-Qaeda links.
Likudist Diaspora Affairs Minister Amachai Chikli made the case more openly, stating that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration. Despite the rebranding of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Shara, the bottom line is that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh. The good news is the strengthening of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the north-east of the country (Deir ez-Zor area). Operatively, Israel must renew its control at the height of the Hermon … we must not allow jihadists to establish themselves near our settlements.”
The Israeli calculus in the days before the fall
All of this was already discussed in the uncertain days between the first offensive that took Aleppo and the collapse of the regime ten days later. As we will see, Israeli leaders were not exactly “delighted,” as a somewhat unfortunate piece by Juan Cole claimed.
Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition (see next section); this put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it preferred the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them. But Israel always left the Assadist war machine intact.
Since Israel had just come through a war with Hezbollah, it could see the opportunity presented by Assad’s treachery to pressure Assad for more, ie, to completely cut the Iranian weapons transfers to Lebanon. During his November visit to Moscow, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for any such efforts to prevent the flow of weapons to Hezbollah (indeed this demonstrates how outside of reality are the conspiracy theories that claim, with zero evidence, that Israel was somehow “behind” the HTS offensive that led to fall of Assad, whatever that even means).
As such, taken by surprise, like everyone else, by the rapid successes of the Syrian revolution, Israel tended to adopt a plague on both your houses view, ie, withholding support for Assad in order to pressure his regime for more in its moment of weakness, while warning of the dangers from the other side. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view expressed on December 3 that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” was probably closest to the mainstream Israeli view. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests.”
On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now likely shift to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which they assessed would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding,” making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” The first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, both sources suggest that Israel saw Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, as a “positive” because they are thereby not focused on Israel.
Regarding the second point, the “military threats” which may arise, Channel 12, reporting that the meeting also raised concerns that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands, which of course is exactly what has come to pass.
A number of prominent right-wing Israeli spokespeople or security spooks made the case for supporting Assad more forcefully. For example, on November 29, Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa penned an article in Maariv claiming that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”
Eliyahu Yosian, former intelligence officer from Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – suspected of being behind Israel’s massive cyber-terrorist attack on Hezbollah members pagers which blew off people’s faces and hands – explained on December 5, “Personally, I support Assad’s rule, because he is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests. No-ne can guarantee who will come after Assad’s fall.” He noted that Israel can attack in Syria “every so often in coordination with Russia and without any threat.” Therefore “We must support Assad’s existence.”
This view was put forcefully by Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur, another former senior intelligence officer (who had earlier called for Israel to “drive Iran out of Syria”). On December 6, he claimed that what the rebels had achieved constituted “a tectonic collapse of the Sykes-Pilot agreement, a major collapse of the foundations of the old order,” and therefore “we need to ensure there is a buffer zone between us and the Sunnis.” This buffer zone “could be fully secured by IDF officers,” which however was “less realistic,” or “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime,” which presumably he thought was more realistic, “so that we don’t end up with a shared border with these guys,” making reference to October 7.
Not all Zionist commentators held these views. Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, explained that there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime. In fact, one of the problems for Israel was the same problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.
In this light, what is striking about all these views expressed above – even just days before the regime’s collapse – is how extraordinarily unrealistic they were; they all seemed to imagine that Assad still had a chance! Such blindness at such a late date suggests wilfulness, ie, Israel was so invested in the regime’s survival that it impossible to imagine it not being there, even if only running the buffer zone! Indeed, even Zisser notes of the move among some Zionists towards accepting Assad’s downfall as a defeat for Iran, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”
Background: Israel and the Syrian revolution 2011-2018
Of course that does make them friends, but the “conflict” between Israel and Syria is quite simple: Israel seized Syria’s Golan in 1967 and has steadfastly refused to ever negotiate it back. That is not an Assad issue; it is a Syrian issue, the opposition has made continual statements on Syria’s right to use all legitimate means to regain the Golan. When asked if he would follow his close Arab allies – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan – in establishing relations with Israel, Assad’s response noted only the Golan, avoiding mention of ‘resistance’ or Palestine: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready … Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Assad, in other words, wanted to be Sadat, but Israel didn’t let him.
From 2012:
Israel’s intelligence chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi, “warned that “radical Islam” was gaining ground in Syria, saying the country was undergoing a process of “Iraqisation”, with militant and tribal factions controlling different sectors of the country”, and claiming there was “an ongoing flow of Al-Qaeda and global jihad activists into Syria”. He said that with the Assad regime weakening, “the Golan Heights could become an arena of activity against Israel, similar to the situation in Sinai, as a result of growing jihad movement in Syria.”
From 2013:
“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would erect a new security fence along its armistice line with Syria because “We know that on the other side of our border with Syria today, the Syrian army has moved away, and global jihad forces have moved in.” “We must therefore protect this border from infiltrations and terror, as we have successfully been doing along the Sinai border.”
“Israel’s military chief of staff has warned that some of the rebel forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may soon turn their attention southward and attack Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights. We see terror organisations that are increasingly gaining footholds in the territory and they are fighting against Assad,” Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said at a conference in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. “Guess what? We’ll be next in line.”
Israel also “worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary” than Assad has ever been. “The military predicts all that (the 40-year peaceful border) will soon change as it prepares for the worst.” The region near the occupied Golan has become “a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests,” said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general, claiming Syria has now become “a big threat to Israel” over the last two years.
‘Israel’s Man in Damascus – Why Jerusalem Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall’ – heading in Foreign Affairs (May 10, 2013), article by Efraim Halevy, who served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.
Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”
[comment: as we can see, the Israeli view that chemical weapons were
no problem in Assad’s hands but must be destroyed if he falls, being
enacted now, goes way back]
From early 2015:
Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, claimed that Assad was the least harmful choice in Syria, so western powers and Israel “should strengthen the Syrian regime’s steadfastness in the face of its opponents.” Allowing Assad to fall would be “the most egregious mistake.”
From 2015 (shortly before the Russian intervention to save Assad which Israel supported):
IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the **preparation of a list of targets** that are likely to be struck inside Syria, **after a possible fall of the Assad regime**.”
[two points: first, clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy
now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about; second, this
also suggests that Israel was not against Iran and Hezbollah being in
Syria as long as they were only defending Assad, rather than delivering
missiles to Lebanon]
From 2015 (after onset of Russian intervention):
At the time when Israel is getting ready for the first coordination meeting with Russia over their joint intervention in Syria, Israeli military sources have confirmed the existence of consensus within Tel Aviv’s decision making circles over the importance of the continuation of the Assad regime. Military affairs commentator Alon Ben-David quoted a source within the Israeli Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying “the best option for Israel would be for the Assad regime to remain and for the internal fighting to continue for as long as possible.” In an article published in Maariv newspaper, the military source pointed out that the continuation of the Assad regime, which enjoys international recognition, relieves Israel of the burden of direct intervention and of deep involvement in the ongoing war. He noted that Israel agrees with both Russia and Iran on this matter.
Israel will provide Russia with intelligence information about opposition sites in Syria to facilitate Moscow’s military operations, Channel 2TV reported, noting that a delegation of Russian army officials will arrive in Israel to coordinate the military cooperation.
From 2017:
The ‘Begin-Sadat Centre’ think tank published an article claiming that as Israel is “surrounded by enemies,” it “needs those enemies to be led by strong, stable rulers who will control their armies and prevent both the firing on, and infiltrations into, Israeli territory,” noting that both Assads had always performed this role. The fact that “Syria is no longer able to function as a sovereign state … is bad for Israel” and therefore“a strong Syrian president with firm control over the state is a vital interest for Israel. Given the Islamist alternatives to his rule, Syria’s neighbours, including Israel, may well come to miss him as Syria is rapidly Lebanonised.”
From 2018 (as Assad regime re-took the south all the way to the Golan “border” with Israel from the rebels, with the support of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu):
In case this was not yet clear enough, at a July meeting with his US counterpart, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”.
After noting that “the Syrian front will be calmer with the return of the Assad rule,” the fascistic Lieberman stressed that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, with the central rule under Assad leadership.” Further, he noted that “we are not ruling anything out” regarding the possibility of Israel and the Assad regime establishing “some kind of relationship.”
It is clear from this summary that Israel’s attack today as soon as Assad was overthrown has been planned for years for precisely such a time precisely because Israel wanted his rule to continue.
Syria’s condemnation of Israel to UN Security Council – and demands that Syria “fight Israel”
In a joint letter to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly dated December 9, the new Syrian government stated that it “condemns in the strongest terms this Israeli aggression, which represents a serious violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement … It also constitutes a violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, the unity and integrity of its territories, and contradicts the principles and Charter of the United Nations, the provisions of international law, and Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, and 497.” The letter then “renews its call on the United Nations and the Security Council to assume their responsibilities and take firm measures to compel Israel to immediately cease its ongoing attacks on Syrian territory, ensure that they are not repeated, and withdraw immediately.”
Much has been made of the fact that, while condemning the Israeli aggression in the UN, the new government has not been very vocal otherwise. There are also literal mountains of disinformation around in social media, in mindless memes and photoshop cut-up jobs, claiming the new government wants to “make peace” with Israel and so on (some useful rebuttals here). Many Assad-loving keyboard warriors are condemning the new government for not “fighting” the Israeli attack.
After 50 years of the Assad regime never firing a shot across the Golan demarcation line, these heroes now condemn a government for not “fighting Israel” in 10 days in power.
One might have noticed that the first thing Israel did was to destroy Syria’s entire military arsenal before it could do anything at all, a military arsenal that Assad never once used against the occupation regime. Presumably they expect Syria to fight the neighbouring genocidal military powerhouse, its warplanes and missiles, with sticks and stones.
As Jolani put it, quite logically, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts.” That is not a call for a “peace” treaty with the occupation, but a statement of fact. The Syrian people have just come through a 14-year war against their own genocidal regime, the regime of Sednaya-Auschwitz, but these western keyboard heroes now believe that the only way the new Syrian government can show its mettle to them (since this is what is important) is by plunging into war with another genocidal regime.
What they might also consider is that while it is Russia that has been bombing the Syrian people for a decade, the new leadership came to an agreement with Russia that it could keep its naval base in Tartous for now, committing itself to not allowing it to be attacked! That’s because they don’t want conflict with that nuclear-armed genocidal power either. This follows HTS’s overtures to Russia earlier in the offensive, when it declared “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “ we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.” The government has also made direct contact with Iran, pledging to protect Shiite shrines, but also giving safe passage to exiting Iranian forces, despite their years of crimes in Syria.
If anything, Jolani’s statement that Syria is in no state to enter a new conflict just now due to exhaustion could well be interpreted by Israel as a medium-term threat. The statements by Israeli leaders justifying their aggression suggest that’s how they view it. Right now, the important thing is for Israeli aggression, destruction and occupation to end, and shooting your mouth off with jihadist slogans, where Israeli leaders and many world leaders and media keep reminding everyone of HTS’s distant past “al-Qaeda” links, would be extremely foolish. No doubt Israel would prefer they did, so it could then bomb Damascus and receive congratulations from its uncritical US backer.
For the entire year since October 7, the Assad regime and Russia had bombed the liberated enclave of Idlib where HTS was ruling, under the cover of Gaza. The entire time, people in Idlib and other opposition-controlled regions were out demonstrating their support for Gaza, while being bombed. The charges against HTS in particular make even less sense, given its strong support for Hamas and for October 7, for better or worse. Jolani has also been filmed boasting that “after Damascus comes Jerusalem,” but of course this kind of rhetoric, so reminiscent of similar Iranian rhetoric, should be taken metaphorically. Yes, any new regime can sell out – there are no guarantees about anything – but if it did, it would face a Syrian population overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, and there is little point in idle speculation now.
Rather, when Jolani says the focus right now is on stabilising the situation in Syria, this is completely logical. A fractured Syria, getting even more destroyed by foolishness, would have no ability to help Palestinians or to revive its place in the Arab world. More importantly, this is a very critical and dangerous time for the Syrian revolution, when putting a step wrong can have devastating consequences.
With Russia cutting off wheat supplies, Syria is looking for food; the search for literally hundreds of thousands missing is still going on, with the most horrific discoveries turning up in slaughterhouses like Sednaya; people are having to face the grim reality that the majority will not be found alive, as enormous mass graves are being discovered; hundreds of the released have lost their memories and their minds; basic services have had to be restored; the rush is on to preserve as much intelligence information as possible, before being stolen by looters or destroyed by Israeli bombs; the mass return of millions of Syrians has begun. This is what is important; this is what Israel is trying to disrupt with its aggression.
The way in which the Sunni-majority led revolution has made overtures to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds has to date been exceptional and has been key to the success of the revolution. The main fault line at present is in the northeast, largely controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Two things are happening. On the one hand, some of the Arab-majority regions within the SDF-run autonomous statelet have revolted against the SDF and joined the main body of Syrian governance, particularly in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa. On the other hand, Turkey, via its proxy SNA, is also attacking Kurdish regions aiming to destroy Kurdish self-rule; while Manbij, which they took from the SDF via a US-negotiated agreement, is a majority Arab city, they are now threatening to move on iconic Kurdish Kobani. To date, HTS has had a much better approach to the Kurdish question and to relations with the SDF than Turkey and the SNA have, but the future is uncertain.
This Turkey-Kurdish question cannot be dealt with in this essay, but how the government deals with it is crucial to the revolution. Israel sees division as a means of entry, Israeli propaganda projecting the Druze and Kurds as Israel’s natural allies. As seen in some of the statements above from Israeli leaders such as Amachai Chikli and Gideon Saar, supporting “the Kurds” is promoted as a key Israeli geopolitical interest; meanwhile, Israel is trying to get the Druze in the Golan to join Israel. There are even fantastic ideas of a ‘Druze state’ in southern Suweida, and a Kurdish state in the east, forming a bridge to Iraqi Kurdistan, with an oil pipeline joining them to Israel; “by leveraging ties with the Syrian Druze and fostering collaboration with Israel’s Kurdish allies, the foundation for this corridor can begin to take shape,” claims the Jerusalem Post. Both the main Druze leadership in Suweida – a key part of the revolution – and the Druze spiritual leadership in Hader itself, along with the Kurdish SDF leadership, completely reject such ideas. But this demonstrates how an increased Turkish-SNA attack on the Kurds, or any step wrong by HTS on religious minorities such as the Druze, could be exploited by Syria’s enemies.
Israel’s interests
This example suggests one important Israeli interest – using the instability and moment of weakness of a revolution to make a land grab – no need to explain why the permanent ‘Greater Israel’ project would want to do that – and extending its hegemony into a chunk of the Arab region via “minorities.” However, this exploitation of minority issues is not only about fostering its influence, but also a means to undermine the revolution. There is no mystery about Israel wanting to do this: genocidal colonial settler-regimes like Israel – like other imperialist states – hate popular revolutions, especially in the Arab world. Not only did Israel have a good working relationship with the Assad regime as demonstrated above, but more generally the mutual existence of apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has always been symbiotic.
Many “left” Assad apologists, who are embarrassed that Israel has only attacked after the downfall of Assad, are trying to save face by saying “see, Assad’s fall makes Syria weak and Israel can do what it wants.” Think of that for a moment: it is an argument that people should not overthrow dictators, even genocidal ones, because when you make a revolution you get attacked by imperialist powers or other powerful reactionary states. Perhaps Russians should not have made a revolution because Russia first temporarily lost a great chunk of territory to the invading German army at Brest-Litovsk, and then had to face another 20 or so western armies of invasion. The argument is ludicrous, and counterrevolutionary.
Let’s look at three aspects that make Israel terrified of the Syrian revolution.
Concern about ‘jihadists’ and ‘terrorists’
The first, the most superficial, is the one that Israeli leaders promote, and is most useful for mass consumption: as seen in so many of the quotes above, Israel does not want “terrorists” or “jihadists” to get their hands on weapons that were previously safely in the hands of the Assad regime, because they might use them to launch attacks “on Israel” (or more likely, the occupied Golan). This cannot be dismissed out of hand. At an immediate level, Israel would have such a fear, especially in times of “chaos,” when a new government does not have clear control of all armed forces and so on.
But any such attacks would do nothing to help Syria, let alone Palestine, whatever the illusions in certain quarters. On the contrary, it would simply be grist in the mill of Zionist propaganda about being “under attack by terrorists” and allow Israel to destroy the whole of Syria, with full US support. Whatever the past rhetoric of HTS, the fact that it has pledged not to do that is entirely logical, especially in current circumstances, and politically defangs Israel’s arguments.
Threat of spread of uprising via regional Sunni Islamist populism
The second aspect is the regional Sunni ‘Islamist’ aspect, not meaning fanatical ‘jihadism’ but more the populist Muslim Brotherhood-type connections between these activists in Sunni majority countries Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and the Gulf. HTS’s marked ‘softening’ puts it more in this camp than anything related to its distant past al-Qaeda connections. The support given by Hamas – the Palestinian MB – to the Syrian revolution both in 2011-2018 and now flows quite organicially from these connections, as does the support given to Gaza by HTS and other Syrian rebel groups and a year of demonstrations in Idlib and northern Aleppo. The MB has been a major opposition force in Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere, and in Jordan in particular it has played a major role in mobilising against the Jordanian regime’s collaboration with Israel.
Put simply, a popular revolution in one Arab country may be just too good an example for people suffering under other Arab dictators whose relationships with Israel are more out in the open than the one it had with Assad, and these religious-political connections may facilitate this. The fact that the ‘Abrahams Accord’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accord’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-MB alliance in particular. The overthrow of the Jordanian or Egyptian regimes in particular would be a huge boost to the Palestinian struggle.
In this light, we read that Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Ronen Bar and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder visited Jordan on December 13 to meet Maj. Gen. Ahmad Husni, director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, “amid concerns the unrest in Syria could spill over to the Hashemite Kingdom.” According to the Jewish News Syndicate, “Jerusalem is worried that the overthrow of the Assad regime by Syrian rebel factions including terrorist elements led by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham could destabilize Jordan … The talks come against the backdrop of fears in Jerusalem that extremist groups in Jordan could try to replicate the swift ouster of Bashar Assad by attempting to remove King Abdullah II from power.”
According to the Jerusalem Post, “Arab diplomats have also expressed alarm over a potential “domino effect” in the region. … An Arab diplomat from the region said this week that authorities in Egypt, Jordan, and neighboring states are monitoring Syria closely. There is growing apprehension that the Syrian rebellion could inspire Islamist movements elsewhere.” Meanwhile, Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, has stated that “the nature of the new forces, the affiliation with the [Muslim] Brotherhood, the affiliation with Al-Qaeda, I think these are all indicators that are quite worrying.”
In this light, the Biden administration has just asked Israel to approve U.S. military assistance to the Palestinian Authority’s security forces for a major operation they are conducting to regain control of Jenin in the West Bank. According to Axios, the PA “launched the operation out of fear that Islamist militants — emboldened after armed rebels took control of Syria — could try to overthrow the Palestinian Authority.” One Palestinian official said “It was a Syria effect. Abbas and his team were concerned that what happened in Aleppo and Damascus will inspire Palestinian Islamist groups,” also claiming that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia support the operation in Jenin to prevent “a Muslim-brotherhood style or an Iranian-funded takeover” of the PA.
At this stage it is unclear to what extent such ‘fears’ will eventuate, but these moves, visits, talks and statements suggest there is concern within the local ruling classes.
More dangerous threat of democratic, non-sectarian revolution to Zionist project
The third and most fundamental aspect is, once again, related to the spread of revolution, but not specifically the Sunni ‘Islamist’ connection. On the contrary, the extent to which the Syrian revolution can maintain its current popular, democratic and non-sectarian potential could have a dramatic impact on the region – including Israel. It was counterintuitive that a former Sunni jihadist organisation like HTS would lead with the outreach to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds, yet it happened. And while the complete hollowness of the regime was the main secret to the rapid success of the revolution, the other crucial ingredient was precisely this non-sectarian element; the descent into sectarianism, deliberately fostered by the Assad regime, was a crucial cause of the failure last time.
Israel’s bluster about being “the only democracy in the region,” while an obvious nonsense in relation to its subjected Palestinian population, holds some truth regarding the Israeli population. By being able to point at ugly dictatorships in the Arab and neighbouring Muslim world, Israeli leaders promote the idea that their anti-Israel agendas are the work of evil tyrants who want to drive out Jews. The fact that many are also run on a sectarian basis – including those are democratic such as Lebanon – further mirrors and is used to further justify Israel’s own racist, sectarian system.
The Arab Spring was the first region-wide attempt at democratic revolution, which however was largely destroyed. In 2019 there was a second round, in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria. What was very pronounced in the first three in particular was their specifically anti-sectarian content. In both Iraq and Lebanon, the movements against sectarian rule were put down, in Iraq brutally crushed by the ‘axis of resistance’ Shiite militia at a cost of hundreds of lives, while in Lebanon Hezbollah also used violence against the movement, thereby saving the rule of all the sectarian elites; in Sudan the democratic opening was overthrown by the military; a few years later, we also saw the Iranian regime crush its own ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement. All of this made the region safer for Israel’s own racist, sectarian project.
By contrast, the victory of democratic, non-sectarian forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and elsewhere would have represented a far larger political challenge to Zionism than harsh but hollow words from ugly regimes, which only facilitate Zionist siege ideology.
It may well be a struggle for the Syrian revolution to maintain the course; the mobilised Syrian revolutionary population will need to fight all attempts to restrict democratic space or to stir sectarianism tooth and nail. But if their struggle does succeed, a democratic, non-sectarian Syria could likewise have an electrifying regional impact.
Israel is trying its hardest to make sure it does not succeed.
The lightning victories of the Syrian rebel coalition over the Assad regime forces in northwest Syria over a vast area – followed in quick succession by equally rapid victories first in Hama and Homs in central Syria, then the uprisings in southern Daraa and Suweida and the collapse of the regime in Damascus itself – all within ten days – demonstrates the complete hollowness of the regime, based as it is on little more than naked military and police violence. The subsequent revelation to the world of the real level of horror in the Sednaya ‘slaughterhouse’ demonstrates the breathtaking reality of this; one is reminded of Tuol Sleng and Auschwitz. Regime defences simply collapsed everywhere, the rebels facing neither popular nor military resistance.
The Aleppo offensive
Within a day or so of the offensive launched on November 27, the rebels had not only taken vast areas of rural eastern and southern Idlib and western and southern Aleppo, but most of Aleppo city as well; even in the 2012-2016 period, the rebels only ever controlled half the city. By contrast, it had taken large-scale regime, Russian and Iranian offensives, with airpower, missiles and overwhelming military power, several years to conquer the half-city from the rebels. They then advanced south into northern Hama province, where it is now contesting the regime for Hama city.
Syrian social media accounts are full of scenes of joy as political prisoners are released, as people return to their towns and homes they were expelled from. As former mayor of East Aleppo Hagi Hassan writes, stressing the humanitarian aspects of the liberation, “The city’s liberation is allowing tens of thousands of families to return home after years of forced exile. These families, who lived in camps without essential needs, can now find a more stable and dignified life. … Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are still trapped in the regime’s jails, suffering unimaginable atrocities. The release of Aleppo has allowed the release of hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, marking an important step towards justice.” Fadel Abdul Ghany, of the Syrian Network of Human Rights, claimed that among the detainees and forcibly disappeared people who have been released were some who have been detained for 13 years, “and in one case a detainee that had spent 33 years in prison.”
According to Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, “events so far suggest HTS [the leading rebel faction] is behaving pragmatically. Its militants were dispatched right away to safeguard banks from looting. On the first night of its occupation, HTS turned off the electricity for factories, thereby affording civilian residences 16 hours of uninterrupted power, something they haven’t enjoyed since 2012. Similarly, Kareem Shaheen writes of “fascinating messages from Christian family/friends in Aleppo about the restoration of electricity and water, garbage collection (apparently the rebels are paying garbage collectors a 1.5 million SYP wage), bread everywhere, active market.”
Aleppo citadel after liberation
Hagi Hassan also claims that “for the first time in years, the city knows some security. Infrastructure has been preserved, public institutions are functioning, and no civil rights violations have been reported since liberation,” stressing that “the military forces that have entered Aleppo have not committed any violations against civilians,” but rather, “they ensured their safety.” Another Syrian reporting from Aleppo, Marcelle Shehwaro, claims there have been violations, though “despite extensive networking around this issue, I’ve only been able to document three violations,” one an infamous Christmas tree incident, though she reports more serious violations between another rebel coalition, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
More seriously, Shehwaro noted that, apart from fear of regime and Russian airstrikes, the main fear at present is gun-related chaos, caused by the release of criminal prisoners in the rush to open jails to release political prisoners. However, she reports that “a complaints hotline was activated, and it appears the operations management room is taking this seriously so far. But this is far from a utopia.”
Importantly, she stresses regarding the head-scarf, given the radical Islamist ideology of some of the groups involved, “there are incidents happening related to being told, “Put a scarf on your head.” However, the scale is still very limited (compared to what might be expected). Wearing a hijab hasn’t yet become customary (and may God strengthen the women of Aleppo so it doesn’t become the norm). For now, women are still walking in the streets without hijabs—not as isolated acts of courage or rebellion, but simply because that’s how they dress.” However, she also stresses there should be no complacency on this.
She emphasises that both “alarmist narratives” and “reassuring narratives” should be avoided. This is sensible nuance for any such situation. Revolutions are typically depicted as unmitigated bloodbaths, or as heroic, romanticised utopias. No revolution in history has been one or the other. And from all the above, and more below, what I want to stress here is precisely that this is a revolution, a revival of the Syrian revolution which many considered crushed, warts and all, not simply a “military conquest by Islamists” as some have depicted.
Hagi Hassan notes that “Yes, Hayat Tahrir al-Cham [HTS] is present, but the true liberators of the city are its inhabitants, its youth who, exiled children, returned today as adults to liberate their city from the yoke of oppression.” Shehwaro also stresses the role of ordinary people:
“The grassroots Syrian effort is remarkable. Aleppo is boiling, inside and out. From bread to communications, burial initiatives, pressing the military to take responsibility for every issue that impacts civilians, supporting organizations, bolstering the Civil Defense’s presence in Aleppo, and tracking the conditions of children—there is extraordinary grassroots effort.”
On December 1, an example of such a popular initiative was the Initiative “People of Aleppo for the sake of the Homeland,” which congratulated the Syrian people for being freed from the regime, but made a list of people’s requests including advising “the brothers in military factions to fully discipline the instructions” of their leaders “not to engage in any violation,” recommending “the brothers in military factions to adhere to military fronts, cord holes, military barracks, and complete ban of any armed appearance among civilians,” while calling for “forming a civil administration from Aleppo’s competencies as a transition stage in preparation for the elections.”
As if on cue, on December 4 HTS commander Abu Mohammed al-Jolani stated that “the city will be administered by a transitional body. All armed fighters, including HTS members, will be directed to leave civilian areas in the coming weeks, and government employees will be invited to resume their work.” Here is the order:
Jolani even suggested that that HTS may dissolve itself “in order to enable the full consolidation of civilian and military structures in new institutions that reflect the breadth of Syrian society.”
The rebel operations room also announced a total amnesty for Syrian regime troops, police and security forces in Aleppo, calling on them to submit their paperwork to receive their official clemency and identification cards.
And the surprise is that, after years of brutal suppression of the revolution, after the regime’s genocidal bloodbath of hundreds of thousands of people and its destruction of its own country with its airforce, after the degree of cooption of the popular uprising – either by the Turkish regime or by the hard-Islamist HTS now leading this operation – that such repression inevitably led to, we might have expected the results of a new offensive to be more retrograde, with more violations, more bloody, more divisive, than in the past. Yet so far, we can say that there were far, far more violations by rebel groups in Aleppo in the past compared to what is ensuing at present.
Before going on to look at the rebel forces involved, and then the wider geopolitical framework, it is worth looking at the question of “return” of thousands, and perhaps soon hundreds of thousands, to their homes, which was touched on above.
If we just consider the 7 million plus displaced Syrians in northwest Syria or Turkey (and not even the millions in Lebanon and Jordan), they come from all parts of Syria, including from a string of Sunni-majority towns around Damascus in the south that were ethnically cleansed via starvation sieges in 2015-17, but also from these very regions now being liberated in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, especially after the regime and Russia reconquered about half of these provinces from the opposition in 2018-2020, leading the population to flee. Now, as a result of this current offensive, all the historic revolutionary towns of the region – Saraqib, Maraat Al-Nouman, Khan Sheikun, KafrNabl – which were captured by the regime in this final stage, have been liberated.
Even for those most cynical of the current HTS leadership of the offensive, what we need to recognise is that this has the potential to be a Gigantic March of Return!
The offensive beginning on November 27 is being carried out by a wide coalition of rebel groups under the Military Operations Command, which arose from the Fath al-Mubeen Operations Room in Idlib. The leading force is the hard-line Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), while the other two major components are the National Front for Liberation (NFL) and Jaish al-Izzeh, both of which are independent ‘secular-nationalist’ Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades, while the Islamist factions Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Shamiya also joined the offensive.
According to the New Arab, “participation of fighters from the secular nationalist Syrian National Army (SNA) factions, which is closely aligned with Turkey,” has been confirmed, but “while the SNA has supported the operation rhetorically, it has not officially confirmed its participation, which is likely due to the influence of Turkey.” That was written before the SNA did step in on November 30 with its own ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operations room (of which, more below), which at the outset was aimed more at the Kurdish-led SDF forces in northern Aleppo than at the regime.
Very broadly, we may divide the rebel groups in this region into three broad categories: HTS itself, which has become the dominant force in Idlib, and which dominates the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG); the factions of the SNA closest to Turkey, including both secular-nationalist and Islamist factions, which is dominant in parts of northern Aleppo province near the Turkish border, and which dominates the Syrian Interim Government (SIG); and organisations like Jaysh al-Izza which are independent, while the NFL, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Shamiya have operated both as allies to the HTS-led command and as loose members or allies of the SNA, while maintaining operational independence.
Overwhelmingly, people join these groups not due to some ideological affiliation, which is more an obsession of western leftists, but to defend their liberated towns and regions from encroachment by the genocidal dictatorship. Who they join depends more on who is dominant in a certain region and thus can better effectively defend that region, who has money to pay wages and for better weaponry and so on. These people are mostly fighting in support of the original aims of the revolution, ie the overthrow of the dictatorship and the institution of a democratic Syria for all. What this means in practice is that, while the politics of the leaderships are not irrelevant, they are also not set in stone; to an extent they reflect the ideals and pressures of their fighting base.
And in a revolutionary situation such as this, many of these divisions break down again, are reconstituted along different lines; leaderships will try to dominate, but their need to keep leadership in a revolutionary struggle also means they will be carried by it. As seen above, popular initiatives play a big role. Even the question of government may end up having little to do with the two ‘governments’ discussed above which have ruled so long in their besieged de-facto statelets.
For example, one resident returning to the northern Aleppo town Tel Rifaat after “a forced absence of around 3205 days” was asked whether the town now will be run by the SSG or the SIG, after being liberated by “many of the Free Army’s factions.” He responded that “the people of the town of Tel Refaat have prior administrative experience, and they elect their council through a general commission composed of all the town’s families. This council administers the town’s affairs, whatever its affiliation.”
On the nature of HTS
Many observers are understandably nervous about both HTS, an authoritarian Islamist group which many years ago was affiliated with al-Qaida, and the SNA, given its control by Turkey and Turkey’s anti-Kurdish policy. There is no question that as a result of being bombed for years, driven into a corner, overwhelmed with displaced from all over Syria, and with virtually no support from anywhere in the world, the civil and military formations of the Syrian revolution have been heavily co-opted for years now, especially since the heavy defeats from 2018 onwards. In fact, all the famous revolution-held towns run by popular councils that continually resisted encroachment by HTS, such as Maraat al-Nuuman, Saraqeb, Karanbel, Atareb and others, were overrun by Assad in the final 2019-2020 offensives, removing important strength from the more independent sectors of the revolution.
People need to survive; and they need protection from the regime. Fighters need wages to feed their families. Western leftists often discuss these issues as if it were a market for different socialist and anarchist ideas on a western campus; it couldn’t be more different. In fact, there is much evidence that many of the fighters in HTS’s ranks today were previously fighters in FSA brigades that its predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, crushed at various times – they may not like it, but they still need to fight to regime. Nusra’s forces never constituted any more than 10 percent of the rebels’ armed forces; yet now HTS is overwhelmingly dominant, meaning the bulk of HTS fighters had no past in Nusra or al-Qaida.
HTS’s own rule in Idlib has been mixed to say the least. The leading cadre of HTS are mostly derived from the former Jabhat al-Nusra, which in 2012-2016 was affiliated to al-Qaida, a relationship it severed that year, before moving on to form HTS as a coalition with a number of other Islamist groups. On the whole, its rule is seen as repressive, if effective, but in practice this has gone back and forth. It has adopted a number of pragmatic positions, both in theory and in practice (eg in relation to social restrictions) since leaving the jihadist cloak behind. Part of this is simply due to the needs to running technocratic government effectively. On the whole HTS has tended not to use repression against popular protest, but it has been quite repressive against political opposition, probably more so than any other rebel group.
According to a recent report on Syria by the UN Human Rights Council:
“Starting in February [2024], unprecedentedly large protests, led by civilian activists and supported by military and religious figures, spread across HTS areas. Protestors called for the release of political and security detainees, for governance and socioeconomic reforms and for the removal of HTS leader Abu Mohammad Al-Julani. Demonstrations were triggered by reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by the HTS general security service, following months of arrest campaigns by HTS targeting their own members, as well as members of other armed groups and political parties, such as Hizb al-Tahrir.”
It notes that Jolani acknowledged the use of “prohibited and severe means of pressure on the detainees” and “pledged to investigate and to hold those responsible accountable.” It also noted that while demonstrations mostly proceeded without HTS state violence used against them, later HTS did begin using force against them.
Despite repressive rule and co-optation by both governments, the populations have engaged in mass popular demonstrations both against Turkey and against HTS at different times, suggesting that, while militarily defeated, the revolutionary masses still believe they have something to fight for and remain committed to the ideals which they rose up for in 2011. Indeed, while some of the demonstrations against HTS were simply against its attempt to impose its rule over areas it does not control, or against its repressive actions, others were against HTS attempting to open a trade connection with the regime; and similarly, the demonstrations against Turkey were against the growing convergence between Erdogan and Assad as they move to ‘bury the hatchet’. And now, just as repression and siege can lead to such co-optation, new revolutionary advances can again liberate popular energies.
It may well be that one of the secondary reasons for the offensive was indeed for HTS to attempt to break out of this increasing unpopularity. If so, there can be no doubt that the offensive has been massively popular, above all by allowing hundreds of thousands to return to their homes.
HTS overtures to Christians, Druze, Shiites, Alawites and Kurds
With this hardline past, it might therefore come as a surprise that HTS has actually come out with some very positive overtures towards the populations in the regions it is advancing into, and towards minority groups in particular, towards religious minorities – Christians, Druze, Shiites and even Alawites – and the ethnic Kurdish minority, despite previously bad relations with all five.
As the rebels advanced towards Aleppo, Jolani addressed his troops:
“We urge you to show mercy, kindness and gentleness towards the people in the city of Aleppo. Let your top priority be the preservation of their properties and lives, as well as ensuring the security of the city. Do not cut down trees, frighten children, or instil fear in our people of all sects [emphasis added]. Aleppo has always been – and continues to be – a crossroads of civilisations and cultures, with a long history of cultural and religious diversity. It is the heritage and present of all Syrians. Today is a day of compassion; whoever enters their home, closes their door, and refrains from hostility is safe. Whoever declares their defection from the criminal regime, lays down their weapon, and surrenders to the revolutionaries is also safe.”
This sounds nothing like the old Nusra, or like any kind of ‘Sunni jihadist’ organisation. Neither does the following declaration from Bashir Ali, Head of the Directorate of Minority Affairs, Department of Political Affairs, of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), made as the rebels advanced:
“As many regions are liberated from the criminal regime, I want to assure all minorities, including Christians, that their lives, property, places of worship and freedoms will be protected. … This is your city too, and you are free to stay and live here in freedom and dignity, knowing that your safety and rights are a priority to us just as all other Syrians.”
The Department issued another statement aimed specifically at two Shiite villages of Nubl and al-Zahara, to the north of Aleppo city:
“Out of faith on our part in the principles of the Syrian revolution that are based on justice and dignity, we affirm the necessity of protecting civilians and guarding their property and lives. In this context, we emphasise that the people of the localities of Nubl and al-Zahara’, like other Syrian civilians, must not be targeted or threatened in any way on the basis of sect or ethnic affiliation. We also call on the people of Nubl and al-Zahara’, and all the Syrian regions, not to stand alongside the criminal regime and aid it in killing the Syrian people and deepening its humanitarian suffering.”
Traditionally, Sunni jihadists like Nusra saw other Muslim sects like Shiites and Alawites as worse than Christians and Jews, as they were considered apostates in Islam; this statement was therefore very significant. Given the extreme divisions from the past (caused by both sides) however, it appears that many of the Shia in these two towns decided to leave, but those that have stayed are reporting that there has been no looting or revenge attacks by the rebels.
Perhaps even more stunning for a formation arising from a Sunni jihadist background, on December 5 HTS issued a statement proclaiming the Alawites to be an indispensable part of Syrian society, calling on them to abandon the Assad regime which it claims “hijacked” the Alawites to conduct a sectarian battle against the opposition:
An as the rebel offensive was approaching victory, Alawite leaders responded in kind:
“Given that the regime, during its years of rule, has regularly sought to prevent any form of societal representation of the Alawite sect, we, the sons of this sect in the city of Homs, renew our call at this critical stage:
“First, we address our call to the revolutionary forces entering the city of Homs. We call on you to maintain civil peace and protect all societal components in the city with all their different spectra. We also urge you to spare the city of Homs, which has been exhausted by violence, from entering a new round of revenge, and to work to preserve public and private property. We hope that you will show the responsibility that you have shown in many cities that you have previously entered, to be an example to be followed in strengthening the unity of the national fabric.
“Secondly, we address our Alawite sect in the city, calling on them to beware of being drawn into the false propaganda and plots that the regime has been spreading with the aim of sowing fear and terror among you. We stress the need for you to stay in your homes, and not to allow the regime to use you again as fuel for a battle that it has in fact been losing since the first day of this revolution.
“Homs was and will remain a symbol of diversity and civil coexistence, and today, as we are on the verge of its liberation, we aspire for it to become a model to be emulated in affirming the unity of the Syrian people and their ability to overcome the wounds of the painful past.
“Long live a free and proud Syria.’ December 6, 2024 – Homs Media Center”
So far, reports from the ground suggest there have been very few violations, though of course some are inevitable in any war. Aleppo’s churches have continued their services and celebrations as normal this past week. Here is the first Sunday mass in Aleppo under Syrian rebels/HTS rule, for example:
However, as Syrian Christian Fadi Hallisso returning to Aleppo notes regarding the fears of many Christians, the assurances that the Islamic dress code will not be imposed on them and that there is no threat to their churches are “not helping at all,” because he claims, these are not the main concerns of Christians, but rather the fear of becoming second-class citizens in a new “Ottoman millet” system. Interestingly, Hallisso states that “the only way to reassure Christians in these circumstances is for Aleppo to be run by a civilian administration of the city’s notables after all armed groups retreat from the city” – ie, precisely what has just been announced by the rebel leadership.
The Arab-Kurdish issue in the current conflict
Marcelle Shehwaro claims that “the Arab-Kurdish situation is catastrophic” and that “the polarization is costing lives, displacement, and a lack of any civil structure with even a minimal level of mutual trust.” She blames both “sniper fire from the SDF that claims civilian lives daily,” and “displacement, abuse, and violations [of Kurds] by the National Army [SNA].” It is very important here to distinguish the SNA from HTS.
As the HTS-led coalition approached Aleppo, Turkiye initially ordered the SNA not to take part. This is likely because if Turkiye gave any green light to the offensive (see below), the aim was for a limited operation in the Idlib/Aleppo countryside to pressure Assad; by all accounts, Turkiye was as blindsided as everyone by the speed of the fall of the city. But when the city did fall to the rebels, the SDF moved into some eastern and northern parts of Aleppo that the regime had fled from, which then linked up Aleppo to the SDF-controlled Rojava statelet in northeast Syria, obviously not Turkiye’s plan.
Therefore, Turkiye the next day sent in the SNA with its own ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operation, which began seizing territory from the SDF – it is important to underline that this was an SNA, not an HTS, action, and should not be confused with the main rebel operation. This demonstrated Turkiye’s anti-Kurdish priorities (though the SNA has also since taken former Assadist territory).
However, even with the SNA’s anti-Kurdish policy, it is not as simple as “Turkey-SNA attacking the Kurds,” as much media, and the SDF, suggest, although there clearly have been violations. The problem is that the main areas of northern Aleppo province that the SNA first seized from the SDF – around the Tel Rifaat region – were not Kurdish regions at all, but Arab-majority regions which the SDF had dishonourably conquered from the rebels in early 2016 with Russian airforce backing, uprooting 100,000 people who have been living in tents in Azaz to the north ever since! For the tens of thousands of expelled residents, this is now a homecoming. However again, even this reality is altered by the fact that two years later, in 2018, Turkiye conquered Kurdish Afrin, northwest of Aleppo, so much of the Kurdish population there fled to these now empty homes in Tel Rifaat, and it is now these people having to flee again.
It is striking that HTS – a former jihadist group which, when its core was Nusra, tended to engage in conflict with the SDF more than any other rebel group – is now engaged in “back-channel dialogue and negotiations with the SDF” which are “far more constructive and effective than with the SNA itself.”
On December 1, HTS issued a statement telling the SDF that HTS’ fight was against the Syrian regime, not the SDF, promising to ensure the safety of Aleppo’s Kurds, and describing the Kurds as “an integral part of the diverse Syrian identity” who “have full rights to live in dignity and freedom,” calling on them to remain in Aleppo; notably also is HTS’s condemnation of “the barbaric practices committed by ISIS against the Kurds:”
HTS then called on the SDF to withdraw from Aleppo, promising to take care of civilians in the Kurdish-held neighborhoods, and offering safe passage to the SDF fighters, possibly to avert an SNA-SDF clash; and the SDF quietly withdrew from the parts of Aleppo it had taken, while remaining in the actual Kurdish-populated regions it had long controlled in Aleppo city, Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh, where they have the support of the population. Any attempt to drive them from here would be a massive violation. At the time of writing, the SDF still controls these two neighbourhoods, and much of the population has also remained.
Background: the evolution of HTS on minority issues
I don’t include all these quotes in order to suggest HTS will necessarily live up to all this, the future simply cannot be known; and the concerns that many Syrians have, including many who are ecstatic about the fall of the regime, are absolutely justified [indeed, some point precisely to what happened after the Iranian revolution of 1979]. Rather, the fact that HTS found it necessary to issue these statements is evidence at least of understanding what a revolutionary situation requires of it. The fact that so far it has been living up to this in practice is a very encouraging sign. Rather than declare in advance either that HTS will throw off all this “re-badging” once it has power and return to its dark past, or that it will surely lead a democratic utopia, it is better to cautiously watch and hope that the spread of the revolution continues to dilute HTS power and older HTS ideology; the broader it is, the more difficult it would be for a militia to put popular power back into a box.
However, the discourse stating that HTS is only saying all these things now to “re-badge” for western consumption to be taken off western “terrorism” lists and so on has the problem that very significant changes in relation to minorities have been taking place for a number of years now in Idlib. The oppression of the Druze minority under Nusra rule for example was particularly appalling; they were basically subjected a program of forced Sunnification, one of the ugliest features of Nusra rule.
However, as well-informed Syria-watcher Gregory Waters explains:
“ … the SSG has spent more than six years engaging with both the Christian and Druze communities in Idlib. An independent, region-wide administrative body was created to serve as a focal point for all communities, including those of minorities. Gradually, this body worked to address complaints and return the homes and farmland that had been seized by a variety of opposition groups in past years. This author has met with some of these community leaders, who told him that, while slow, significant progress has been made for their community in relation to security, property rights, economy, and religious discourse.”
This stepped up in 2022, when Jolani visited the Druze centre, Jabal al-Summaq, after which HTS began returning homes and land earlier seized; and visited Christian residents of Quniya, Yaqoubiya, and Jadida, which was followed by the reopening of the St. Anne Church in Yaqoubiya village, for the first time since the rebels entered Idlib in 2015, attended by dozens of people, and then another large mass at the Armenian Apostolic Church, a decade after it was closed.
Just as surprising has been HTS’s outreach to the Kurdish community. After taking over the Kurdish region of Afrin in 2022 from the SNA, HTS declared that it “confirms that the Arab and Kurdish people… or the displaced are the subject of our attention and appreciation, and we warn them against listening to the factional interests… We specifically mention the Kurdish brothers; they are the people of those areas and it is our duty to protect them and provide services to them.”
While this may sound like rhetoric, in March 2023, HTS confronted the SNA after five Kurdish civilians were killed by members of a Turkish-backed faction during a Nowruz celebration in the town of Jenderes. Jolani met with the residents and HTS forces deployed in the town and seized control of headquarters of the military police and the SNA’s Eastern Army, which was accused of the killings.
This outreach has even proceeded to discussions with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), HTS hosting several delegations from Hassakeh in 2023. An agreement for the SDF to supply oil to HTS-controlled refineries was reached (the SDF already has a large-scale agreement of this kind with the regime). Intriguingly, HTS also proposed participating in the SDF’s anti-ISIS fight, and for the establishment of a joint civilian administration between HTS and the SDF if HTS could gain control of areas currently held by the SNA!
Apart from the needs of technocratic government getting the better of ideology, the evolution of HTS’s Kurdish policy was also partly driven by its rivalry and clash of perspectives with the Turkish-backed SNA. As Turkey’s priorities turned more to confronting the SDF in Syria, it held back the rebels it controlled from confronting the Assad regime, and continually made overtures to the regime for a joint war against the SDF as a basis for restoring relations. HTS however, whatever its past clashes with the SDF, and also the more independent FSA militia groups, continued to see the conflict with the regime as having priority, and were furious with Turkiye’s attempts to reconcile with the regime. This created a cautious, low-level convergence between HTS and SDF priorities.
Why now? ‘Deterring’ regime’s year-long ‘aggression’ waited for Lebanon ceasefire
This offensive did not come out of the blue; by all accounts, the rebels have been planning this for up to a year. However, there was little expectation their offensive would be so successful; the name of the offensive – Operation Deter the Aggression – instead informs us of the original aim: to push back against over a year of renewed aggression, mostly by regime and Russian bombing, against the opposition-controlled regions of Idlib and Aleppo provinces in the northwest.
However, surprised by the rapidity of regime collapse, the aims then widened, to liberating as much territory from the regime as possible.
From the onset of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the Assad regime, while maintaining complete quiet on its southern frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan, used the cover of Gaza to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib right from the start, a stunning example of this part of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ lacking a compass. According to the Syria Response Coordinators, “266 educational facilities in northwestern Syria have been put out of service over the past three years,” with attacks on schools sharply increasing over the last year, with 43 attacks between September 2023 and November 2024.
All this time, people in opposition-controlled Idlib and Aleppo have continually demonstrated in support of Gaza, with ongoing protests, seminars, donation drives etc Gaza (while the Assad regime bans pro-Palestine demonstrations). Assadist “resistance” to the Zionist onslaught was apparently carried out against this extremely pro-Palestine population of the northwest, demonstrating one of numerous examples of the use of phoney “resistance” language by repressive and reactionary regimes who in reality have no interest whatsoever in “resisting” Israel’s genocidal campaign.
People in Idlib have continually demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza, despite being under regime and Russian bombing themselves.
These attacks continued on a daily basis, systematically targeting villages, civilian infrastructure and agricultural zones, impacting some 55,000 families. This has led to new waves of displacement as people fled their homes to escape the bombardment; in late October, the Syrian Response Coordinators “recorded the forced displacement of over 1,843 people from 37 towns and villages in just 48 hours.” According to Ibrahim Al-Sayed speaking to the New Arab, about three-quarters of the residents of Sarmin have fled the town, which is “the largest displacement the city has experienced since the ceasefire agreement was signed in March 2020,” due to “daily artillery and missile shelling.”
It has been widely pointed out that Assad’s Iranian and Hezbollah backers have been weakened due to defeat in Lebanon by Israel. In reality, this makes little sense, and hardly explains the complete rout that the Assadist armed forces have undergone, the fact that virtually no Syrian soldier in the whole country considered it worth laying down his life to save the genocidal dictatorship. No amount of extra Iranian or Hezbollah reinforcement would have made any difference.
In reality, the connection is somewhat different: it is precisely the fact that Hezbollah had to stop being a counterrevolutionary force in Syria but rather return to its resistance origins in its own country Lebanon – ie, return to standing on the side of the region’s peoples resisting oppression – that allowed for similar developments in Syria, ie, the Syrian peoples’ offensive against the Assad regime. Hezbollah is, after all, a Lebanese organisation, and its raison d’etre is supposedly defence of southern Lebanon. It was not Hezbollah’s defeat in Lebanon, but rather its resistance in Lebanon, that meant it couldn’t protect Assad’s tyranny. If anything, its defeat ad the signing of a ceasefire could have freed it to send forces back to Syria, had it chosen to. Yes, Israel destroyed a lot of Hezbollah’s capacity in Lebanon, but that was rockets aimed at Israel; they were never used in Syria to defend Assad in the past, why would they be now? Hezbollah’s role in protecting Assad was essentially manpower. Even Israel’s destruction of a lot of Iranian capacity in Syria means largely the infrastructure involved in delivering weapons across Syria to Hezbollah.
Much has also been made of the fact that the rebel offensive began at almost the same time as the Lebanon ceasefire came into effect, as if the defeat of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon was the signal for the rebels to launch the attack, even leading to conspiracy theories that Israel greenlighted the attack. However, as demonstrated above, it is the regime that has been attacking the rebels for the past year rather than using its forces to open a front on the Golan to aid Palestine or even to aid its ally Hezbollah, while the rebels were trying to ‘deter’ this aggression. The question is rather why the rebels waited so long to deter regime aggression.
In fact, the rebels purposefully waited until the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as not to be seen breaking any transit of arms between Iran and Lebanon across Syria while the war lasted. While the regime’s ongoing offensive made the necessity of their operation more and more acute, they were reluctant to wage it as long as the conflict continued. As Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, explained, HTS waited for a ceasefire “because they did not want anything to do with Israel … HTS is against Israel, it has praised the October 7 attacks, it is for the Palestinian cause, Israel has nothing to do with what HTS is doing.”
According to Hadi al-Bahra, head of the exile-based opposition leadership, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), plans for the offensive were a year old, but “the war on Gaza … then the war in Lebanon delayed it” because “it wouldn’t look good having the war in Lebanon at the same time they were fighting in Syria,” and therefore waited till the ceasefire. While the SNC itself has no control over the fighters (especially HTS, which is not part of the SNC), the article further notes that “Rebel commanders have separately said they feared if they had started their assault earlier, it might have looked like they were helping Israel, who was also battling Hezbollah.”
This also raises an interesting question about Hezbollah and Iranian intentions now. Hezbollah played a significant role in Assad’s counterrevolutionary genocide, acting as a proxy for the Iranian regime. Yet when it was in its existential struggle in Lebanon against Israel, the Assad regime did not lift a finger to help. The regime’s silence was stunning, it took it 48 hours to even issue a statement about the killing of Nasrallah. Meanwhile, the regime has been closing Hezbollah recruitment centres. Even in its statements on Lebanon it mostly didn’t mention Hezbollah.
Assad’s message to Hezbollah was: thanks for the help back then, was nice knowing you.
How likely then is it that Hezbollah or even Iran will send its own battered troops back to save Assad’s arse again? Hezbollah has already stated, diplomatically enough, that it has no plans to do so “at this stage,” while a Hezbollah spokesperson told Newsweek, comically enough, that “The Syrian Army does not need fighters. It can defend its land.” And this was probably an added incentive for any Hezbollah cadre who did happen to still be in Syria, and even other Iran-backed forces, to flee with the rest rather than stand and fight; and on the whole, there has been surprisingly little action by these Iran-led forces over the last week.
The other “why now” question relates to Russia. While Russian warplanes did bomb the advancing rebels, this was not at a very decisive level. Bombing civilians all year while the population remained largely passive was easy enough for a ramshackle bully state like Russia, but is less effective against an advancing revolution when not used in full force. Of course, some of this is due to Putin’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, where most of the Russian airforce is needed to bomb Ukraine in order to maintain its illegal conquest of one fifth of that country, while Putin had thought that Syria was pacified. But, as with the Iranians, there has not been much to show for even the Russian air capacity that is present in Syria, apart from stepping up barbaric attacks on the civilian infrastructure in Idlib, such as the bombing of five hospitals, including a maternity hospital and the university hospital.
But the relatively low profile of both Russian and Iranian backers in the defence of the regime also has two other causes: firstly, the collapse of regime defences itself means it is not just difficult but pointless to fight for a regime which will not fight for itself, indeed, as Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent Iranian analyst who advises officials on regional strategy put it, “Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight;” and secondly, it may also be related to frustration with the Assad regime itself, which in turn relates to their long-term work with Turkey on the Astana process.
The role of Turkiye
While Turkiye was a major backer of the rebels in the early years, by around 2016 it began prioritising its conflict with the SDF in Syria over support for the uprising. Its series of agreements with Russia and Iran under the Astana process between 2017-2020 to freeze the frontlines in the northwest can be seen in this context. While Turkiye guaranteed rebel compliance, Russia supposedly guaranteed regime compliance. With the frontline quiet – well, quite on the rebel side – Turkiye invaded northeast Syria in October 2019 to drive the SDF from the border region, with the acquiescence of Trump and Putin; the reliance of the rebels on Turkish protection of their remaining enclave allowed Turkiye to coopt some in the SNA to take part in this invasion. The invasion in turn forced the SDF to allow the regime to send troops into part of the ‘Rojava’ region they controlled, especially the border region, thus extending regime control in Syria.
But the reason Turkiye could not simply betray the rebels outright and allow full Assadist reconquest of the northwest in exchange for alliance with Assad against the SDF is because Turkiye already has 3.6 million Syrian refugees within its borders, the largest refugee population on Earth; allowing Assad to completely take all of Idlib and Aleppo provinces would lead to another few million refugees pouring in, at a time when Turkiye actually wants to try to send as many as possible back to Syria. Refugees will not return to regime-ruled Syria as long as Assad remains in power. Therefore, Turkiye has to maintain support a certain amount of territory remaining under opposition control, and has to continue to push Assad to open a dialogue with the opposition under the terms of the Astana process and of UN Resolution 2254, which calls for a Syrian-led ‘political solution’ process, because such a political process, based on compromise, could also open avenues for safe refugee return.
However, while Russia and Turkey, together with Iran, had agreed to certain frontlines in 2017 under the Astana dialogue, between 2018 and 2020 the regime launched several gigantic offensives which cut the region controlled by the opposition in half, losing all of western Aleppo province, southern Idlib province and the parts of northern Hama and Latakia it had controlled. This added an extra 1.4 million displaced people to the 2.2 million already under opposition control, now squeezed into half the area. While Turkish action finally put a stop to the Assadist offensive in early 2020, this could not be satisfactory for Turkey: how could it begin sending refugees back into Syria when the liberated region was smaller than before with even more displaced?
Despite this, the Erdogan regime has continued to push for normalisation with Assad for several years now, with proposals for launching a joint offensive against the SDF in the east, despite US forces stationed there who work with the SDF against any re-emergence of ISIS. Both Erdogan’s ultra-rightist ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the opposition Kemalist CHP, have been strongly pushing for normalisation with Assad, a joint war with Assad against the SDF, and expulsion of Syrian refugees, on the absurd grounds that peace with Assad would allow refugees to return! [Interestingly, a number of European countries, led by Italy’s far-right Meloni government and Austria’s FPO, have been pushing much the same line, that refugee return requires reconciliation with Assad, with Italy recently sending an envoy back to the Assad regime].
Erdogan better understands the contradiction between those two stands: that refugees cannot be sent back if there is no opposition-held territory, that the only way to send them back to Assad would be violently, causing enormous upheaval, and that either expanding opposition territory, or reaching the compromise ‘political solution’, or both, are essential requirements for sending back refugees. Yet Assad, while open to normalising with Turkiye, demands withdrawal of Turkish forces as a precondition – which would likely mean Assadist reconquest – and resists all pressure to engage with the political process of UN Res 2254.
This is why much speculation has it that Turkiye gave the green-light to the offensive, to pressure Assad on these issues.
However, on November 25, just days before the rebel offensive began, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan stated that the withdrawal of Turkish troops was no longer conditional on either the regime reaching an agreement with the opposition, or the opening of the ‘political process’; seemingly, Turkiye was still making concessions to get the normalisation process happening. The fact that the offensive was led by HTS, rather than the SNA which Turkey initially held back, also suggests that Turkiye had nothing to do with the operation.
Others note however that several days after that statement, Fidan stated that Assad is clearly not interested in peace in Syria, so perhaps exasperation did lead to Turkey giving a green light to a “limited operation.” Either way, once the operation began, Turkiye could see its value in terms of pressuring Assad on the issues dividing them and returning non-regime territory to 2017 lines.
Since then, Turkish statements have been cautious. Erdogan has said nothing, while Fidan said that Turkiye had no involvement, declaring pointedly that “We will not initiate any action that could trigger a new wave of migration [from Syria to Turkiye],” and telling US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Turkiye was “against any development that would increase instability in the region.” On November 29, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that “the clashes experienced in recent days have caused an undesirable increase in tension in the region. It is of great importance for Turkey not to cause new and greater instabilities and not to harm the civilian population.”
One might think, OK, this was not Turkiye’s plan, but if the offensive does lead to the overthrow of Assad, then refugees would be able to return, and Turkish influence extended all over Syria. However, Turkiye has no control over HTS, nor will it be able to control a Syria after a successful revolution. With its main goal still to “leverage[e] the situation to push Damascus and its allies toward negotiations” via pressure from Russia and Iran, and to jointly fight the SDF, the Turkish regime would prefer a more controlled situation. On December 2, Erdogan stressed “the Syrian regime must engage in a real political process to prevent the situation from getting worse,” and that unity, stability and territorial integrity of Syria are important for Turkey.
For HTS, on the other hand, the very threat of a Turkish agreement with Assad, Russia and Iran in which it would be sacrificed was probably another reason to launch the offensive, and the independence it has gained by going so well beyond Turkey’s limited plan will be jealously guarded.
Furthermore, there is also the possibility that Assad, with Russian and Iranian support, may launch a furious counteroffensive if the rebel advance does not stop; Russia has vital strategic interests on the Syrian coastal region, and Iran in parts of the centre and south, and it is unlikely they would give them up without a massive fight beyond a certain line. And if that happened, it could lead to a further refugee outflow into Turkey.
Both Russia and Iran appear to be bending towards the Turkish position, and indeed, frustration with Assad’s intransigence, which led to this explosion, could well be a reason for the lack of Russian and Iranian response. On December 1, Russia emphasised the importance of “coordinated efforts within the framework of the Astana Format with the involvement of Turkey.” On the same day Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi “held a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara, where both agreed that foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Russia should meet soon.” Both are rational enough to see that if they don’t try to salvage something through a political process, they may end up with nothing [update: somewhat comically, as Daraa and Suweida and Homs were falling, and hours before Assad and family fled and Damascus fell, and the whole of Syria was celebrating, that Astana meeting did place, with Russia, Turkiye and Iran demanding “an end to hostile activities” in Syria!].
An interesting side-point here is HTS’s unexpected November 29 appeal to Russia, aiming to neutralise support for the regime. While condemning Russia’s bombing, the Political Affairs Administration of the SSG affirmed that “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, and it is likewise not a party to what is happening in the Russia-Ukraine war, but rather it is a revolution that was started to liberate the Syrian people from … the criminal regime,” calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.”
Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Iraq: Go Assad!
As is well-known, three of the ‘Abraham Accords’ states – UAE, Bahrain and Sudan – restored relations with the Assad regime during much the same time period as they established relations with Israel, while Egypt, which has had relations with Israel for decades, also established strong relations with the Assad regime following the bloody military coup of al-Sisi in 2013.
Not surprisingly therefore, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty reiterated Egypt’s support for “Syrian national institutions” to his Syrian counterpart, stressing “Syria’s vital role in fostering regional stability and combating terrorism.” Similarly, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) told al-Assad that his country “stands with the Syrian state and supports it in combating terrorism, extending its sovereignty, unifying its territories, and achieving stability.” MBZ also recently put forward the idea to US officials of lifting US sanctions on the Assad regime if it cut off Iran’s weapons routes to Lebanon (an idea also put forward by Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer during his early November discussions with Russian leaders in Moscow). Jordanian King Abdullah II similarly said that “Jordan stands by the brothers in Syria and its territorial integrity, sovereignty and stability.” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani of the US-Iran joint-venture Iraqi regime also stressed that “Syria’s security and stability are closely linked to Iraq’s national security,” while a number of pro-Iranian Iraqi militia groups declared they are sending forces to Syria to bolster the regime – curiously after not having sent forces to aid their Hezbollah co-thinkers in Lebanon when under existential attack by Israel.
Juan Cole runs the often very useful ‘Informed Comment’ site, but like everyone, he has his areas of expertise … and not. One of the problems with Syria is the tendency of people who know little about it to make up for its alleged “complexity” by making sweeping statements and buying to crass stereotypes that they normally wouldn’t. In his first piece on this uprising, while correctly discussing the alliance of states like Egypt and UAE with Assad, he then proceeds, based on nothing at all, to claim “these anti-Iran forces include Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, and, outside the region, the United States. All are delighted at the news.” He then goes on to warn them that in reality, this may not be good news for them – as if they don’t already know, since they do not hold the view he so groundlessly ascribed to them!
Saudi Arabia was slower than its main allies (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan) in restoring relations with Assad, just as it was with Israel. Despite constant media declarations that Saudi Arabia was about to normalise with Israel, it still hasn’t, but in the meantime it fully normalised with the Assad regime, and even with its great rival Iran, and it played the key role in getting Assad back into the Arab League in 2023. On December 2, Saudi leader MBS met with UAE leader MBZ, for the first time in years – their alliance has been replaced by rivalry – to discuss the Syria situation. There is little doubt MBS shares his partner’s concerns. As for Bahrain, it was one of the first Arab states to normalise with the Assad regime, just after UAE in late 2018, and like Egypt, UAE, Jordan and Israel, Bahrain welcomed the Russian intervention in 2015 to save Assad, as did Saudi Arabia secretly. Cole’s confident speculations are clearly baseless.
“In general, GCC states are supportive of the Assad regime and are firmly against it being challenged or indeed replaced by a coalition of Islamist and jihadi factions formerly associated with al-Qaeda,” according to Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with Chatham House, while Andreas Krieg, of the defense studies department of King’s College London, stressed the angle of them protecting growing Gulf, especially Emirati, investment in Syria.
USA – rebels “terrorists”
As for the US, on November 30, National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett released the following statement:
“… The Assad regime’s ongoing refusal to engage in the political process outlined in UNSCR 2254, and its reliance on Russia and Iran, created the conditions now unfolding, including the collapse of Assad regime lines in northwest Syria. At the same time, the United States has nothing to do with this offensive, which is led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist organization. [emphasis added]. The United States, together with its partners and allies, urge de-escalation, protection of civilians and minority groups, and a serious and credible political process that can end this civil war once and for all with a political settlement consistent with UNSCR 2254. We will also continue to fully defend and protect U.S. personnel and U.S. military positions, which remain essential to ensuring that ISIS can never again resurge in Syria.”
So, the opposition is terrorist, and we want de-escalation at a time it is winning. Doesn’t sound “delighted” to me. On December 2, the US, France, Germany and the UK released a joint statement urging “de-escalation,” claiming the current “escalation” underlines the need to return to the “political solution” outlined in UNSC Res 2254.
Israel: Collapse of Assad regime could lead to military threats
Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition; throughout the Syrian conflict, Israeli leaders (political, military and intelligence) and think tankscontinually expressed their preference for the Assad regime prevailing against its opponents, and were especially appreciative of Assad’s decades of non-resistance on the occupied Golan frontier. This put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it prefers the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them.
But since Israel has just come through a successful war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Assad regime betrayed its ally, Israel can see the opportunity to put even more pressure on Assad, to completely cut the Iranian lines into Lebanon. As such, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” is probably closest to the mainstream at present. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests,” which also seems to be a common view in Israel.
On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now be shifted to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which will bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding, meaning that these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” Channel 12, reporting on the meeting, also claimed concerns were raised that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands.
So, not exactly “delighted.” This raises the question of why Israel apparently has no problem with these chemical weapons currently being in the hands of the regime! As far back as 2013, Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”
It is interesting that the first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, is no problem for Israel, as long as they are not focused on Israel. This corresponds to the times when Israel’s support to the Assad regime against the uprising was something stated openly by Israeli political, military and security chiefs, except for the Iranian factor – yet at times it was even let slip that Israel supported Iranian and Hezbollah actions as long as it was focused on support for Assad.
For example, in 2015, IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the preparation of a list of targets that are likely to be struck inside Syria, after a possible fall of the Assad regime” [clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about].
Other prominent spokespeople in the Israeli media include Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa, who penned an article in Maariv which claimed that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”
“The collapse of the regime in Damascus would pose a threat to the whole region, including Israel,” according to Yehuda Balanga, at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Nevertheless, Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, while largely agreeing, thinks there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime, but, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”
One of the problems for Israel is the same as the problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.
On possibility discussed is for Israel to invade and establish a “buffer zone” in southern Syria if the rebels take Homs. Apparently the Golan Heights is not enough of a “buffer” for Israel [update: this has come to be in a big way!]
With events moving rapidly, the rebels walked into Hama, again the regime simply melting away, with massive scenes of celebratory welcome by the population. Hama was where Hafez Assad slaughtered 40,000 people and bombed the city to suppress another uprising back in 1982, a dress rehearsal for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the bombing and destruction of all Syrian cities by the regime airforce during the 2011-2018 round.
For those who don’t know the significance of Hama falling to the rebels, this video is from Hama in 2011, when millions rose against Assad. As Syrian revolutionary Rami Jarrah says, “they were quickly silenced by Assad’s killing machine, these are the people who have just been liberated and this marks the end of the Assad regime.”
The rebels then moved onto Homs and again took it at lightning speed. Just as with Hama, we were warned that the rebels’ victory streak would finally meet resistance because, unlike the north, this is part of regime core areas, and there are more minority (Christian, Alawite and Ismaeli) populations in the region. Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, claimed “we will see more hardened lines in the core areas where the regime is strongest,” referring to Tartous, Lattakia, Homs, Hama and Damascus. Even Exile-based Syrian opposition leader, Hadi al-Bahra, declared he was ready to start negotiations with Assad on December 4 [postscript: talk about being out of touch with the people he claims to be a leader of!].
No such luck for the regime. Homs had been a very important centre of the 2011 revolution, in fact was called the ‘cradle of the revolution’, though it is true that there was sectarian division, which however was deliberately created by the regime. The regime bombed the city to the ground, as we see here:
Here is what the regime had done to Homs by 2013. Really, a regime ‘core’ area? The regime popular here?
Meanwhile, former rebels in the southern province of Daraa launched a new front called the Houran Free Gathering, which stormed police stations and local intelligence headquarters, disarmed regime checkpoints, seized weapons, and launched attacks on regime troops.” On December 6, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) took control of the Nassib border crossing with Jordan for the first time since 2018, leading Jordan to close the border, and the same day, these FSA fighting groups announced the establishment of a Southern Operations Room for the south of the country. By December 7, the whole of Daraa had fallen.
Daraa had been the birthplace of the revolution in March 2011; here is some footage from Daraa then showing peaceful protest and massacre. The movement was galvanised in April following the regime kidnap, murder and mutilation of 13-year old Daraa child Hamza al-Khatib and torture of other children for writing anti-Assad graffiti. For several years, Daraa was controlled by the democratic-secular FSA Southern Front, containing some 35,000 troops at its height, in over 50 brigades, but as Assad’s forces rolled in in 2018, as part of a Trump-Putin-Netanyahu agreement, many fighting units underwent forced ‘reconciliation’ with the regime under Russian auspices. These fighters have now reemerged, thrown off their ‘reconciled’ uniforms and were joined by other people rising against the regime.
The neighbouring Druze province of Suweida was something of a prequel of the new revolution when the people rose against the dictatorship back in August 2023, which at the time also echoed around the country; now again people took to the streets and demanded the fall of the regime. On November 28, the ‘Local Forces in Suweida’ issued a statement supporting the “battles to regain the lands in northern Syria against the regime.” On December 1, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hajri, declared that Syrians were “at a historic turning point to end the conflict and stop the killing machine of Syrians and those who caused their displacement and migration over the years,” vowing support for the “the right of the owners of the land to return to their lands” mentioning Aleppo, Idlib and parts of Hama.” Meanwhile, a Druze militia called the Syrian Brigade Party issued a statement calling on Druze soldiers to defect and return home to Suweida, and soon police station and governent buildings were seized. In coordination with neighbouring Daraa, Suweida was also under the control of the revolution by December 7.
In the east, the Arab-led Deir ez-Zour Military Council in the SDF launched the ‘Battle of Return’ and captured seven villages on the eastern side of the Euphrates from which regime militias had been launching daily attacks on the SDF. According to the SDF, this offensive was in “response to the appeals of local residents amid escalating threats from ISIS, which seeks to exploit the unfolding events in the western part of the country.” Now the SDF has taken control of the west side of Deir ez-Zour city from the regime and Iranian forces (it already controlled the east side).
By early December 8, the combined southern forces from Daraa and Suweida had entered Damascus. All the previously revolution-held towns of the southern and eastern Damascus – Darayya, Moademiya, Madaya, Rabadani, Ghouta and so on – once again fell to revolution, despite the expulsion of their populations to the northwest when they were defeated in 2016-18, and their repopulation by the regime with supporters, including many Iraqi and Pakistani Shia, in a sectarian engineering program, which clearly did not save the regime. Then Damascus itself fell to the southern revolutionaries.
That still left Tartous and Latakia, the two provinces of ‘the Alawite coast’, which were considered very unlikely to fall to the revolution, both due to it allegedly being the strongest base of the regime (some 80 percent of military and security officers were Alawite) but also because this is where Russia would most likely put its foot down to defend its naval bases and airbases. Nevertheless, they collapsed, and as Assad statues came down in Tartous and Latakia, the revolution declared “The city of Tartous has been liberated, we are here with our people from all sects, Christians, Alawites, Sunnis, Druze and Ismailis, the Syrian people are one, to our people in Tartous, work with us to build our country, we will present a model to be proud of”. As one Alawite who was previously in a pro-regime Alawite militia appealed:
“Do not blame us and do not resent us. We were deceived for 14 years. Our awful life was under the delusion that if he [Assad] lost authority, we would be massacred and slaughtered. Our life was filled with great fear about the prospect of our being subject to genocide if he left. No one ever told us that you [the insurgents] would enter in such a peaceful way and without bloodshed. By God we have never treated anyone on a sectarian basis, but rather with all humanity and love. We lost martyrs, and you lost martyrs. God have mercy on all the martyrs. And let’s work together to build a new, free Syria: one hand and one people in all its sects and religions. To the dustbins of history, oh traitor [Assad]!”
The regime disappeared into history in 10 days. The speed of collapse demonstrates that the regime’s base even in what were considered its core areas had disappeared, that no-one is willing to fight for a genocidal and uber-corrupt hereditary monarchy any longer, and the markedly positive attitude of the rebel leadership towards minorities – supposedly one of Assad’s bases – has removed the fear that the acceptance of the dictatorship rested upon. There will be many struggles ahead, but today is the day for Syrians and people fighting oppression the world over to celebrate one of the most decisive and popular revolutions ever.
Myths concocted by Putin shills, but widely believed even by well-intentioned peace activists, anti-imperialists and fence-sitters
by Michael Karadjis
Below are a series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014. All of them are complete myths, as this review will demonstrate. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better. Because although they may have been invented by apologists for Putin’s war of neo-Tsarist conquest, unfortunately many of them are believed by a large number of western leftists, peace activists and fence-sitters, including many who are well-intentioned and who oppose Putin and simply want the war to end; believing myths that show that ‘both sides’ are at fault often provides some kind of psychological sustenance to these positions. While the Ukrainian government can certainly be criticised for many things, like any government can, there is simply no ‘two sides’ story in a blatant and horrifically brutal act of 19th century style imperialist conquest.
This list of myths is an ongoing project and new ones will be added as time permits. All suggestions welcome. To date, this is the list of myths that will be dealt with below, along with their specific Facebook links where each was originally posted:
Hundreds of thousands of people peacefully protesting in the streets against a malignant government is described, incredibly, as a ‘coup’
Myth 1:The Maidan uprising of 2014 was a “US-orchestrated coup.”
There was no “coup” in Ukraine in 2014, except in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians marched in the streets in a sustained mobilisation over many months from November 2013 through February 2014 – against the uber-corrupt ruler, Victor Yanukovych – this is not the conventional definition of a ‘coup’, which normally refers to a conspiratorial action of a small but powerful group (eg, a section of the armed forces or other state forces) carrying out a rapid and violent ousting of a government; there are dozens of examples to choose from, for example the US-backed coups that ushered in bloody dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire, the Shah in Iran and the list is virtually endless – none of which look remotely like the popular uprising that took place in Ukraine.
Incidentally, since I called Yanukovych’s regime ‘uber-corrupt’, let’s just make an aside to back this up; we read that after his overthrow, “Ukrainian citizens who stormed his Mezhyhirya mansion discovered a palace of cartoonish opulence with guilded bathrooms, a private zoo, and a floating restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship. A good illustration of this extravagance is the $11 million he allegedly paid for a chandelier and his seven tablecloths worth a staggering $13,000.” Interesting the kinds of thieving capitalist rulers that some ‘socialists’ have come to defend in this era of ‘geopolitical’ rather than class analysis.
Yanukovych, like many unpopular despots, reacted first by bashing protestors with iron bars, then with a raft of anti-democratic anti-protest laws, then with guns, and hundreds were shot – but of course each upturn in repression only made the popular movement more determined to get rid of him, despite attempts by some of the opposition leadership in January-February 2014 to do a deal to allow him to stay as president until December 2014. In the end he made their deals pointless anyway, when he fled to Russia with his stolen billions (some estimates as high as $37 billion), following which on February 22 the entire Ukrainian parliament – every member, including every member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions – voted to oust him as president.
If such a profoundly democratic process involving mass popular uprising and unanimous votes by a democratically-elected parliament constitute a “coup,” then logically we should be in favour of more ‘coups’.
For an excellent blow by blow account of the Ukrainian popular uprising of 2013-14, ‘Ukraine Diaries’ by Andrey Kurkov is a must. Some of it can be accessed at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fbuUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false but buying the book would give you a fuller picture. Or better still, watch the amazing film, Winter on Fire at https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80031666, which covers the full 3 months of the uprising, the enormity of the demonstrations, the ongoing brutal repression – if after watching it you still think the events were a ‘coup’ rather than truly massive genuine revolution, then we’re speaking a different language.
It is a sad moment when “leftists” decide that massive popular street protests against reactionary capitalist rulers are a bad thing; they thereby reject everything they have claimed to stand for throughout their lives. Unless they think that people have no agency (and no rights to agency) and that these kinds of numbers can all be manipulated the CIA, Victoria Nuland, Hunter Biden etc. Were all these hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and every member of parliament, personally bribed? That the US (or others) will always attempt to influence, to co-opt, a movement, is of course a given, but that is not a reason to oppose a popular uprising or mass mobilisation and hence essentially give support to a corrupt and repressive regime being overthrown.
‘Coup’ in this case seems to be just an updated version of the infamous term ‘colour revolution’, a nonsense concept invented by tankies who did not like watching the heroic Serbian working class overthrow bourgeois-nationalist butcher Milosevic in 2000, and so then extended its use to entirely different circumstances in Georgia in 2003 and different again in Ukraine in 2004. It is simply a term used for ‘popular uprising’ when it is one disapproved of by this sub-set of western lefties who assume they know what’s best for other peoples, and/or when the regime it is directed against is allied to Russian or Chinese (rather than US) imperialism or otherwise engages in some hollow “anti-imperialist” bluster.
The idea that the popular uprising was “US-orchestrated” stems from attempts by US rulers to co-opt it. One might say, ‘what business do US leaders have turning up to meet with protest leaders in another country?’ I agree – they should keep their noses out of it, just as should the Russians – but the point here is not the political morality of this – it is naïve to think powerful states don’t always try to coopt movements – but rather the fact that they had remarkably little to do with what eventuated, and simply did not have this power.
The main charge is that US advisors like Victoria Nuland played some role in choosing the caretaker who would temporarily become prime minister, after Yanukovych’s prime minister from his Party of Regions, Mykola Azarov, resigned on January 28 amidst the upsurge. Whether or not US advice was decisive in this choice of caretaker is hard to say; the idea is based on leaked correspondence involving Nuland and US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, where they did say they preferred the candidate (of three options), Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was indeed the one subsequently chosen by the Ukrainian parliament as interim prime minister. Is it not possible that the Ukrainian parliament made its own decision that they preferred him of the three options?
Just out of interest though, for those with short attention spans who think jumbling together “coup”, the US, “fascists” and “banning Russian language” explains anything, it is worthwhile briefly looking at the interim leaders chosen. It is clear from Nuland’s leaked correspondence that that candidate she preferred as prime minister, Yatsenyuk, was one of the more liberal ones, as opposed to Oleh Tyahnybok, from the far-right fringe; as Pyatt notes, “we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys.” For some reason, they also prefer Yatsenyuk over the other “moderate democrat,” Vitaly Klitschko; Nuland says “I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. … I don’t think it’s a good idea,” and “what he (Yatsenyuk) needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.” Clearly, they want to keep the far-right out, but as for ‘Yats’ over ‘Klitsch’, the only clue is that Yatsenyuk was probably seen as more of a compromise candidate by Moscow, because Yanukovych had offered Yatsenyuk the prime-ministership on January 25 (before his own pm resigned!).
Indeed, in the same leak, Nuland and Pyatt also speak of the need for “some kind of outreach to Yanukovych.” So, far from the Nuland chat being part of a far-right, anti-Moscow coup, it appears that they preferred as interim pm the candidate who could best build bridges with Moscow. The only way I can read all this is that the famous ‘Nuland leak’ is about Nuland and the US government preferring to hatch a deal with Yanukovych, some kind of compromise government. After all, what most left conspiracists miss in all this is that Ukraine has both a president and a prime minister: Yanukovych was the president; the Nuland discussion did not concern his position at all, but rather who was going to be HIS interim prime minister! Unfortunately for Nuland, the US and the ‘moderate democrats’, the deal stitched together to keep Yanukovych in power till December with a new prime minister was rejected by the Ukrainian masses. US interference! Nuland advocates same interim prime minister for Yanukovych as does Yanukovych to aid the deal to him in power!
As for the interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed by the Ukrainian parliament on February 23 after it ousted Yanukovych the previous day, and there is no ‘Nuland story’ about this appointment. But did the ‘coup’ leaders (ie, the entire elected parliament) choose some rabid Russophobe to heighten tension with Moscow and with Russian-speakers in Ukraine? Well, when the post-Maidan interim government attempted to overturn the language law which Yanukovych had introduced in 2012, which gave Russian equal status to Ukrainian, this was vetoed by none other than interim president Turchynov. So, very much the moderate, the bridge-builder, trying to hold back the more virulent strains of west Ukrainian nationalism raising their head. Really, these pieces are not falling together very well for tankie fiction stories.
After all, the brief interim period was followed by presidential elections in May in which Ukrainians freely elected Petro Poroshenko; and parliamentary elections in October, in which a government was freely elected by Ukrainians, and chose Yatsenyuk, once again, to continue as prime minister (his party, the Peoples Front Party, received the highest number of popular votes, so I don’t think Victoria Nuland had anything to do with that). Tankies thus can make up stories about the US choosing the Ukrainian government, but what they really mean is that these fine people living in faraway lands disapprove of the choices democratically made by Ukrainians, and believe they have a right to demand they choose otherwise.
Regarding the parliamentary elections, the parties of Yatsenyuk and of Poroshenko received nearly half the votes between them and the majority of seats; the Opposition Bloc (ie, the renamed Party of Regions, which tankies will tell you was banned from standing) received 9.43 percent of the vote and 27 seats; while neither the fascist right (Svoboda and Right Sector, with 4.71 percent and 1.8 percent of votes respectively), nor the Communist Party of Ukraine (with 3.8 percent of votes) cleared the electoral threshold and thus got no seats.
As for Yanukovych, MPs from his own Party of Regions released a statement asserting “Ukraine was betrayed and people were set against each other. Full responsibility for this rests with Yanukovych and his entourage;” as for the allegedly ‘pro-Yanukovych’ populations of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, on the question of whether they consider Yanukovych “to be a legitimate President of Ukraine,” in an April 2014 survey only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said “rather” or “certainly yes” (and these were by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said “rather” or “certainly no.” Western tankies are well alone on this one, of defending the born-to-rule rights of a murderous, hyper-corrupt multi-billionaire oligarch.
Myth 2: The new government in 2014 banned the Russian language
This is quite an entrenched myth. Claiming that Ukraine changed its language law to downgrade Russian language in 2014, or more colourfully that it banned the language, is a common tankie claim used to justify the Russian quasi-annexation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. Of course, the Russian language was not banned in 2014 nor any time since, and further, there was zero change in the language law in 2014; that did not occur until 2019.
As background, Ukrainian president Zekensky is a Russian-speaker, as are a significant proportion of Ukrainians, and indeed Zelensky was elected in 2019 largely on the votes of Russian-speakers. Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine have been the main victims of Russian mass-killing since February 2022, and have dominated the resistance to it. The famous/infamous Azov Regiment of the National Guard (often confused with the fascistic Azov Battalion which existed in 2014) is largely composed of Russian-speakers. According to a 2017 poll, 67.8% of Ukrainians “consider Ukrainian to be their native language, 13.8% claimed it to be Russian, whereas 17.4% declared that both languages are their native tongues.” However, while in western Ukraine, 92.8% are Ukrainian speakers and only 1.9% are Russian speakers, in eastern Ukraine 36.1% consider Ukrainian their language compared to 24.3% who declare Russian to be; in central regions, the figures are somewhat in between, but generally much closer to the western figures.
The 1996 constitution makes Ukrainian the only state language, indeed it says “state ensures the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.” However, there were strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, which can play an official role alongside Ukrainian in regions where these minorities are prominent. The constitution thus also states “the free development, use and defence of Russian and other languages of national minorities is guaranteed in Ukraine.”
All the language laws until 2012 were based on this well-balanced constitution. But in 2012, Yanukovych introduced a new language law which made Russian a ‘regional language’ with equal administrative status to Ukrainian wherever Russian was the language of at least 10 percent of the population, and other minority languages could have the same status. Since Russian is the language of over 10 percent in half the regions of Ukraine, this was quite wide-ranging. Many Ukrainians felt this tipped the balance too far.
So what did happen in 2014? Initially, after the fall of Yanukovych, the parliament attempted to rescind this new language law that Yanukovych had introduced just two years earlier, in 2012. The parliament’s aim in overturning this was to return to the previous law which had held sway ever since Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s, based on the 1996 constitution. As we saw, returning to the 1994-2012 linguistic framework was hardly a radical anti-Russian language step; it was merely the reversal of a recent radical change in the other direction. However, even this change did not take place, because it was vetoed by the caretaker president. Yanukovych’s radically pro-Russian 2012 law thus remained the law until 2019.
Therefore, leaving aside the blatant lie that Ukraine banned the Russian language and thus provoked a reaction from Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, in fact nothing at all happened to the rights of Russian-speakers in 2014, making the lie even worse. Now, of course, it may well be that just the attempt to change the law back to the original could have been a factor promoting mistrust of the new government by many Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine; often it is not the actual content of a proposed change but the broader context, and this was the context of the newly assertive Ukrainian nationalism post-Maidan in reaction against Russian backing of Yanukovych and the immediate Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention into Donbas straight after his fall; this Ukrainian nationalism did include a virulent strain which was indeed alienating to many in the east. However, this point can be made without blatantly dishonest lies about what did happen.
It could well be argued that the Yanukovych law of 2012-14 was a better one, based on an abstract notion of complete equality of languages – even a broken clock can be right twice a day, and possibly for the wrong reasons. As a non-Ukrainian, I prefer not to get into that debate. The Ukrainian argument is based on the fact that Ukraine was a colony of Russia for hundreds of years, and the Ukrainian language was actively suppressed and discriminated against throughout that period (both under Tsarism and under Stalinism). There is also an important class aspect: Russian, the language of the colonial administration, came to dominate urban centres, even Kiev, while the villages were overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking; it was even considered shameful to speak Ukrainian in late Tsarist Russia, being a sign one was from the village, as rural-dwellers crowded into cities during industrialisation in the early 20th century. Therefore, Ukraine now has a right to promote its language as the national language; Russian-speakers should have the right to use their language, but it is the language of the coloniser which became dominant via colonisation and suppression. Which argument is correct? Both arguments have validity, and much depends on context and manner in which such laws are introduced and implemented. What can be said for certain, however, is that the Ukrainian constitution, and the pre-2012 law, are hardly unusual by global standards; on the contrary, they are the norm. They are even less unusual for former colonies – what of the attempts over many decades in Ireland to promote the Irish language at the expense of English, for example?
The new Language Law of 2019 did partially downgrade Russian, at the time against Zelensky’s opposition (Zelensky was just elected in 2019 with votes of Russian-speakers). This new law was pushed by the outgoing Poroshenko government as it more and more turned opportunistically to the nationalist right (ironically in 2014 Poroshenko, elected then with the votes of Russian-speakers and appealing to unity, claimed the parliament’s attempt to rescind the 2012 law was a grave mistake). This new language law made Ukrainian the only language of state throughout Ukraine. While the law is consistent with the Ukraine constitution which makes Ukrainian the official language, the constitution also has strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, especially in areas where they are the majority. The new law arguably downgrades the status of some of those protections. In schools, for example, Ukrainian is the language of instruction throughout the country; Russian can be learned in school as a language subject. However, in pre-school and primary school, Russian or other minority children can study in their own language, as the language of instruction, in addition to Ukrainian, but they cannot in high school. From an internationalist standpoint, this change is certainly regressive, but it is hardly unique for most of the world.
The new law makes Ukrainian the language of all official communication, ie in government operations, including local government. In itself, this is hardly unusual by world standards. Regarding the media, however, the law is highly regressive and certainly can be seen to violate the Ukrainian constitution. The law stipulates that any publications in Russian or other languages must be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content and volume, a draconian and impractical regulation. There are exceptions for Crimean Tatar language, and for languages of the EU, but not for Russian. While a former colony certainly has the right to promote the national language, doing so in a way that makes everyday life more difficult for speakers of other languages at a practical level violates their rights and divides the working classes.
However, it is the very essence of hypocrisy for Putinite shills to try to use this argument, even after 2019. What they miss is that this law only came in after years of its implementation in reverse in Russian-annexed Crimea. In 2015, Crimea made only Russian the language of school instruction, while allowing students to learn Ukrainian or Tatar as elective languages; in pre-school and primary school, instruction could also be in Ukrainian or Tatar in addition to Russian, but not in high school. It is almost as if the Ukrainian government plagiarised the Russian occupation government of Crimea’s law four years later! But the reality in Crimea is much worse than even this official downgrading; in reality, Ukrainian has been comprehensively eliminated from all Crimean schools and from all official society. One of the first acts of Russian-owned rulers in both Crimea and the Donbas was to replace multilingual signs with Russian only ones.
Likewise, in the Russia-owned Donbas statelets, almost immediately following their quasi-annexation in 2014, “the curricula have been altered to exclude the teaching of Ukrainian language and history, which makes it problematic to obtain State school diplomas,” according to a November 2014 report by the UN High Commission on Human Rights; in 2015, the curriculum was overhauled, with Ukrainian language lessons decreased from eight hours to two hours a week, while Russian language and literature lessons increased. Russia’s five-point grading system replaced Ukraine’s 12-point scheme. School leavers from then received Russian certificates with the Russian emblem, the two-headed eagle. In 2020, Russian was declared the only state language.
That does not justify the Ukrainian law of 2019 (which current president Zelensky opposed), but it is important to recognise that the chronology is in reverse: no change in 2014 in Ukraine, regressive change in late 2014 and 2015 in Donbas and Crimea under Russian occupation, followed years later by copy-cat regressive change in Ukraine – which however in no way ‘bans’ the Russian language’.
Myth 3: The Crimean people voted in a referendum to join Russia, which was an act of self-determination, and it rightfully belonged to Russia historically
Indigenous Crimean Tatars – victims of centuries of Russian colonialism and genocide – protest annexation by Russia in 2014
Russia’s flagrant annexation of the sovereign Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 was the first annexation inside Europe since the (globally unrecognised) Turkish quasi-annexation of northern Cyprus, and in a league with only very few outright annexations globally – Israel’s annexation of Palestinian Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara, Indonesia’s annexation of Irian Jaya and later east Timor (until 1999) spring to mind. Yet Putin apologists have attempted to justify this act of Russian imperial expansionism as an act of self-determination by the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea (which frankly reminds one of Hitler’s claim to Sudetenland), or claim it was ‘always Russia’ and so on.
On February 27, 2014, just five days after the Ukraine parliament’s vote to oust Yanukovych, masked Russian troops invaded Crimea – sovereign Ukrainian territory – attacked government buildings, raised the Russian flag over them, forced out the democratically-elected Crimea autonomous state government, replaced it with stooges from the ultra-right ‘Russian Unity’ party, which had received 4 percent of the vote in the previous elections – surely all this is a coup, isn’t it? It is a textbook coup, combined with invasion. This foreign-installed junta in Crimea then carried out, under Russian military occupation, the illegal “referendum” to leave Ukraine and join Russia, within ten days after calling it. Only two options were presented in the fake “referendum,” neither of which included the status quo. Ukrainian media was closed down.
Of course, the junta declared that 97 percent had voted for joining Russia – the usual figure plucked out of the air by dictators who throw “election” circuses. Yet Putin’s own Human Rights Council claimed the real turnout was 30-50% of voters, and that only 50-60% of those voted to join Russia. Notably, in a February 8-18 2014 Ukraine-wide poll, only 41 percent of people in Crimea favoured joining Russia – and that was far higher than anywhere else in Ukraine; we are supposed to believe that this jumped from 41% to 97% in a month!
International observers – of course, the Russian-installed junta invited various far-right/fascist parties from Europe for this show, indeed the invitees list – the French National Front, Jobbik (Hungary), Attaka (Bulgaria), Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right. Fascist parties throughout Europe declared their support for Crimea being “reincorporated” into Russia, its rightful place in their view, believers in the restoration of empires after all.
From 100% of the population at Russian conquest in 1783, the Crimean Tatars became a minority 100 years later, but then were 100% deported by Stalin in 1944
The Crimean Tatars were the majority population of Crimea since the 11th century, and remained so long after Russian settler-colonialism began with Catherine the Great’s invasion in 1783. Not until around 1900 did these Russian settlers begin to outnumber the indigenous Tatar population, who also fled Russian oppression in their hundreds of thousands. However they remained some 40 percent of the population until 1944 when Stalin expelled every man, woman and child Tatar from Crimea – hundreds of thousands of people – into central Asia, a torturous journey during which one in three died along the way. While they have been allowed to return in recent decades, such mass displacement tends to have a semi-permanent effect, and numbers were only re-growing slowly, but continually, before this process was halted by annexation. In other words, the “left” (and far-right) assertion that, since 58 percent of the population of Crimea are ethnic Russians, annexation by Russia is an act of self-determination, is a declaration of support for the results of centuries of Tsarist colonialism and the Stalinist genocide.
An interesting comparison could be made to the current debate in Australia about an Indigenous ‘Voice’ to parliament, which will be subject to referendum later this year. While the tepid and powerless ‘voice’ on offer can well be criticised for its limitations, and indeed many Indigenous leaders prefer a ‘treaty-first’ approach which would recognise their sovereignty and cede some actual power to the Indigenous nations, the main opposition is coming from the right who are vigorously opposed to any even symbolic increase in Indigenous representation. From being once the sovereign owners of the whole of Australia, Indigenous Australians have been reduced, through colonisation and genocide, to only a few percent of the population.
So, using the same simple ‘majoritarian’ principles that many Putin apologists are now using to justify the result of the staged Crimea ‘referendum’ (even if we pretend for a moment that it was legitimate and not staged under military occupation) – that 58 percent of the Crimean population are ethnic Russians and so, if that’s what they want, so it should be – what would we say if the large Anglo-Australian majority here one fine day voted to be re-annexed to ‘Great’ Britain, and the 3 percent Indigenous Australian population were opposed? Should we say, well, the (former colons) Anglo-Australians are the majority, so it should be, like the (former colons) Russians in Crimea? Or would we say that Indigenous Australians should have some special constitutional right to not have their lands returned to some foreign colonial power? I suggest that the kind of constitutionally empowered real Indigenous voice via treaty that most on the Australian left are in favour of would indeed empower the Indigenous minority to reject such a move, and rightly so.
And, more generally, when there exists more than one constituent nation in a mixed region – in this case Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars – is ‘winner take all’ the democratic solution? Take Cyprus (a place I know something about …), with its 80 percent Greek Cypriot majority and 20 percent Turkish Cypriot minority. So if the majority of the majority Greek Cypriot community vote to be united with Greece, so that should be, right? Oh, wait a minute, they tried that, with the movement against British colonialism led by the right-wing and the Orthodox church, calling for ‘Enosis’ (union) with Greece (rather than an independent bi-national federation) … thereby alienating the Turkish minority, driving them into the hands of Turkey’s military regime which eventually invaded in 1974 and the rest is history. No solution in the divided island 50 years later. Or take Bosnia, with its 44 percent Bosniak (‘Muslim’), 30 percent Serb, 18 percent Croat and 8 percent ‘Yugoslav’ (ie too mixed to be anything else) population – no majority, but if the Serbs and Croats voted together for Bosnia to be divided between Serbia and Croatia and got a slight majority of votes, so that should happen despite the views of the other communities? Indeed, since Serb and Croat fascist leaders actually tried to do that militarily in 1992-95, they were in the right, were they? The Crimea ‘solution’, in other words, is the most utterly reactionary solution possible.
On a minor point, one of the justifications often heard from Putin shills is that Russia had to seize Crimea because it has a naval base in Sevastopol (and heaven forbid that an imperialist power should lose a military base in another country, say many on the western ‘left’). Yet the Russian military’s lease on Sevastopol does not expire until 2042.
Myth 4: There were popular uprisings of the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas, who established their own republics in an act of national self-determination
Putin offering to save Russian-speakers in Ukraine from the barbaric assault he is carrying out against them
In answering this, I just want to clarify where I’m coming from: I support the right of nations and peoples to self-determination, and see this as superior to any obsession with “sovereign borders,” which have always changed throughout history, both for good and bad reasons. For example, I support the struggle of the Chechen people for self-determination, including independence, from Russia if that is their choice; I don’t care about the “sovereign” borders of the inheritance of the Russian colonial empire. Ditto for Puerto Rico or Hawaii if they chose to break up the US empire’s “sovereign” borders. I supported the national liberation struggle of the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian oppression, of the Kurds against oppression in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and so on: so why don’t I support the same self-determination of “the Russian people in Donbas”? Well, apart from the fact that even if there were such a struggle, it would currently be an irrelevant pawn for Russian imperial conquest, the more fundamental problem is that no such reality exists.
As we saw, almost immediately after Yanukovych fled to Russia (February 22, 2014), Russian forces invaded Crimea (February 27). Just as quickly after this, the first Russian forces, from the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party, turned up in Donbas, alongside other far-right Russian paramilitary forces who had just helped conquer Crimea; the seizures of government buildings began almost immediately, launching coup d’etats against the very governments Donbas residents had recently elected, bringing to power Russian stooges and fascists in the two oblasts (provinces) Donetsk and Luhansk; indeed, the first coup was the six-day seizure of the Donetsk State Administration Building on March 1, when “a group of activists bestowed the titled of ‘People’s Governor of Donetsk’ on a local nationalist-socialist activist named Pavel Gubarev,” an RNU leader. Such a rapid march of events in itself belies the idea that Russia was only responding to grass-roots movements in these regions staging a popular movement against the new post-Maidan authorities in Ukraine; it looks much more like a planned Russian conquest.
The swastika of the Russian National Unity Party, the first fascist mob to seize power in the coup in Donetsk in March 2014
Let’s look at the three connected myths that make up this grander myth narrative.
Sub-Myth 1: ‘Ethnic Russian Donbas’
First, it is difficult to establish exactly what an ‘ethnic Russian’ is, as opposed to a Ukrainian who speaks Russian as a first language. Think of Irish, Welsh and Scottish who speak English as their first language, and try calling them ‘English’. See what happens. This is what occurs after centuries of colonialism, in both cases. Which in terms of ruthless Russification and physical destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, was probably even worse under Stalin than under the Tsars, though there is not much to choose from between them.
If we go by people’s identity, according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians formed 58 percent of the population of Luhansk Oblast and 56.9 percent of Donetsk Oblast. Those identifying as ethnic Russians formed the largest minority, accounting for 39 percent and 38.2 percent of the two oblasts respectively. In other words, Ukrainians were the same size majority in Donbas as Russians were in Crimea – yet this (post-colonisation and genocide) Russian majority in Crimea is given as a reason by the same Putin apologists to justify Russian annexation there! Furthermore, much evidence suggests a marked decline in the population identifying as ethnic Russians rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainians: in a 2019 survey carried out by the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, only 12 percent and 7 percent of the residents of the Russia-owned and government-controlled parts of Donbas respectively identified as ‘ethnic Russians’, while 21 percent and 12 percent respectively declared themselves ‘mixed Ukrainian and Russian’. The impact of Russian aggression since 2014 is likely the cause of this declining identification as ‘Russian’ – how ironic given that this Russian intervention is falsely justified as protecting these ‘ethnic Russians’! Indeed, the impact of the current war seems to be even greater, with even use of Russian language among many Ukrainians markedly declining as a political choice due to revulsion against the aggression.
Therefore, to claim that the setting up of ‘independent’ republics in 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk, and their annexation by Russia in 2022 following fake ‘referenda’ under brutal military occupation, was “the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russian population of Donbas,” is a statement of extraordinary ignorance. The population of Donbas is divided between ethnic Russians, Ukrainians who speak Russian, and Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.
Before moving on we should clarify: from 2014 to 2022 the Russian-owned forces only controlled some 40 percent of ‘Donbas’ (approximately the same in both Donetsk and Luhansk) while some 60 percent remained under Ukraine government control. So Russia has not just annexed the parts it formerly controlled, but the entire two oblasts, plus two others that it never had any control of (Kherson and Zaporizhzhya) and where there was never any support for Russia.
Sub-Myth 2: The population of Donbas, regardless of ethnicity, wanted self-determination for the region and were oriented more to Russia than to Ukraine
It is certainly true that neither ethnicity nor language tells us anything necessarily about the views of the Donbas residents; neither being an ethnic Russian nor Russian or Ukrainian speaking does not equal a particular political opinion; the opinions of people in all three groups, in both government-controlled and Russia-controlled parts of both oblasts, are mixed. But the data does not support the myth, but rather the opposite.
Two surveys carried out in April 2014 reveal very important information, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and by the Pew Research Centre. In the KIIS survey, to the question ‘Do you support the idea, that your region should secede from Ukraine and join Russia?’, 27 percent in Donetsk and 30 percent in Luhansk answered either ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ yes – while some 52 percent in both oblasts answered ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ no. These minority ‘yes’ votes in Donetsk and Luhansk were the only of any significance in all of Ukraine. The Pew research showed similar results, with the question whether regions should be allowed to secede answered in the positive by only 18 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 4 percent in west Ukraine), and only 27 percent of Russian-speakers. The KIIS survey also asked if they were in favour of Russian troops entering the region, to which under 20 percent in both oblasts said yes while substantial majorities said no.
On the question ‘Do you consider Viktor Yanukovych to be a legitimate President of Ukraine?’, only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said rather or certainly yes (by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said rather or certainly no. So much for the idea that the people of Donbas were angry that “their president” was deposed.
Larger numbers support some kind of autonomy or ‘special status’ within Ukraine, but with sharp differences in the two parts of Donbas. Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies found that in the Russia-owned regions, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia. Of the majority opposed, 30% supported some kind of autonomy and a quarter no special status. But in the government controlled two-thirds, while a similar 30% favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just Ukraine with no special status; hardly any supported joining Russia. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the overall majority necessarily even favour autonomy. Even this does not necessarily mean that the chunks seized are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation; given the dispossession of half the Donbas population (some 3.3 of the original 6.6 million people), it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones, while the millions in refuge simply don’t get a say in such surveys.
Therefore, both in Donetsk and Luhansk, in both government and Russian-controlled regions, and among the dispossessed, both ‘ethnicity’ and political opinion are very mixed, there is no ‘Russian’ region or specifically even ‘pro-Russia’ region; so the regions violently seized are entirely arbitrary and correspond to no movement for ‘self-determination’ or necessarily for anything.
Truth 1. There was a degree of alienation from the new government in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014
This is not to deny that there was broadly a sense of alienation among many in eastern Ukraine from the direction taken by the new post-Yanukovych government, regardless of ‘ethnicity’ or language; there were also geographic and other factors, including more economic connection to Russia in the east. Specifically, the new Ukraine authorities, and even more so the empowered far-right minority, projected an assertive Ukrainian nationalism, and various largely symbolic actions drove this alienation. According to the Pew survey, while 60 percent in western Ukraine thought the new government had “a good influence on the way things are going in the country,” only 24 percent in eastern Ukraine agreed, and 67 percent there assessed this influence as “bad.” Similarly, 66 percent in western Ukraine thought only the Ukrainian language should have legal standing, while 73 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 86 percent of Russian-speakers) said both Russian and Ukrainian should be official languages, underlining the centrality of the language question – my Myth 2 details the comically false assertion that Russian language was downgraded or “banned” in 2014, but even the unsuccessful attempt to revise the language law in this context would have been a factor in this alienation.
But in itself, this is not remarkable: the dominance of certain political tendencies in different regions of a country due to complex combinations of history, culture, economics etc is not uncommon: think of northern and southern England, northern and southern Italy, regions of the US, Aegean Turkey and Anatolia etc. That does not mean that the peoples of such regions would welcome a foreign military intervention because a party perceived to favour a different region’s political proclivities were in power.
Sub-Myth 3: The Russian-backed seizure of power in parts of Donbas represented this alienation of the region’s population from the new government
There was certainly a valid political struggle that could have been waged by many people in the region against certain policies of the new government; the fact that the Maidan was initially confronted by an ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east was in itself a valid expression of popular dissent. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed, funded, trained and armed militia and direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries, tanks and other heavy weaponry, political operatives and fascists, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine. Simon Pirani argues that while neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary, in fact the “social aspirations” of the two were similar, “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”
The idea that this militarisation, seizing of buildings and coup d’etats were a natural reflection, extension, of the civil ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east is belied by the 2014 KIIS survey. On the question ‘Do you support actions of those, who with arms capture administrative buildings in your region?’, only 18 percent in Donetsk and 24 percent in Luhansk answered rather or certainly yes, while 72 percent and 68 percent respectively in those two allegedly ‘pro-Russian’ oblasts answered rather or certainly no!
I have heard it claimed that Donbas residents were alienated because the government they elected had been overthrown in Kyiv (as if the parliament, which deposed the president – one person – wasn’t also elected by them). But how does this sit with small armed groups launching coup d’etats in Donbas overthrowing the very regional government that Donbas residents had elected?
Nor can militarisation be justified as an act of self-defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan, as nothing of the sort had taken place: the coup d’detats, took place immediately after the deposing of Yanukovych; the armed conflict later.
John Reiman, in his excellent review of the Ukraine Diaries, cites some passages describing this very early intervention (ie, months before the generalised war):
“On March 9 for the first time Kurkov reports on the entry of Russian agents in Ukraine. And not just any Russians – members of the fascist Russian Unity Party (RNE). ‘The members of RNE, swastikas tattooed on their necks and arms, have no qualms about negotiating with Ukraine’s regional governments and making ultimatums…’ … On April 4, Kurkov reports that 15 Russian citizens had been arrested in Donetsk with 300 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a grenade launcher, ammunition and other military equipment. … On April 7, Kurkov reports the arrest of a Russian GRU agent, Roman Bannykh. The Ukraine government seized his telephone records, which revealed that he had been coordinating the actions of the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk. … pro-Russian activists … walk around in combat uniform, with no badges or other signs of identification, carrying AK-100 assault rifles. The Ukrainian army does not possess those rifles but the Russian army does … Of the 117 Russian citizens arrested for having taken part in disturbances, at least ten are Russian secret service agents. … On April 21 … the separatists in Slovyansk attacked and pillaged the homes of gypsies in that city. Simultaneously, Nelya Shtepa was kidnapped. She was the former mayor of that city and had originally supported the separatists but broke with them because they were being manipulated by Russian secret service agents’.”
Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, admitted that he pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”
Finally, regarding the so-called “referendums” that the coup authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk carried out in May 2014, Cathy Young writing in The Bulwark provides a useful anecdote which, as she says, by itself pretty much “tells the tale”:
“On May 7, Ukrainian intelligence released the audio of an intercepted phone call between Donetsk insurgent leader Dmytro Boitsov and far-right Russian nationalist Aleksandr Barkashov (the head, as it happens, of the aforementioned Russian National Unity). In the obscenity-laden exchange, Boitsov complains that the rebels are “not ready” to hold the referendum on May 11 as planned. Barkashov responds testily: “Just put in whatever you want. Write 99 percent. What, you’re going to fucking walk around collecting papers? Shit, are you fucked in the head or something?” “Ah. All right, I got it, I got it,” replies an audibly relieved Boitsov as it dawns on him that he and his pals are not expected to hold an actual referendum, just to produce results. Barkashov continues: “Just write that 99 percent—no, let’s say 89 percent, fuck it, voted for the Donetsk Republic. And that’s it, shit, we’re fucking done.”
I mean, it may as well have been a discussion between blood-drenched Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and some ‘election’ henchman who thought the ‘election’ circus had to be taken at least partly seriously; hell, some western ‘lefties’ are so thick they even agree with their far-right allies that those ‘elections’ were genuine!
Young continues:
“By amazing coincidence, on May 11, the separatist “election commission” of Donetsk announced that 89 percent of the voters had chosen self-rule. As I have noted earlier, the first prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, “political consultant” Aleksandr Borodai, was not only a citizen of Russia but a reputed officer in the FSB (the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor) with a long history of involvement in far-right, ultranationalist circles.”
Conclusion
By intervening and militarising a movement, swamping it from the get-go, forcibly seizing territory, Russia completely changed the nature of Ukrainian politics. From a Ukrainian perspective, Russia, the former colonial power and neighbouring superpower had engineered a violent military conflict, slicing up Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, thereby completely overwhelming whatever democratic voices could have arisen among Russians or Russian-speakers and supporters, while likewise hardening the right-wing nationalist views of many Ukrainians now seeing a fight for their country’s very existence. This militarisation also strengthened far-right forces in Ukraine at the time because the Ukrainian armed forces were in disarray, and the far-right took the initiative on the military front.
Whatever original support the civil anti-Maidan may have had, it is hard to know what survived the Russian-led military intervention and coups. We know that 3.3 million people of the original 6.6 million have fled Donbass since then, the majority into other areas of Ukraine. We also know that many of the irregular Ukrainian militia on the frontlines in the Ukraine-government controlled two-thirds of Donbas are residents uprooted as a result of the conflict and blame the Russian intervention. The more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any expression of opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies.
Finally, one might rightly ask, does this even have any relevance now, with Russia heavily bombing and destroying Russian-speaking towns and cities in Donbas, including the complete decimation of Russian speaking Mariupol, and the massive rejection of Russian rule by these populations – has anyone seen a single welcoming party in eastern Ukraine for conquerors in the last year? It is almost certain that whatever lingering pro-Russia feeling that may have existed before 2022 has now largely collapsed. Indeed, the problem with this entire discussion, even as I write it, is the danger of implying that Russia’s monstrous war has anything to do with the rights of Russians or Russian-speakers in Donbas: if that were the case, there would have been no reason for Russia to advance an inch from the control it already exerted over 40 percent of Donbas where they perhaps had more support – what would have been the purpose of annexing the more anti-Russian parts of Donbas that had been in government control, let alone annexing the other two oblasts, let alone invading and savagely bombing the whole of Ukraine?
Before February 2022: Russian-backed forces only controlled about 40 percent of each of the two Donbas oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk.
What Russia controlled in Ukraine by October 2022
Myth 5: The Ukrainian army bombed the Donbas for 8 years before the Russianinvasion, killing 14,000 ethnic Russians between 2014 and 2022.”
As I have already fully dealt with this before, this will merely be a summary of main points; the article provides the detail.
The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have overreacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.
Is any of this true?
Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?
“The Ukrainian army killed.”
Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.
For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?
“ethnic Russians”
Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.
But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians – after all, when you are fighting a military force, you don’t usually describe the ethnicity of the troops killed. For example, now, when the Russian and Ukrainian armies are in combat, no-one refers to the numbers of ‘ethnic Russians’ or ‘ethnic Ukrainians’ dying, when referring to military deaths. So it clearly means ‘ethnic Russian civilians’.
So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021. And these 3,404 civilians would have included ‘ethnic Russians’ and ‘ethnic Ukrainians’, who both live in Donbas.
However, what about the last part:
“between 2014 and 2022.”
Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.
But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.
In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. According to the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides, here are the numbers of deaths in the years before the Russian invasion:
2016 – 88 deaths
2017 – 87 deaths
2018 – 43 deaths
2019 – 19 deaths
2020 – 23 deaths
2021 – 16 deaths, including:
– 11 deaths (Jan-June)
– 4 deaths (June-Sep)
– 1 death (Sep-Dec)
2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).
As we can see, the rate of death continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.
The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.
But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.
Up to half of civilian deaths in Donbas in 2014-22 were from landmines
Myth 6: The Minsk Accords offered a just way out of the crisis, Russia wanted to implement them, but the Ukrainian government refused to implement them, encouraged by the US.
These assertions are entirely fictional as will be shown, but they also raise a number of sub-points; first, there were two Minsk agreements, so what happened to the first?; what is the actual content of the Minsk II agreement?; how was it imposed on Ukraine?; and what is the evidence that it was Ukraine that blocked its implementation?
Following the first few months of armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russian-backed militia in Donbas in mid-2014, the first Minsk agreement was signed between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as by the Russian-backed junta leaders who had seized power in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), on 5 September 2014.
The main provisions were for
• an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by OSCE,
• “decentralisation of power, including through the adoption of the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,”
• the permanent monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border by OSCE,
• release of all hostages and illegally detained persons,
• a law preventing the prosecution and punishment of people in connection with the conflict,
• “early local elections in accordance with the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,” and
• the withdrawal of “illegal armed groups and military equipment as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian government immediately carried out its side of the bargain by adopting the “Law on the Special Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions” on September 16. According to this law, this special status of self-government will be implemented in the districts of Donetsk and Lugansk controlled by the separatists at the time of the ceasefire. The law provides for the freedom of any language to be used and cross-border cooperation with Russia. Local elections were scheduled for the region in December.
However, the Minsk I Protocol was almost immediately violated in a massive way by the Russian-orchestrated ‘separatist’ militia, which launched an attack aimed at seizing the Donetsk airport, which was in the government-controlled part of Donetsk at the time of the ceasefire. This led to a 5-month battle in which the side launching the aggression was in open violation of the Protocol, and as it was a battle to control infrastructure, cannot in any way be excused as a battle to protect hypothetically endangered pro-Russian communities. They further violated the Minsk Protocol by holding their own “elections” in November outside the new Ukrainian special status law, under Russian military occupation, and without any of the other provisions of Minsk adhered to (eg, withdrawal of illegal armed groups, OSCE monitoring of the border etc). In January, the separatists took control of the airport, and also launched attacks on other government-controlled regions, including Mariupol, Debaltseve and Krematorsk, killing dozens of civilians.
So there is no ambiguity regarding Minsk I: Ukraine carried out the political requirements, but the Russia-owned militia massively violated both the political and above all the military agreements.
With large-scale support from direct intervention by Russian forces, the separatists and Russia were able to force a new Minsk agreement, Minsk II, on Ukraine. Minsk II, mediated by France and Germany, was signed on February 12 by Russia, Ukraine, OSCE and the separatist leaders.
Again, it was immediately violated by the Russian-orchestrated militia, who continued their attack on Debaltseve, unilaterally declaring it to be outside the agreement! Hundreds of Ukrainian troops had been holed up and besieged in the town for weeks. It fell to the separatists on February 18, a week after the agreement.
Was Minsk II a good agreement for Ukraine? Well, the first thing that must be noted is that it was imposed on Ukraine by military force, given the large scale and relatively open intervention of Russian forces (as opposed to just Russian-backed forces and Russian heavy weaponry) in the second phase of the Donbas war. Therefore, the way Ukraine “agreed” to it was an act of international injustice, imperialist imposition, so those blaming Ukraine for not implementing it are in effect siding with imperialist bullying.
That said, was Minsk II so much worse than Minsk I for Ukraine, and was it a fair and just agreement anyway, despite the way it was imposed?
1, 2, 3 ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons by both parties at equal distances, security zones for heavy weaponry, monitoring and verification by OSCE
4. On the first day after the withdrawal, to begin a dialogue on the procedures for holding local elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and the Law of Ukraine “On a temporary order of local government in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” … no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, to adopt a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the specification of a territory subject to the special regime in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in some regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” based on the line set in a Minsk memorandum of September 19, 2014
5, 6 Pardons and amnesties, law prohibiting prosecution and punishment in connection with the conflict, release and exchange of hostages and illegally detained persons
9. Restoration of full control over the state border of Ukraine by Ukraine’s government throughout the whole conflict area, which should begin on the first day after the local elections and be completed after a comprehensive political settlement (local elections in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine, and a constitutional reform) by the end of 2015, on condition of implementation of paragraph 11.
10. The withdrawal of all foreign armed forces, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.
11. Conducting constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new constitution coming into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with representatives of these areas), as well as the adoption of the permanent legislation on the special status of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions
12. On the basis of the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in individual areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” the questions regarding local elections shall be discussed and agreed with the individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in compliance with the relevant standards of the OSCE with the monitoring by the OSCE ODIHR.
Minsk II appears more comprehensive than Minsk I, but in certain respects can be considered more disadvantageous to Ukraine; after all, Russia and its proxies did not continue the war for another 6 months for no gain. In addition, there is arguably confusion in the timeline, which allowed both sides to stall. It is generally thought that Ukraine stalled on the political aspects of Minsk, while Russia and proxies stalled on the military-security aspects.
For example, while Ukraine had already agreed to the special status provisions in Minsk I and had immediately passed the relevant legislation (and again, following Minsk II, the Rada (parliament) voted in the ‘special status’ laws for Donbas, Minsk II goes beyond in mandating Ukraine bring into force a “new constitution,” with “decentralisation as a key element.” Understandably, Ukrainians may well wonder why Russia, via military intervention inside Ukraine, has the right to impose a “new constitution” of a specific nature on Ukraine as a whole, as opposed to the provisions already agreed to regarding Donetsk and Luhansk.
If the United States had sent troops into Russian territory to “aid” the Chechens during Putin’s grizzly slaughter in Chechnya over 1999-2001, and then forced Russia to sign a ‘Minsk’ agreement according to which, not only would Chechnya have special status, but Russia had to write a whole new constitution based on the ‘decentralisation’ of the entire territory of Russia, I wonder how many of today’s ‘leftist’ Putin apologists would be demanding Russia ‘sign Minsk, the only road to peace’, and be praising the US for its desire for peace?
In addition, Minsk II says that Ukraine can only regain control over its sovereign border after the local elections have been held in Donbas, and can only be completed after this imposed “new constitution” comes into being. There is nothing remotely as sweeping as this in Minsk I.
However, Minsk II also says that all foreign armed forces, military equipment and mercenaries must leave Ukraine “under the supervision of the OSCE” and that all “illegal groups” must be disarmed. Yet this manifestly never happened. It definitely never happened “under the supervision of OSCE,” because OSCE continually reported over the years ahead evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine.
Indeed, at this point, we should probably demolish this particular sub-myth, because any reasonable person would have to admit that Ukraine could not carry out acts of ‘local self-governance’ in a region occupied by the army of a hostile neighbouring superpower; yet Russia denies its troops were there.
Sub-Myth: There were no Russian troops in Ukraine between the 2015 ceasefire and the 2022 invasion
OSCE had become quite open about its evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine by 2016. By the end of that year, the OSCE observer mission had observed “more than 30,000 individuals in military-style dress crossing just at the two checkpoints to which it has access. … Twenty uniformed persons crossed the border in a single bus with tinted windows in mid-October, according to Observer Mission reports. … On at least 27 different occasions, the Observer Mission has reported seeing funerary vehicles returning to Russia with a sign reading “Cargo 200” or “200,” a well-known code for Russian military casualties. … on June 10 [the Mission] observed the exhumation of a soldier in a Russian military uniform. … On October 17, at the Uspenka border crossing point, the SMM saw one black minivan with tinted windows and black military license plates enter separatist-held Ukraine from Russia, with two men in military-style dress on board.” In 2018 an OSCE drone even recorded footage of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine.
Indeed, the evidence is simply overwhelming. For example, Paul Gregory writes that as of September 2016, the organization Cargo 200 had published “names, photos, addresses, and military records” of 167 troops “killed,” 187 “MIA,” 305 mercenaries “killed” and 796 “MIA.” But these are likely underestimates, as, for example, he continues, the Committee of [Russian] Soldiers’ Mothers “gather information from grieving families to arrive at casualty figures of up to 3,500 KIA [killed in action]” by 2016; the Committee was labelled a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian Justice Ministry. Furthermore, “Young Russian soldiers in Ukraine routinely post pictures on vKontakte (a Russian version of Facebook) of themselves in Ukraine and identify their unit.”
Bellingcat further demolished the myth by demonstrating “that thousands of Russian soldiers have been awarded the highest honors of the Russian Federation for bravery/distinction in combat,” by gathering images of these medals that the soldiers posted on social media. “Bellingcat’s analysis shows 4,300 medals “For Distinction in Combat” awarded between July 11, 2014 and February 2016,” but this is only one of four kinds of medals awarded.
Unlike the issue of Ukraine regaining control of its border, there is no prior condition in Minsk II for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, mercenaries, equipment etc; therefore, Ukraine quite understandably interprets this refusal by Russia and its proxies to implement these provisions of Minsk as reason not to implement the local elections, despite having passed the legislation for it. Because no sovereign state would be prepared to hold local elections in a region of its country under the control of a hostile foreign military power, which also controls the local militia running the region.
Furthermore, how do we define “illegal groups” as described in this same article of Minsk II? To the Ukrainian government, the Russian armed and financed and often staffed armed militia in control of the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk not in its control are “illegal groups,” but they obviously don’t consider themselves to be, which is a problem of the text. Not that Ukraine has used this as a pretext, however.
The text also says that the regions where this ‘special status’ and hence local elections would be held would correspond to the ceasefire lines of September 2014, ie, when Minsk I was signed. But now the Russian proxies were in control of more territory, including the airport, Debaltseve etc. So while Minsk II calls for immediate ceasefire (ie, on the lines of February 2015), these lines are beyond those of September 2014, on which special status is to be based. So how does Ukraine carry out local elections when the separatist militia control areas beyond the assigned region?
Furthermore, Minsk II says that the local elections are to be held “with the monitoring of OSCE,” but it is unclear how OSCE can monitor a situation in which OSCE itself says a key provision of Minsk, namely withdrawal of all foreign forces and weapons, has not been carried out. In addition, it is unclear how Ukraine can carry out these local elections under its new special status law, as required by Minsk II, when both Russia and its proxy leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk rejected this new law. Finally, just two months after Minsk II was signed, the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk under Russian control held their own local “elections” anyway, neither under Ukrainian government law nor with OSCE monitoring, in outright violation of Minsk II.
For all these reasons, Ukraine not proceeding with the political side of Minsk (local elections under its special status legislation) is arguably completely justified; local elections carried out in such conditions would result in Russia essentially having a permanent place inside the Ukrainian polity. Or, at the very least, even if one accuses Ukraine of not carrying out Minsk II, they must at the same time accuse Russia of also not carrying out Minsk II. For its part, Russia simply claims it is not a signatory to Minsk II and is therefore not bound to it, claiming only the separatist leaders were signatories, but this is simply a lie: the signature of Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, can be clearly seen on the Minsk agreement, indeed on the Russian version of it. Check the last page with the signatures.
So, while both sides arguably stalled, and, in my view, the Ukrainian side justifiably so for the reasons above, what of anti-Ukrainian or pro-Putin writers who claim either that Zelensky began with a peace platform to implement Minsk II when elected in 2019 but “backed down” due to intimidation from the Ukrainian far-right, or that, even more blandly, Ukraine ultimately “rejected” it (often with the very colourful addition that Russia “wanted to implement it”)?
According to the first charge, after being elected in 2019 on a peace platform, Zelensky signed an agreement for the mutual pull-back of armed forces in order to facilitate the conditions for proceeding with Minsk (based on the new Steinmeier formula which Zelensky had signed onto), but when confronted by the refusal of the far-right and the Azov Regiment to pull back, so the story goes, he “backed down.”
“There had been an agreement [in late 2019] that there would be a troop disengagement at three points of what was then the line between Ukrainian forces and Russian/separatist forces in Donbas. Then people from around the Azov movement, and from the National Corps Party, staged a campaign there, at one of these points, presenting this disengagement as if it represented some kind of gain for the Kremlin, as if Ukrainian troops alone were called upon to withdraw and leave their positions. But this wasn’t what the disengagement required; it required both sides to pull back. But even in this case, which was so crucial for the right, where they tried to achieve their maximum mobilization for this activity, they didn’t succeed in achieving their point of view because Zelensky intervened personally. He traveled to that line of forces and engaged in heated discussions with some Azov members, and eventually Ukraine did carry out this disengagement, which was a prerequisite for resuming the meeting in the “Normandy Format” with France and Germany as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. So even in this case the right was unable to block governmental policy.”
Curiously, the pro-Putin voices often show a video of Zelensky being confronted by the far-rightists at the disengagement lines as evidence of him “backing down” and that the far-right call the shots in Ukraine despite their tiny size. In this video tweet, the pro-Putin clown Denis Rogatyuk writes “The fighter refuses [to lay down arms]. Zelensky is NOT running the show. The neo-nazis are.” I say curiously because the video shows the complete opposite: it shows Zelensky stood his ground. They backed down; as Billous explains, Zelensky did carry out the disengagement; and on December 19, the Ukrainian parliament yet again extended the Donbas special status legislation for another year.
Furthermore, if Zelensky had “backed down” to the far right, and instead decided on “NATO-backed” war to reclaim the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas as the tankie discourse goes, then wouldn’t we have seen an upturn in the fighting? Yet, as I demonstrated in my ‘Myth 5’, the numbers of people dying on the Donbas front quite sharply declined in 2019-2021 under Zelensky (and of course it was already well down in 2016-2018 compared to the hot war of 2014-15 when nearly all the 14,000 deaths (including 3404 civilian deaths) occurred. The total deaths in this conflict dropped to 19 in 2019 (from 43 in 2018) then 23 in 2020, 16 in 2021 (11 in the first half year and 5 in second half) and zero in 2022 before the invasion – and all this taking into account that the Russian-backed side are also responsible for these deaths, and that around half these figures are from landmines rather than shooting and shelling – the evidence suggests Zelensky did largely carry out his peace program. Sure doesn’t suggest much of a ‘NATO-backed offensive’.
On the final charge, that Ukraine actually “abandoned” or “rejected” the Minsk agreement, it is unclear if those making this common charge are simply saying the same, that Ukraine has yet to carry out certain provisions of it, for the reasons described above, but saying it in a more colourful and dishonest way; or if they really are claiming that at some point Ukraine formally renounced the agreement. Since I wouldn’t want to accuse Putin apologists of dishonesty, I will read it to mean what it does mean in English.
In which case, they should provide the source of the statement by the Ukrainian government. Anyone that watches or reads the news might remember that the ‘Normandy’ framework discussions between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany had continued right up till the eve of Russia’s recognition of the “independence” of the two ‘republics’ it controlled just a few days before the invasion; these were discussions based on trying to negotiate Minsk II. Russia’s recognition and invasion buried the accords. So in its literal meaning, this continual charge is simply a lie.
In order to seem less of a liar, Jacques Baud, the former NATO military analyst turned Putin troll who was widely cited by the tankie left around the time of the invasion, put it this way: “But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of the political advisers of the leaders of the “Normandy format” ends, without concrete result: the Ukrainians still and always refuse to apply the Accords of Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States.” As “evidence” for this claim, he “cites” this article. But of course the article “cited” says no such thing; it reads “Reiterating Ukraine’s commitment to a political and diplomatic settlement of the ongoing tensions, Yermak said the country would continue to take measures to intensify the work of all existing negotiation formats in order to facilitate the peace process.”
Baud, in other words, just made it up. Those of us who are used to this are not surprised; those who are not, try to understand that pretty much all pro-Putin propaganda is of this level.
“The “People’s Republics” also formally adopted constitutions which claimed sovereignty over areas under Kiev’s control – again, in breach of Minsk 2. Over 800,000 inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” have been issued with Russian passports, i.e. Russian citizenship. Higher education institutions have adopted the curricula used in Russia. The Ukrainian language has been banned in schools. In addition to the replacement of Ukrainian television broadcasting by state-controlled Russian television channels, the Kremlin version of current affairs (and world history, in the form of the “Russian world”) is promoted by outlets of the Russian Centre organisation (Russian-state-funded) and the Russia-Donbass Integration Committee (also Russian-state-funded). Russian political parties are now active in the “People’s Republics” and contest elections there, especially the Just Russia Party, the Russian Communist Party, and Putin’s United Russia Party. Those inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” who have Russian citizenship also take part in Russian elections. Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 are dead.”
Myth 7: Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace agreement in April 2022 whereby Ukraine would not join NATO, but then British prime minister Boris Johnston visited Kyiv and told Zelensky not to go ahead with it, after which Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations, scuttling this chance for peace.
This myth has taken on such a life of its own it has probably been re-published in almost every conceivable left and alt-right publication, not only the anti-Ukrainian ones. The tankie and conspiracist etherworld has been full of it, for example Jacobin’s pro-Putin propagandist Branco Marcetic here. Yet there is not an ounce of truth to it.
Of course, the Ukrainians have no agency; they just jump to the alleged commands of some foreign leader that shows up. Yet we don’t even know for sure what Johnston said; it was just a claim by one Ukrainian newspaper, allegedly from some unnamed sources close to Zelensky. Hell, anyone can say anything.
It is certainly true that there was a peace proposal on the table that involved Ukraine scrapping its bid to join NATO. In fact, that proposal was already on the table before the war even began. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Putin rejected it, because, after all, Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and restore the Russian Empire, as he openly stated that Ukraine had no right to exist as a separate entity to Russia; the NATO stuff as just a smokescreen, so he saw Ukraine’s acceptance of no NATO as a threat rather than an opportunity.
It is also true that there was a more detailed peace proposal on the table in late March-early April 2022, about a month into the war. Importantly, this was Ukraine’s 10-point peace proposal to Russia on March 29 2022; it was not just some ‘proposal’ floating around in the atmosphere, that some are accusing Ukraine of rejecting (rejecting its own proposal).
The 10 points included that Ukraine would no longer seek to join NATO, would not join any military alliance, that instead it would get sovereignty guarantees from a number of nations instead (including Russia), the statement that there was no military solution to the question of Crimea and the 40 percent of Donbas already occupied by Russia before February 2022, and therefore Russia would withdraw to these pre-February lines, the sovereignty guarantees would not even cover these regions until a solution was eventually arrived at via negotiations, and in the case of Crimea, the negotiations could last 15 years!
For what happened next, I am going to cite US Greens Party leader Howie Hawkins who put together a very clear outline based on easily available sources; above all what this shows is that Russia had already rejected the proposals two days before Johnston’s visit, and that despite horrific Russian massacres in the meantime, Zelensky remained open for negotiations. These facts may not fit with lots of peoples’ favourite conspiracy theory, but they are clearly on the record, so please argue against the facts, not against me or Howie Hawkins. Here is Howie:
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“The peace settlement on the table at the end of March provided for Russia to return to the pre-February 24 lands it held in the Donbass and Crimea, for Ukraine to be a neutral non-NATO country without nuclear weapons or foreign troops (the latter two provisions are already in the Ukrainian constitution) in return for a security guarantee treaty signed by the big powers, and for the status of the Donbas and Crimea to be determined over a number of years diplomatically, not militarily.
“According to a Reuters report, that basic proposal was on the table in the days before and just after the invasion, but Putin rejected it because he wanted to annex Ukraine, not just make it militarily neutral.
“Whether Johnson’s April 9 no negotiations message, attributed to unnamed sources in the Zelensky administration only by a single Ukrainian news source, represented the Collective West, as the report said he claimed, has never been confirmed by the US or other Western countries.
“In any case, three days later on April 12, Putin said the negotiations were at a “dead end.” “On April 27, the Financial Times reported in a story entitled, “Vladimir Putin abandons hopes of Ukraine deal and shifts to land-grab strategy,” that Putin had “lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war,” citing sources briefed on conversations with Putin.
“Meanwhile, Zelensky remained open to peace talks. At an April 25 press conference, Zelensky had said he is ready to hold peace talks and wishes to do so face-to-face with Putin. “He followed up on May 12, again calling for negotiations. “And again on June 8: Asked about talks with Russia which have been suspended since late March, Zelensky said that Ukraine has not changed his position. He said he maintains the view that war should be ended at the negotiating table. The Ukrainian President also stated that he was ready for direct talks with Vladimir Putin, adding that there was “nobody else to talk to” but the Russian president, news agency AFP reported.
“I think these statements by Putin and Lavrov show it was Russia that didn’t want a peace agreement that would make them retreat to the pre-Feb 24 contact line in late March. Russia was at its peak of territory held, although it was being defeated and about to retreat from Kiev and other northern oblasts.”
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I would also add another aspect: even though it is clear from this that Zelensky didn’t abandon Ukraine’s own plan, but Lavrov and Putin rejected it, Ukraine would have been fully in its rights to reject it by mid-April, because Russia had given its own response to Ukraine’s generous offer in practice: by organising the Bucha massacre of some 400 Ukrainian civilians as it withdrew from the Kyiv region, and by continuing to besiege and level the city of Mariupol, from where it was then deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Yet, amazingly enough, the sources here suggest it still remained open to a negotiated settlement.
It is also worth noting that in the months ahead, Zelensky continually insisted Ukraine would fight on until Russian forces were forced back to the pre-February 2022 (ie pre-invasion) lines, and then negotiate. For example, here in May he is still saying there can be negotiations, if Russia withdraws “from areas that it seized during the invasion,” as well as intends to negotiate on Crimea and Donbas, while noting that:
“With each new Bucha, with each new Mariupol, with each new city where there are dozens of dead people, cases of rape, with each new atrocity, the desire and the possibility to negotiate disappears, as well as the possibility of resolving this issue in a diplomatic manner.”
If by later in 2022 Zelensky’s statements hardened – since then Ukraine has insisted that all of Ukraine, including Crimea, must be liberated before a ceasefire – then this seems to me to be a sensible negotiating position after continuous Russian rejection, both on paper and more importantly in practice, of all and every Ukrainian proposal before then, including the March-April 2022 peace process.
As for Russia, since illegally annexing four Ukrainian oblasts (as well as Crimea) later in 2022, including two where there was never any support for joining Russia, its ‘negotiating position’ has been that Ukraine must first recognise this theft of five oblasts, of a fifth of its territory!
A further Ukraine Myth to be dealt with next is the big NATO question, ie, the idea that Russia was ‘provoked’ into a genocidal invasion of its neighbour, a non-NATO member, due to its ‘provocative’ unrequited wish to join NATO. But for now, it is obvious from Russia’s rejection of both the pre-invasion proposal for Ukraine to quit its NATO ambitions, and Ukraine’s more developed proposals for the same and more one month into the war, that Russia invaded Ukraine not because of any fear of NATO but rather, as Putin tells us himself, because he believes Ukraine has no right to exist.
Besides, imperialism is a real thing; Russian imperialism wants strategic control of the Black Sea, its resources and its sea lanes; ‘NATO’ is just a good excuse (and useful to bullshit gullible western leftists with), while restoration of the Russian Empire is the ideology to bullshit the Russian masses and consolidate the ruling class with.
Myth 8: Ukrainians are forced by the US and ‘the West’ to continue the war; most Ukrainians would happily trade territory for peace if they had a say
In Myth 7, I already dealt with the claim that Ukraine was “forced” by an alleged Boris Johnston statement to abandon peace talks, and demonstrated that Ukraine never abandoned the path of negotiations.
However, the more general idea that the war continues because the US (before Trump) and European leaders want it to, to grind down Russia, and they therefore use their sway over Ukraine to push it to take uncompromising positions which prolongs the war, remains widespread within a certain “left” discourse. According to this version, most Ukrainians would happily give up some or all of the Ukrainian territory that Russia has conquered in exchange for peace, but their leaders, puppets of the US, UK and EU, keep forcing them into the “meat grinder” over this little bit of borderland.
Before we get onto the main issues, it is worth just noting that if western powers were using Ukraine to grind down Russia by keeping the war going – ie continuing to fund Ukraine’s defence against illegal aggression and occupation – then surely Russia, if it did not want to be “ground down” like this, could withdraw from the illegally occupied territory, and end the war? But yes, simple logic like that is not as much fun as blaming the victim.
For the record, of course it is a legitimate argument that the war has gone on too long, that too many are getting killed, and that this can no longer be justified by the need to regain territory, and therefore Ukraine may be forced to make a compromise that is against its interests, due to Russia’s overwhelming military superiority. Liberation movements have many times been forced into such rotten compromises when the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against them. And if and when they do, supporters in the West would be completely out of order to “condemn” the victim for “capitulating;” in our solidarity, we would continue to condemn the aggressor as the cause of the rotten compromise, the imperial theft, but recognise the right of the oppressed nation, in this case Ukraine, to make its own decision.
And yes, some of the people I might partly disagree with do simply advocate this; they believe there is no alternative; Ukraine’s case is hopeless; being forced to give up territory is unjust, but a necessary pragmatic decision because the number of Ukrainian troops dying cannot be justified by keeping the territory. They don’t necessarily put the blame on Ukraine, the condemn the Russan invasion, but they think if Ukraine does make the rotten compromise now, it will only have to do so later, after countless more have been killed. And this article does not argue against these comrades; that is a valid position.
But when Ukraine has not made such a decision, surely it is just as out of order for people in the West to be “condemning” Ukraine for not making a rotten compromise, for not capitulating, for not agreeing to trade away its occupied territory, and the Ukrainian populations who live or use to live there, while making every excuse under the sun for Russia’s right to aggression, occupation and annexation. When it is not simply a pragmatic argument, like in the previous paragraph, but one that puts the blame on the occupied nation for the war continuing. Yet that is the view of a substantial part of the western left.
Let’s be clear on what kind of compromise Ukraine is being asked to make: Russia has annexed five Ukrainian oblasts – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kerson and Zaporizhzhia. Crimea was annexed in 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk were invaded in 2014 but less than half occupied by 2022, while Kerson and Zaporizhzhia were not invaded until after the 2022 war began. Only later in 2022 did Russia formally annex these four oblasts, despite still not controlling all of Donetsk, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia.
Map shows how much of the five oblasts Russian troops currently occupy (red line shows the extent of Russian occupation)
The question is whether Ukraine should give up these 5 oblasts in their entirety, or all the sections of them currently under Russian control, or whatever was under Russian control in February 2022, in exchange for an end to the war. The five oblasts constitute about 20 percent of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Look at the map: it almost completely cuts Ukraine off from the Black Sea, which, after all, is precisely one of the strategic aims of Russia’s imperialist war of conquest.
We should also be clear that Russia demands formal recognition of all these annexations, made by brute, illegal, military conquest, not simply long-term ceasefire. Take for example the Syrian Golan. Israel conquered the Golan in 1967, Syria made an attempt to regain it in 1973, and then in 1974, recognising the overwhelming odds, signed a long-term demarcation of forces agreement, whereby Israel remains in occupation of the Golan – which it later illegally annexed – and Syrian and Israeli troops were separated by a UN force, and Syria never again attempted to recover its territory – but neither the Assad regime nor the current post-Assad government recognise the annexation; every year, a UN Resolution reaffirms Syrian sovereignty.
To be clear: this kind of pragmatic arrangement is not on offer to Ukraine. In fact, for all those saying Ukraine should just negotiate over territory, and blaming it for not doing so, remember that from Russia’s viewpoint, there is nothing to negotiate: Putin’s regime demands recognition of Russia’s annexation of all five oblasts as a prior condition for negotiations to even begin!
So what do Ukrainians think of territorial compromise?
What the is the truth about the opinions of Ukrainians? Are they being forced by a Zelensky government acting as western “proxy” to fight rather than surrender territory? The easiest way to check is to do 5 minutes of research.
In 2022-23, a full 87 percent of Ukrainians rejected any territorial compromise. But after years of war, surely the figure has gone down? Yes, it has, but not by as much as might be expected.
According to a Gallup poll conducted in late 2024, around 52% of Ukrainians “would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible,” while only 38% “believe their country should keep fighting until victory.” Ten percent didn’t know or didn’t answer. This is a big change compared to previous years.
However, only 52% of this 52% agreed that “Ukraine should be open to making some territorial concessions as a part of a peace deal to end the war.” That is, only 27% of the population agree to even “some” territorial compromise.
Of the 38% who believe in “fighting till victory,” only 19% would agree to some territorial compromise (as the bar chart shows, 81% reject any territorial compromise); that is, only 7% of the population:
Add this to the 27% from the first group, and 34% of Ukrainians are now in favour of “some” territorial compromise. In contrast, around 51% of the population reject any territorial compromise.
These figures tie in well with another survey, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), from mid-2024, which found that 32% of Ukrainians were in favour of some territorial concessions, while 55% reject any compromise.
Now, while both surveys show a majority rejecting all territorial concessions, the majority is razor thin, even if the pro-concession group is considerably smaller. However, the devil here is in the details.
In the Gallup poll, as can be seen in the chart above, while 81% of Ukrainians wanting to “fight till victory” believe all territory must be recovered for this “victory, a full 96% believe that Ukraine must regain a substantial amount of territory: 9% want to regain all territory lost since the Russian invasion of 2022 (ie, all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and most of Luhansk), about half the occupied territory, while another 6% want to regain all four eastern oblasts but would be prepared to give up only Crimea.
If we were to add these people to those rejecting capitulation to Russia’s territorial demands, the number goes up to 56%, while those in favour drops to 29%.
But as the poll does not give similar breakdown data for the first group, ie the majority wanting a negotiated settlement, who agree to “some” territorial concessions, it is likely to also be the case that many of those who agree to “some” would reject ceding all territory. As such, the numbers rejecting the Russian demand to recognise all annexed territory as Russia’s is likely to rise to some two thirds; the number accepting to be a quarter at most.
Clearly, the vast majority are opposed to ceding all territory to Russia, so it is fiction that the Ukraine government does not represent the popular will. However, it is clear that the majority is declining, and the numbers supporting “some” territorial concession, while still a minority, are now substantial enough to suggest that some kind of compromise is possible for the sake of ending the war. But the problem remains that Russia’s starting point for beginning negotiations is Ukraine’s prior recognition of its annexation of all five oblasts, even the parts it does not control. This makes condemning the Ukrainian government or people for wanting endless war, seeing them as the party that needs to be pressured, is somewhat absurd.
NATO, security guarantees, and Trump
It is also important that Ukrainians in various polls (especially the KIIS poll) see security guarantees as just as an important an issue; if forced to make territorial concessions for peace, they do not want Russia to re-invade again in a few years. And most see NATO membership as the most certain form of security – it is rather obvious to them that Russia invaded a NATO non-member, while Sweden and Finland, the latter with a long border with Russia, have never been touched or threatened since joining NATO.
Yet for all this – and all the non-sequitirs from much of the left about prospective Ukrainian NATO membership being what “provoked” Russia’s invasion, the reality is that NATO membership was never on the cards for Ukraine, and Zelensky was always ready to trade that away – this was offered to Putin before his invasion, and he rejected it, since his aim was territorial conquest, not the NATO bogey; Ukraine again offered it in a formal peace plan a month into the war, to which Russia responded with the Bucha massacre and the complete obliteration of Mariupol (see Myth 7). If there is no NATO membership, Ukraine has been willing to accept other forms of tight security guarantees all along. But the NATO discussion will the topic of Myth 9.
A final note related to what Ukraine may have to compromise on: the problem with Trump’s blatant dealing with Putin over Ukraine’s head about Ukraine is not some pragmatic recognition that the war is a quagmire and requires negotiations and bad compromises; nor that the US wants to get out of Europe, focus elsewhere, and leave European problems to Europe. It is hilarious watching parts of the left cheer Trump – the guy who wants to expel two million Palestinians from Gaza – as a peacemaker!
Because if Trump simply wanted to launch a negotiation, he might have included Ukraine and Russia on equal terms rather than engaging in such blatant imperial carve-up; and he would not have given everything to Moscow in advance, he and his ministers declaring in advance of negotiations both that Ukraine will not recover its territory and that it will not join NATO and that the US will not be involved in any other security guarantees; Trump told Zelensky that he had “no cards,” as he had given all of Ukraine’s cards away to Russia before any negotiations begin. If that is not a blatantly pro-Putin action, I don’t know what is. And if he simply wanted the US out of Europe, it is strange that he invited Zelensky to the White House to get Ukraine to sign a colonial deal to hand over its mineral wealth to the US; Ukraine is in Europe.
It is no accident that Zelensky’s popularity in Ukraine shot up following the Trump-Vance ambush where he left without signing the colonial deal; because whatever else may be wrong with the Zelensky government – a neoliberal government that socialists would take issue with on many fronts – the stance of defending Ukraine’s self-determination against Russian imperialism remains one with significant majority support.
Cataclysmic destruction in Syria: Which were caused by the February 6 earthquake, which by Assad regime bombing?
By Michael Karadjis
Following the 7.8 Richter earthquake of February 6, no disaster relief reached the people of northwest Syria, in the region under opposition control, from the United Nations or any country, in the crucial first week, meaning thousands died under the rubble. This was the part of Syria most heavily impacted by the quake. These people, who had already experienced the full brunt of years of horrific bombing by the Assad dictatorship and Imperial Russia with the full connivance of the “international community”, were yet again condemned to genocide by the world.
In the context of the quake, the Assad regime renewed its push for the lifting of US and EU economic sanctions on Syria. As I will argue in the second part of this series, there are good reasons to lift, or at least radically overhaul, these sanctions in their current form because, regardless of their intention and exemptions, they overwhelmingly impact the civilian population while the blood-drenched regime has consolidated. However, this has nothing to do with the current crisis over earthquake disaster relief.
It is very important that the genocidal regime – which has imposed the equivalent of hundreds of February 6 earthquakes on the people of Syria via its bombing of much of the country into a moonscape over the last decade, and which even bombed northwest Syria within hours after the earthquake, and has reportedly continued to do so since and even bombed Idlib on February 26-27 as the Egyptian foreign minister was meeting Assad – does not benefit from this disgraceful and hypocritical propaganda war. Because while 214 planeloads of disaster aid had arrived in regime-held Syria, via Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia airports, or via Beirut, as of February 24, from dozens of countries – completely unencumbered by sanctions which do not prevent such humanitarian aid – it is the much more heavily impacted northwest, outside regime control, that has been betrayed by the world, received very little, and initially left to die.
As UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths noted, “The first 72 hrs after a disaster are critical” because this is when people buried under rubble may still be found alive, so the absence of aid in the first week cannot be fixed by (a little) more arriving the second week; as Jasmine Gani explained on February 9, “as a result of the slow international response and lack of aid, residents in Idlib have reported that most of the victims who are still alive and might have been saved are still trapped under the rubble after four days. Tragically, the sounds of people calling for help under the debris are slowly giving way to silence.”
That was obviously not due to sanctions on the regime, but on the contrary, to the regime’s sanctions on sending some of the enormous aid it did receive to the northwest; to the Russian veto in the UN on most cross-border aid crossings from Turkey into northern Syria to “protect Syria’s sovereignty”; and above all the decision by the UN, the US, the EU and others to “respect” this argument about Assadist “sovereignty” or UN “legality” by not sending aid direct to the region – or else back-handedly justifying their lack of aid with these arguments. The regime’s propaganda is so despicable that images of destruction in non-regime Idlib are shown with slogans against sanctions; most people have heard that little aid has reached the victims in northern Syria and hence the disgraceful lie that this is due to sanctions on the genocidal regime often sounds persuasive to those not in the know.
Background: The liberated northwest and years of Assadist terror-bombing
The Assad regime and Russia bombed the people here – as with elsewhere in Syria – for a decade with every conceivable form of “conventional” and unconventional WMD except nuclear, destroying entire cities and towns, turning much of the country into a moonscape, bombing hundreds of hospitals, but the people refused to submit. While the regime, with Russian and Iranian support and US connivance, reconquered most of the regions held by the anti-Assad revolution, two regions remain outside its control – the northwest (much of Idlib and Aleppo provinces), under the control of a range of rebel groups, and partially controlled by Turkish forces in an uneasy alliance with them, and the northeast, under the control of the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Yes, the rebel leaderships in the northwest became heavily co-opted either by Turkey, or by the jihadist militia HTS, in the last few years, inevitable considering their desperation to not be overrun by the genocidal Assad regime, and the lack of support from the West; yet even over the last few months we’ve seen mass popular demonstrations both against Turkey and against HTS at different times, suggesting that, while militarily defeated, the revolutionary masses still believe they have something to fight for and remain committed to the ideals which they rose up for in 2011.
Indeed, while some of the demonstrations against HTS were simply against its attempt to impose its rule over areas it does not control, or against its repressive actions, others were against HTS attempting to open a trade connection with the regime; and similarly, the demonstrations against Turkey were against the growing convergence between Erdogan and Assad as they move to ‘bury the hatchet’, just as Erdogan has also recently moved to patch things up with his former enemies in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel (and just as the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain and increasingly Saudi Arabia have re-aligned with both the Assad regime and Israel in an axis of counterrevolution). But the 5 million people in the liberated northwest – including almost 3 million refugees from elsewhere in Syria – are both the main reason for Turkey maintaining some level of commitment to the anti-Assad cause when abandoned by everyone else – because, with 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey already, Erdogan does not want Assad to reconquer the region and send millions more across the border – but therefore also the main obstacle to full Erdogan-Assad rapprochement, and the main potential victims of such a deal. If one were cynical one would suggest the earthquake was too good “an opportunity” for the regional oppressors via the sheer level of death, destruction and demoralisation meted out to the stubbornly resistant people of the region.
Left: demonstration against HTS trying to open trade links with regime; right, demonstration against Turkey trying to reconcile with regime
The impact: Turkey and the two parts of northwest Syria
Let’s clarify what is going on with the earthquake and its victims. Turkey suffered by far the biggest disaster, with over 44,000 killed and 345,000 apartments destroyed (some 160,000 buildings containing 520,000 apartments were either destroyed or severely damaged). Of these, the Syrian Network for Human Rights had already documented 3841 Syrian refugees in Turkey among the dead as of February 15, but at that point overall numbers were much lower so the real figure now may be much higher. The situation is unimaginable. But while no amount of disaster aid is enough, at least it has been arriving on a large-scale, and Turkey has a functioning government dealing with the situation, whatever one’s views on that government.
In Syria, despite relatively smaller numbers, the situation is even more drastic due to the lack of such a government and the politics of aid. Regions both under regime control, and under opposition control, in northwest Syria were heavily impacted by the earthquake; victims on both sides deserve all the aid they can get. But there are two differences: firstly, the level of devastation is far worse in the opposition-controlled regions (4300 dead, 7600 injured, 1700 buildings completely destroyed) than inside the Assad-ruled part (still tragic, 1408 deaths, 2301 injuries, dozens of destroyed buildings), as the opposition-controlled region is closer to the epicentre of the quake in Turkey; and second, thousands of tons of disaster relief have poured into Damascus since the earthquake struck, into the hands of the regime or of humanitarian organisations in regime territory, from dozens of countries from the very first days, whereas hardly anything arrived in the opposition-controlled northwest in the crucial first week after the quake when survivors may still have been found, and only a fraction of what the regime received has arrived since. To this we can add that the opposition region has been destroyed by years of Assadist and Russian bombing already, which not only killed and destroyed on a far vaster scale than the earthquake while also weakening the foundations of its buildings which have now collapsed, and meted out an incomprehensible level of destruction of its hospitals and health infrastructure which were ruthlessly and deliberately targeted; and the conditions the refugees were living in was already dire, before the earthquake hit: 1.7 million are living in refugee camps, while 4.1 million of the region’s population already rely on humanitarian aid.
Regions of Syria under different political control. The green areas in the north-west under opposition/rebel control were the most heavily impacted, but very little disaster aid went there. Parts of the north-west under Assad regime control (in red) were also impacted, to a lesser extent – nearly all disaster aid has gone to the regime.
How can aid get to northwest Syria: its two “borders” and regime sanction on cross-border aid
So, how can aid get into liberated northwest Syria? Well, it has two borders. To the south is regime-controlled Syria. So while all the disaster aid going into Syria is a good thing, it is largely irrelevant to northwest Syria, because the Assad regime does not allow supplies to cross the boundary; “this area is an open-air prison that is disconnected from everywhere else,” according to Zaher Sahloul, the president of the aid organization MedGlobal, which works in the region and in Gaziantep in southern Turkey, home to thousands of Syrian refugees. The regime has also cut off electricity to the region, so search-and-rescue and medical services run on generators. Even within the region of Syria it does control, the regime has a well-documented history of directing aid to politically preferred regions. Nothing crossed the boundary in the first week, indeed, the Syrian Foreign Minister initially declared that no aid should get to what it called “the terrorists in the north,” ie, regions controlled by the rebels. On February 10, four days after the quake hit, the regime finally announced that it would let aid cross (called “cross-line” aid to distinguish it from the cross-border aid from Turkey), clearly timed to allow most under the rubble to die first, and then try to look good afterwards. In any case, only a trickle at most has been sent since the announcement, while even attempts by Syrian citizens to collect and send aid to the northwest, from various parts of Syria, have reportedly been thwarted.
The other border is to the north, the border with Turkey. Turkey has been the main provider to this region, but also, international organisations have accessed this region via Turkey. Turkey itself has 3.6 million Syrian refugees, the world’s largest refugee population, and most live in the region of Turkey just destroyed by the earthquake there. There were long two major routes from Turkey into this region of Syria for humanitarian relief (as well as smaller routes), plus a route from Iraq and one from Jordan. However, since 2020, Russia has blocked the routes from Jordan and Iraq and all but one of the routes from Turkey, via its UN veto. This “resulted in a lack of essential items, building materials and specialist equipment making it impossible to rebuild the region which was devastated by war and bombed by Syrian and Russian forces.” Even the one crossing Russia reluctantly allowed the stay open, the Bab al-Hawa crossing, has to be renewed every 6 months. However, this route was itself badly damaged by the earthquake, and for over a week after the quake, the Syrian regime insisted that all aid must flow through Damascus, even that to the region outside its control, and therefore refused to budge on the question of “allowing” other crossings from Turkey. And the UN did not use the other routes to get in urgent aid, due to this Russian UN veto and respect for this alleged “Syrian sovereignty”, despite the fact that several months ago, before the earthquake struck, a range of international legal experts had already declared that no UN or regime “permission” is needed to send urgent humanitarian aid across borders.
The first crucial week: Massive aid to Assad’s Syria, nothing for the northwest
Now, of course, the main villain here is Putin’s imperialist Russian regime blocking humanitarian corridors on behalf of the alleged “sovereignty” of its satrap in Damascus, and that satrap; however, given the scale of the disaster, the UN could simply have used the other crossings, and put saving lives ahead of such spurious “sovereignty” arguments, as these experts argued.
Not a single search and rescue team arrived in the northwest from anywhere in the world in the first week, and the existing equipment in the hands of the relief organisations such as the absolutely heroic White Helmets was only sufficient to search about 5 percent of impacted areas. According to reporter Ruth Sherlock on February 11, “on a rare visit to this rebel-held enclave of a country broken and isolated by more than a decade of civil war, NPR saw no international crews of rescuers; no trucks loaded with machinery or medical aid; no streams of ambulances to save the wounded. The border crossing into Syria was empty and silent.”
Meanwhile, the damage at the one legal opening did not prevent trucks crossing to bring back bodies of Syrian refugees from Turkey killed in the earthquake there – so why couldn’t relief get in as well as bodies? Some 22 trucks did cross the border on February 9, three days after the earthquake, but that was only to deliver goods ordered before the earthquake, namely backlog supplies of food, water and cleaning materials, hardly what was most pressing at the time. By the end of the first week, northwest Syria had only received five truck convoys, a mere 52 trucks, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This compared with 84 planes and 12 truck convoys that arrived in regime-held Syria by that same point, clearly unimpeded by sanctions. And what about airdrops – couldn’t the UN or US or EU have carried out airdrops of supplies? As Jasmine Gani points out, “in 2016, due to the extent of damage to the roads, the UN was able to airdrop hundreds of supplies to the regime-held area of Deir Ezzor, multiple times; but the UN must first seek approval from the regime, and with a lack of permission, no such airdrops have been made in the North-west of Syria.” So the UN simply capitulated to the regime and continued to send all its aid to regime areas. And couldn’t the US or EU have somewhat pressured the UN on this issue if they really wanted to get aid in, or made airdrops themselves – after all, the US has an airbase just across the border in Turkey. Indeed, Idrees Ahmad shows, both made fancy statements about sending aid to the disaster-hit zone in the first week, but nothing arrived. The fact that they didn’t, and that the UN, US and EU all preferred to send aid via the regime-controlled region, makes extra mockery of the idea that sanctions were preventing aid, as no sanctions prevented them sending aid via Turkey to the north.
Of the 84 planeloads of aid and 12 truck convoys that were sent to regime-held Syria in the first week, the absolute majority, 71, came from Arab countries. Of these by far the largest contribution came from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which sent 22 planes and one truck convoy, while Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Tunisia all sent planes. In addition, another 15 planes came from a range of other countries, including the European Union and Italy. The story spread on some “anti-imperialist” sites that only “anti-imperialist” states sent aid was nothing but the laughable fiction we’ve come to expect from such quarters: depending on what this vague and hollow term is taken to mean, the 11 planes sent at this stage by Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela was relative peanuts. Russia, of course, had no trouble sending hundreds of warplanes to bomb Syria to bits for years, but only 3 planes for disaster relief. For many of the reactionary Arab states who sent the great bulk, especially the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Oman, and partially Saudi Arabia, this massive aid has gone hand in hand with dramatically increasing their political rapprochement with the Assad regime (including top state visitsto Assad and by Assad) which these states have been leading in the Arab world for years now; it is no coincidence that they are the same states which have led rapprochement with Israel in the same period. Only Qatar (which rejects rapprochement with either Assad or Israel) and Kuwait have focused their aid on the northwest.
Cross-border aid “allowed” but remains a relative trickle
Finally, on February 13, a week after the quake, the regime “gave permission” to the UN and other agencies to use the other crossings (Bab al-Salama and al-Rai) to deliver aid to the region it has no control over (apparently at the urging of its close UAE ally), again well-timed to allow maximum death first, and the UN, thanking “his Excellence” genocidal tyrant Assad for such magnanimity, finally delivered the first aid through the Bab al-Salama crossing on February 15.
By the end of the second week, 178 trucks had crossed the border from Turkey in the entire period since the quake hit, a big improvement which continued in the third week (282 trucks by February 24). However, while this may sound a lot, throughout 2022, “some 600 trucks loaded with aid crossed Türkiye each month” in normal times! Moreover, the contrast with the level of aid being sent to regime Syria remained stark: 167 planeloads of disaster aid had arrived in Syria, via Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia airports, in the region controlled by the Assad regime, as of February 18, rising to 214 planes as of February 24 (of which 93 were from the UAE). In fact, the number of trucks which arrived in the first two weeks in the northwest was equivalent to what sometimes arrived in regime-held Syria on a daily basis, for example, on February 18, a convoy of 100 Iraqi aid trucks crossed the Syrian border, plus trucks from various other countries, along with 17 planes, half from the UAE. To put it simply, almost as many planeloads arrived in regime-held Syria (in addition to trucks) as truckloads arrived in the far more impacted rebel-held Syria! Moreover, trucks mostly bring in aid such as food and tents rather than the specialist equipment required for search and rescue or construction materials to rebuild homes and buildings destroyed.
Actually, 120 trucks of aid collected by Syrians in Deir Ezzor, under the control of the SDF in northeast Syria (the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, AANES), which was sent to the northwest on February 14, exceeded the amount of aid sent by the United Nations at that point by two and a half times! The aid was transferred by AANES to the opposition Syrian Interim Government (SIG) which controls much of the northwest, despite their otherwise poor relations. Unfortunately, a second convoy of 30 tanks of fuel and 20 trucks of aid sent by AANES to the northwest was apparently blocked by the SIG, possibly due to Turkish pressure.
First week
By February 18
By February 24
Regime-held Syria
84 planes + hundreds of trucks
167 planes + hundreds of trucks
214 planes + hundreds of trucks
Rebel-held northwest
0
178 trucks
282 trucks
Disaster aid arriving in two parts of Syria, first few weeks after earthquake
So, what about the sanctions on the Assad regime?
Given all the above, it appears deeply ironic that the Assad regime is attempting to use this disaster to press for the end of US (and EU) sanctions on the regime, which were imposed in their current harsh form in 2019 after the US had facilitated Assad’s military victory over the armed opposition. This will be elaborated on in the second article of this series, focused on the sanctions.
The key point here is that, while there are good reasons to demand the end, or at least the radical overhaul, of the sanctions in their current form, this question has nothing to do with the current disaster relief issue. Therefore, raising that argument in the midst of the disaster played into the hands of the genocidal regime and its lies. It is abundantly clear from all the above data that the sanctions were not preventing any aid from getting into Assad’s Syria: on the contrary, as massive aid poured in, it was opposition-controlled Syria that was both most devasted, and receiving very little aid, where avoidable mass death took place. And part of the reason for this was the effective ‘sanctions’ imposed by the Assad regime on aid to the northwest, the UN veto imposed by its Russia paymaster on cross-border aid to the northwest, and above all the loyalty of the UN system to these legal fictions of Assadist “sovereignty” and Putinite “legality”, trumping the survival of thousands of Syrians under the rubble.
Therefore, given this combination of facts – the massive disaster relief sent to regime Syria unimpeded by sanctions, the corresponding catastrophic lack of disaster relief being sent to the rebel-held northwest which had borne the main brunt of the disaster, the fact that regime ‘sanctions’ on aid to the northwest and Russian UN veto on cross-border aid corridors worsened the situation of the northwest, the ongoing bombing of the earthquake-hit northwest by the regime, the regime’s theft and manipulation of aid, and the fact that this regime had bombed its country to ruins far, far exceeding what any earthquake could do – the opportunist campaign to use the disaster to call for the end of sanctions on the genocidal regime was deeply flawed and hypocritical, based on lies, and aimed at the regime’s rehabilitation rather than aiding earthquake victims.
But as long as we separate this issue from the current disaster, there are nevertheless good reasons to take a hard look at this question of US and EU sanctions on the regime in their current form. The assessment now that 3-4 years have elapsed appears to be: on the one hand, the ordinary Syrian people feel the major impact of sanctions, because, despite their exemptions, they impact humanitarian relief in countless indirect ways, especially in relation to the banking system, and sanctions on entire sections of the economy (eg energy) inevitably batter the poor regardless of intentions; on the other, the regime appears firmly entrenched in power and its oligarchic circles have always been in the best position to evade, or even profit from, sanctions. This however comes up against the question of, if not sanctions, what can be done with a regime that has destroyed its country, killed hundreds of thousands, still holds tens of thousands of political prisoners in horrific conditions involving systematic torture, while a quarter of the population have fled the country and will not return while Assad remains in power, and more than half of Syria’s pre-war population are outside regime control. This will be discussed in the second part of this series.
Time and time again, we have been told that ‘the Global South’ – ie, the developing world consisting largely of former colonies – does not support Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s barbaric colonial invasion, or is even supportive of Russia. According to this rendition of reality, support for Ukraine is entirely a project of the imperial West, and this very fact is all the more reason that former colonies of western imperialist states do not want to be on the side of their former colonial masters.
Quite apart from the problematic mathematics involved – 140 countries voted to condemn the Russian invasion, the vast majority of which are in the Global South, and only 5 voted against – there is a more significant problem here: the conflation of ruling classes, governments and often dictatorships with the people of these countries, as if people being gunned down by some regime of exploiters would automatically have the same opinions as their oppressors, because they’re all ‘Global Southerners’. While such a boringly pedestrian assumption is normal in mainstream mass media and bourgeois political discourse, it ought to be second nature to anyone proclaiming some kind of socialist or even vaguely left or progressive ideology that such discourse is inconceivable nonsense.
“Only white nations are supporting Ukraine, the black and brown peoples of the world refuse to support ‘NATO’s war’ against Russia” I have been informed by western leftists, assuming to be speaking on behalf of several billion people in several continents, when in fact only speaking on behalf of their torturers.
This essay will first look at the facts of who voted what and why, and will note the largely sub-imperial nature of major states which either abstained on voting to condemn Russia, or formally voted to condemn but were in other respects pro-Russian in practice; and then will compare this to the overwhelmingly anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian views of their populations, belying the claims that these abstentions were “reflective” of alleged “anti-colonial” views among the peoples of the South. This will be done via examining a variety of surveys of popular opinion. While it is difficult to vouch for the validity and reliability of these surveys without much deeper research, nevertheless their variety itself, together with the largely similar results, suggests somewhat tentative conclusions can be drawn.
First, the facts
Before we look at what people actually think, let’s first establish the facts regarding the votes of these countries and the views of the governments and ruling elites, because the assertions are not even borne out on this level.
Like most myths, these assertions are based on bits and pieces of truths and half-truths. Both the UN General Assembly vote to condemn the Russian invasion in March, and the more recent one to condemn Russia’s outright theft of a fifth of Ukraine, were supported by over 140 countries and opposed by 5, while some 35 countries in each case abstained. Since nearly all the 30 or so ‘white’ nations of the Global North (European countries, North America, Australasia) voted to condemn, it means all of those who abstained were from the Global South – even if they were vastly outnumbered by the overwhelming majority of South countries who voted to condemn. Of the 5 who voted against both times, two were ‘white’ Global North countries – Russia and Belarus, of course – while 3 were from the South: Assad’s genocide-regime in Syria, which relies on Putin for its existence, the grotesque ‘Juche’ regime in North Korea, and, the first time, the extremely repressive dictatorship in Eritrea, and second time, Ortega’s turncoat regime in Nicaragua.
In other words, even just on this basis, we can say that, within the Global South, over 100 nations condemned the invasion and annexations, while three supported them.
However, it is also more complicated than that, because the reasons that countries vote in favour or abstain can have many dimensions; while, as we will see, some of those which abstained, such as Modi’s regime in India, did so because they actually sympathise with Moscow, many others may have had no such sympathy, but for diplomatic or economic reasons – associated with being relatively poor – felt they could not openly vote to condemn Russia, often due to some important economic relationship with Russia, or with China.
Meanwhile, the other core of truth is that it has only been western countries that have sent arms to Ukraine, and have activated economic sanctions on Russia, despite the overwhelming votes to condemn Russia’s invasion. However, this is hardly surprising for many reasons: the major arms suppliers (and producers) in any conflict are richer countries (western countries and Russia), and are wealthy enough to provide large quantities. It is also only countries of the Global North who can afford the pain to themselves of sanctions on a large country such as Russia, whereas in the South imposing sanctions would often mean impossible pain, especially given the importance of Russia in the global food, fertiliser and energy markets; while also endangering economic links and projects which they have built up with Russia, just as they have with the US and western countries; finally, the Ukraine war is in Europe, so it is logical that European nations have more of a direct stake than others, in the same way that African nations all opposed the Apartheid regime in South Africa and all Arab states give official support to Palestine.
The ambivalent sub-imperialist belt
While, as we will see, some abstaining countries are simple Russian neo-colonies under forms of violent occupation (eg, Mali, Central African Republic), there is a bloc of relatively powerful states that either abstained on all votes (China, India, Iran, South Africa), abstained on some votes (Brazil, United Arab Emirates, both in Security Council votes), or officially voted to condemn to satisfy their Washington connections, but in practice have acted in every possible way to demonstrate the importance they place upon their ties with Moscow and lack of commitment to their votes (Israel, Saudi Arabia and to some extent Turkey).
Putin with Saudi BFF Mohammed bin Salman: destroyer of Yemen laughs with destroyer of Syria and Ukraine
With the exception of Turkey, which has supplied Bakhtiar drones to Ukraine, none of the other “US allies” in the Middle East (Israel, UAE, Saudis) have either helped supply Ukraine with arms, or imposed sanctions on Russia. After the West imposed oil sanctions on Russia, driving the price of oil through the roof, the US aimed to get its Saudi and Gulf allies to increase oil supply to stabilise prices; at the time, Saudi and Emirati leaders reportedly “declined U.S. requests to speak to Mr. Biden.” Following Biden’s low-key July visit to Saudi Arabia in the hope of getting the Saudis on board, they responded in October by leading OPEC into cutting oil production by 2m barrels a day, keeping prices high to their own, and Russia’s, benefit. To double the insult, the Saudis rounded out the year with the lavish welcome to China’s Xi Jinping in December, signing a “strategic partnership.” As for Turkey, “not joining sanctions to keep diplomacy open” apparently includes agreeing to Russia’s plan to turn Turkey into a Russian gas hub, while blocking the NATO membership applications of Sweden and Finland.
In Israel’s case, former (and again current) far-right leader Benjamin Netanyahu long cultivated close ties with Putin, so not surprisingly, his equally ultra-rightist successor, prime minister Naftali Bennett, was the first “world leader” to make a high level visit to Moscow to meet Putin soon after the invasion. Bennett’s first statement affirmed Ukraine’s right to sovereignty, but made no mention of Russia. Following US pressure, foreign minister and more “centrist” Zionist Yair Lapid issued the official, half-hearted condemnation, but Bennett refused to mention Putin or Russia in subsequent statements, and issued a demand that his ministers say nothing; rejected Ukraine’s calls for arms, and promised to block any attempt by Baltic states to send Israeli-made arms to Ukraine. His equally fascistic minister Avigdor Lieberman later refused to condemn Russia following the Bucha massacre, claiming “I support first of all Israeli interests.” Israel also blocked the US from providing Israeli ‘iron dome’ missile-shield technology to Ukraine, as Russian missiles obliterate Ukraine. After Israel’s refusal of a US request to co-sponsor a UN Security Council move to put a motion to condemn Russia to the General Assembly caused rebuke from Washington, Israel voted in favour at the General Assembly, Bennett explaining that Russia understood Israel’s forced stand, and Russia affirmed this would not affect cooperation in Syria. When Lapid replaced Bennet as prime minister late in the year, he was more openly critical of Russia, but refused to supply weaponry. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s far-right Likud opposition spent the year criticising the government for saying anything at all, and in its first statement, the new Netanyahu government promises to “speak less in public” about Ukraine.
These are not countries that have the excuse of being poor and hence having little bargaining power – Israel is an unquestionably ‘Northern’ economy, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are oil superpowers, and Turkey is a member of the OECD, and, for that matter, of NATO. Their actions are clearly choices: does this mean Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey are an ‘anti-colonial’ vanguard? Alongside, within Europe itself, the far-right regime of Orban in Hungary, Putin’s best friend in NATO, which almost alone in Europe stands against sanctions on Russia and arms to Ukraine? And when we add other countries ruled by far-right reactionaries like Modi in India and Bolsonaro in Brazil, who are allied both to the US and to Putin’s Russia, we further see the problem with the alleged ‘anti-imperialist’ explanation for going soft on Russia.
We often hear that, despite the numbers in the UN votes, “the majority of the world” abstained and hence refused to condemn Moscow, because between them, China and India, make up two fifths of the world, so when we add other large abstaining countries such as Iran and Pakistan, as well as Brazil which, despite voting to condemn, has rejected sanctions while Bolsonaro declared his “deep solidarity” with Russia in Moscow on the eve of the invasion, we are covering more than half the world’s population.
But that’s where the nonsense peaks: as the mullah regime in Iran guns down hundreds of women and young people demonstrating against tyranny in the streets every day, we are asked to assume that those being shot, tortured, brutally oppressed, have the same opinion on Ukraine as the regime killing them. That Iranian Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis and other oppressed minorities have the same view as their oppressors. That the Muslim population of Gujarat must have the same view as Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist regime, where Modi himself was involved in the huge pogrom in that state back in 2002. That oppressed Indian women, Dalits and minorities all agree with the BJP’s votes in the UN, alongside the world’s largest population living in absolute poverty – yes, of course, they all must agree with the Indian petty-bourgeoisie aggressively proclaiming its pro-Moscow views on the Internet. That the millions in Xinjiang suffering under China’s regime of forced assimilation and cultural genocide must all agree with the regime imposing this upon them, alongside the hundreds of millions of China’s insecure ‘floating population’ of exploited workers, they of course must agree with their exploiters.
The sheer idiocy of such assumptions should stare anyone in the face. That such class-free analysis could ever be considered by anyone claiming left-wing or socialist politics simply underlines the ideological bankruptcy of much of the Old Left (ie, the degeneration of what was once the ‘New Left’).
Rather, what these countries and governments have in common – China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel – is their sub-imperialist (or in some cases arguably imperialist) nature. Far from their positions on the war reflecting any “anti-colonial” consciousness of their people (or reflecting their oppressed and exploited peoples at all), they rather reflect the geopolitical positioning, their global bargaining position, between US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialism, taking advantage of the war to assert their own sub-imperial interests, regional influence and conquests, and oppressive rule over internal and local colonies.
Yes: there is western hypocrisy! Yes, the world’s peoples remember colonialism!
OK, but are not some of the points being made valid in themselves? Of course, it is true that the western imperialist powers supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian occupation are hypocritical. None have the same view regarding Israel’s decades-long brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine, and the Golan, and its massive violation of the most elementary human rights of the Palestinians. While some European governments might offer more criticism compared to the unconditional and uncritical support for Israel by the US, there is never a hint of sanctions or breaking ties. We can name any number of other examples, such as Saudi Arabia’s monstrous bombing of Yemen, where western reactions can similarly range from condemnation to support, but even in the cases most condemned, there are no penalties.
The same goes for Russia’s previous actions: neither Putin’s slaughter of the Chechens, the horrific bombing of hospitals, schools, markets in Syria on behalf of Assad’s genocide regime, nor the 2014 annexation of Crimea, evoked the kind of reaction we see now in Ukraine.
Then there are conflicts in which huge numbers of people are killed, such as the two-year genocidal assault on Tigray by Ethiopia and Eritrea, killing 600,000 people, which both western governments and media treat with complete indifference. Not surprisingly, many Africans would have been offended when French minister of state, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, demanded “solidarity from Africa” because of Russia’s “existential threat” to Europe.
And of course, there is the vastly different treatment of millions of Ukrainian refugees in Europe compared to that of refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa.
In this sense we can say the Ukrainians are ‘lucky’ (if such a term can be used for a people being invaded and bombed) compared to others in terms of western support. Western powers act based on their own interests, just as Russia does, and this may rarely coincide with the interests of justice. It is not the fault of Ukrainian men, women and children getting bombed and killed in apartment blocks that the West is more supportive of them than of other struggles. They have a right to resist and to get aid from wherever its offered, as do all peoples fighting liberation and resistance wars.
But the argument that rejection of western hypocrisy is the reason for the ambivalent stance of many governments in the Global South is very problematic. Many of these ambivalent governments are violently oppressive, and don’t really care less about western hypocrisy or alleged ‘principles’; they are often leaders in hypocrisy themselves. In fact, often it is the very beneficiaries of western hypocrisy – such as those just mentioned above, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia – which either abstained, rejected western sanctions or otherwise carried out actions that benefited Russia in practice; they have good relations with both imperialist blocs. As for the contention that their stance is a reflection of ‘anti-imperialist’ views among the people they oppress, there is little or no correspondence with popular opinion as will be demonstrated below.
A similar contention is that the ambivalent views of some South governments reflect anti-colonial sentiment: the western governments now supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian colonialism were previously the colonialists ruling over the peoples of the South. In itself, this could lead to sympathy for Ukrainians fighting the same anti-colonial fight they once did; but since Russian colonialism expanded across northern Eurasia, not in Africa, southern Asia or Latin America where other colonial rulers were, it may not be so obvious the southern peoples. But again, the idea that many of these reactionary, violent and pro-imperialist regimes are expressing anti-colonial principles is laughable.
What about the people of the South?
The idea that the views and UN votes of the collection of thuggish reactionary regimes listed above represent the views of the people they oppress is unlikely by definition, at least for anyone who understands the concept of class analysis. What is the evidence of any correspondence between the policies of this minority of southern governments and the alleged “anti-colonial” views of their people, which are allegedly expressed via supporting Russia’s colonial invasion of Ukraine?
Brazil
An interesting place to start may be Brazil; since both the outgoing, far-right Bolsonaro regime, and the incoming, soft-left, Lula administration, have been very partial to Putin and Russia’s viewpoint. Bolsonaro was always strongly allied to Putin (and to Trump), seeing both an ideological ally and an important trading partner. On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Bolsonaro turned up in Moscow to declare his “deep solidarity” with Russia! While his government went through the motions of voting to condemn the invasion in the General Assembly, Bolsonaro himself blasted that stand, and claimed Ukrainians “trusted a comedian with the fate of a nation.” Later, Brazil abstained in the UN Security Council vote in September to condemn the annexations. Meanwhile, as the West sanctioned Russia, Brazil-Russia trade ballooned. As for Lula, he criticised Russia’s invasion but claimed Ukraine was “as responsible” as Russia and had not tried enough to negotiate with the aggressor.
Yet, according to ‘Morning Consult’, “the share of Brazilian adults with a favorable view of Russia has plunged from 38% to 13% since the day before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, while the share with an unfavorable view has surged from 28% to 59%.” Meanwhile, 62 percent of Brazilians say they side with Ukraine, compared to only 6 percent who side with Russia. What this suggests is quite the opposite of “pressure from the masses” – both Bolsonaro and Lula, with differing ideological emphases, represent the views of the sub-imperialist BRICS ruling elite and the way it positions itself in the world, not at all the views of the Brazilian masses. As the 9th most unequal country on Earth according to 2023 Gini Index rankings, why would anyone expect the poverty-stricken masse or the Indigenous being destroyed in the Amazon to hold the same views as the elite?
There’s good reason to believe that this is the case throughout Latin America, “despite” (due to?) the strong anti-imperialist traditions throughout the region. Favourable views of Russia are higher in Mexico than in Brazil, yet a late February poll in Mexico showed that only 20 percent of Mexicans had a favourable view of Putin, and 60 percent an unfavourable view.
Putin and recently defeated Brazilian far-right co-thinker Jair Bolsonaro: Real men like us won’t allow the “the gays” and “liberals” to prevent us from destroying Ukraine and the Amazon
Southern Africa
From Brazil, we may jump to another BRICS stalwart which has abstained on the UN resolutions condemning Russia, namely South Africa. In explaining South Africa’s vote, almost every media article in the world has pointed to the “traditional ties” between the African National Congress, which led the fight against Apartheid, and the Soviet Union, pointing to Soviet support for the struggle. Perhaps the government’s vote reflects this popular love for Moscow due to this historic struggle? As if Putin’s Russia were the Soviet Union; Putin doesn’t think so. Ukraine, of course, was also in the Soviet Union.
But here’s the thing: according to a Gallup survey of Africans in 24 countries on their attitude to Russia conducted in 2021 (before the invasion), only 30 percent of South Africans had a positive view of Russia, the second lowest on the continent (the lowest was in Zambia). Even more interesting is the fact that the countries where people recorded lower support for the Russian leadership were mostly in the southern African region, eg, Tanzania (32%), Zimbabwe (39%), Namibia (40%), Mozambique (41%) – ie all countries which abstained, and are ruled by regimes associated with the Soviet-backed anti-colonial struggles in the 1970s and 1980s, connected to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Hence, where we may expect to see the highest support for Russia based on this ‘anti-colonial’ discourse, we see the lowest – by way of contrast, support for the Russian leadership in 2021 was largely between 50-70% throughout west Africa.
Bear in mind that all these figures, high and low, were from 2021; drastic drops in support for Russia have been recorded in every part of the world since February 2022. Keep this in mind if 30 percent still sounds high. Also worth keeping in mind is that while approval of the Russian government was on average higher in Africa (42%) than globally (33%), this was nevertheless “lower than the approval ratings of the leadership of the U.S. (60%), China (52%) and Germany (49%)” – not sure how we fit the square “anti-imperialist” peg into this round hole! Also notable is that even the 42% average approval for Russia in 2021 was drastically down from 57% in 2011, in the decade since Russia’s global imperialist adventures have become more pronounced; we can be certain that 2022 has not helped.
This data also means that, despite the higher African average, the 30 percent approval in South Africa is below the 33 percent global average.
Therefore, we would probably need to draw the same conclusion about South Africa as about Brazil: far from representing the “anti-colonial” and “anti-apartheid” memories of the masses, the ANC government’s vote represents, once again, the views of the sub-imperialist BRICS ruling elite and the way it positions itself in the world. The working classes and the poor in all these countries where the regimes are now close to Russia – South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique etc – are brutally exploited by the capitalist classes that arose out of the ANC, ZANU-PF, Frelimo, SWAPO, the MPLA etc. In fact, South Africa is the most unequal country on Earth, based on 2023 Gini Index rankings, and Namibia, Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe are all in the top 15 most unequal (BRICS partner Brazil is number 9).
It is therefore hardly surprising that that many people in these countries share little in terms of views with the sub-imperialist South African or the other neo-colonial regimes tied to South African, Russian, Chinese – and western – imperialism.
Western and northern Africa
What about the higher approval of the Russian leadership in western Africa? According to Eric Draitser, Russia gained support in parts of West Africa by moving in the last few years and ousting French imperialism from its dominant role there. This may well be true. According to the Gallup survey, 84 percent of people in Mali had confidence in Russia in 2021; while popular surveys under military dictatorships are highly suspect, it is quite possible that the figure was in fact at the higher end, perhaps like the more realistic 50-70 percent area (as in Guinea, Cameroon, Congo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso etc). Did Mali’s abstention, and those of the Central African Republic (CAR), and of a couple of other west African states (Guinea, Togo), represent the vanguard of anti-colonialism and this great surge of support for Russia replacing France?
The problem with one imperialist country replacing another is that initial welcome can easily become its opposite when the new power acts the same or worse. In the case of Mali and Central African Republic (CAR) in particular, the fact that this survey was before 2022 not only concerns the global crash in support for Russia following its invasion; it also concerns the Russian-backed dictatorships showing their horrifically brutal fangs in 2022.
Last November, the ‘All Eyes on Wagner’ group linked the Russian Wagner paramilitary force operating in Mali to at least 23 incidents of human rights abuse since the 2020 coup, but the biggest massacres took place in March 2022, when the Malian military, backed by Wagner, executed some 300 civilians in small groups over several days in the town of Moura.
Similarly, in the Central African Republic (CAR), Wagner mercenaries “enlisted to counter rebels since 2018 have abducted, tortured and killed people on an ‘unabated and unpunished’ basis,” according to a UN report, which also claimed a Russian company linked to Wagner “secured gold and diamond mining licenses.” But once again, it was in March 2022 when the brutality hit a peak, when Wagner mercenaries in the CAR carried out a series of massacres around the site of a gold mine in the Andaha region, killing more than 100 gold miners from Sudan, Chad, Niger and CAR.
Wagner began operating in Africa in 2017, invited initially by Sudanese tyrant Omar al-Bashir, who told Putin that Sudan was Russia’s “key to Africa”. In Sudan, Wagner secured gold mining concessions, and this lucrative business then spread to other countries of the region. This led to fierce competition with French imperialism in west Africa, but Russia’s need for gold greatly increased following its invasion of Ukraine and imposition of western sanctions, a likely factor in the upturn on violent repression.
One wonders what the slaughtered villagers and gold-miners would think of the assertions floating around the western left that the abstention votes in the UN by their ruling Russian-backed dictators in Mali, CAR and Sudan represented their “anti-colonial” views, or simply the views of these dictators ruling Russian neo-colonies via the Nazi-linked Wagner plunderers and killers?
Meanwhile, another government which has twice abstained on these UN votes is that of Ethiopia, which has been waging a genocidal war against the people of Tigray for two years, killing some 600,000 people, a horrific crime ignored by the world. If its abstention also signifies a pro-Russian orientation, is it really the voice of anti-colonial liberation? When the regime also has “seemingly unconditional American praise and support”? Did someone ask if its victims got a vote on their killers’ UN vote? And its ally, the Eritrean dictatorship, which the Ethiopian regime invited into its country help it kill its own Tigrayan citizens because it knew it would do so with a vengeance, is the only African state to actually vote against the UN resolution in February; hardly surprising that the only country declaring itself 100 percent in the Russian camp is widely regarded as one of the world’s worst dictatorships, a one-man dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerki, “subjecting its population to widespread forced labor and conscription … with no legislature, no independent civil society organizations or media outlets, and no independent judiciary,” where elections have never been held since independence in 1993.
In fact, while it may be drawing a slightly long bow, the claim in this Conversation article – that the minority of African states that abstained from condemning the Russian invasion or annexations are largely dictatorships (with the exception of South Africa), ie, the regimes most removed from any popular pressure, and vice versa – is not so far from the truth. Certainly there are exceptions – Egypt’s bloody al-Sisi dictatorship voted with the majority, but in fact it falls into the same camp as its Saudi and Emirati allies, ie, making the “correct” vote by Washington while doing everything to maintain its ties to Moscow; indeed, the long-planned construction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant by Russia got underway in July.
India
As we know, Modi’s India, which has close ties to both Putin’s Russia and to the US – seeing its main rival to be China – abstained on the UN resolutions and has maintained strong ties with Russia. For Modi, this is not only about traditional Russia-India ties, playing Russia against China and, once again, the global positioning of a BRICS sub-imperialist bourgeoisie, but also – as with Bolsonaro in Brazil – deeply ideological, Modi’s Hindu-supremacist BJP being strongly aligned with Putin’s far-right international.
Putin hugs with far-right chauvinist Indian co-thinker Narendra Modi: friendly competition over empire-building; that “war on terror” stuff George Bush came up with been real useful along the way.
This ideological commitment to Russia is more entrenched the further to the right one goes. Shortly after the invasion was launched, members of extreme-right Hindu Sena demontsrated in support of Putin and the invasion. Demonstrators held signs reading “Russia, you fight, we are with you” and some called for an “undivided Russia.” Hindu Sena president Vishnu Gupta even advocated that India put “boots on the ground” to support Russia. Indeed, the concept of ‘Akhand Bharat’, “which envisions the entire Indian subcontinent, stretching from Afghanistan to Myanmar, as belonging to a single, “undivided” nation with India at its core,” is supported by many on the Hindu-chauvinist far-right, strongly reminiscent of the Putinite and Duginite views that former parts of the Russian Empire all belong to Russia.
As the head of a Hindu-supremacist regime that has engaged in open violence against Indian Muslims, and of a deeply socially-chauvinist regime in a country where billionaires today grow on trees while India boasts the greatest number of absolute poor in the world, it is surely extraordinary that many “leftists” and even “socialists” would claim that Modi’s pro-Putin politics is somehow representative of the anti-colonial traditions of Modi’s brutally oppressed and impoverished subjects. “Most of the world” abstained, we hear, not just from common clueless liberals, but from those professing a class analysis, because between them India and China already make up two-fifths of the world!
It is somewhat difficult to discern Indian views on the conflict, and in such a large and diverse country the likelihood of polls capturing much of value is small. From what we have though, an Ipsos poll conducted in May found that, on the one hand, 6 in 10 Indians supported India maintaining relations with Russia and opposed India imposing economic sanctions, yet the same poll found that 77% of Indians believed that the economic sanctions imposed by others were “an effective tactic for stopping the war” and 7 in 10 believe “doing nothing in Ukraine will embolden Russia to take the war to the rest of Europe and Asia.” In a Blackbox Research survey in March, only four per cent of Indian respondents said they had a positive image of Moscow (and only eight per cent in China), and 91 percent in India said they supported or sympathised with Ukraine (compared to an also surprisingly high 71 percent in China). Some 60 percent of Indians blamed Russia for the conflict, though only 10 percent in China did.
While difficult to know what all these polls prove, at face value they suggest that, despite some ambivalence, overall Indian people are more critical of Russia and sympathetic to Ukraine than the Modi regime. Where support for Russia and the government’s position seems apparently strong is on social media, probably representing largely upper middle class Indian views. It is interesting to see what their views are based on; but from this analysis, “anti-colonialist consciousness” does not even get a mention. Rather, it is all about the “historic ties” between India and Russia (ie, blatant geopolitics), the fact that Russia is India’s major arms supplier, and in order to stop Russia from bending too far towards China, which India sees as its chief sub-imperial rival, despite both being part of the ‘BRICS’ framework. And all those masses of advanced weaponry that India buys from Russia are not aimed at fighting … British colonialism, but China, Pakistan, the occupied Kashmiris and so on.
How ironic that India’s pro-Russian position on the war could be considered part of an “anti-colonial” or “anti-imperialist” position when the Russian weaponry, if aimed at China, is done so within the framework of India’s anti-China ‘Quad’ alliance with the US, Australia and Japan.
China
As noted above, “between them India and China already make up two-fifths of the world” is a hipster-leftist meme that implies the abstentions of the BJP and CCP regimes represent their entire exploited and oppressed populations.
As with India, we don’t want to put too much store in surveys of relatively small numbers of people in a country of 1.4 billion; and in the case of China, discerning popular views is made more difficult by the almost total monopoly on media – including social media – by the regime; aside from North Korea, few countries in the world are as effective at suppressing independent social media as is China.
The Blackbox survey cited above for India also contains some alleged views from China. The survey found that a mere 8 percent of respondents had a positive image of Moscow, and a surprisingly high 71 percent in China said they supported or sympathised with Ukraine; on the other hand, only 10 percent of Chinese respondents blamed Russia for the conflict, dramatically lower than in India. What to make of this contradiction is unclear, especially given the context noted above, but we can make some general points.
Firstly, would it be logical to assume that the colonised Tibetan masses, or the largely Muslim, Turkic Uyghur, population of Xin Jiang, where a million people are subject to internment in forced assimilation facilities are likely to hold similar views to the Han-chauvinist regime? In a country which now boasts 1185 billionaires, more than the US, where “the net worth of the 153 members of China’s Parliament and its advisory body that it deems ‘super rich’ amounts to $650 billion,” how likely is it that the brutally exploited, permanently insecure, floating population of rural-to-urban-to-rural migrant workers – one fifth of China’s population upon whose backs China’s “miracle” has been built – would tend to agree with their exploiters? Or that the CCP bureaucracy would “reflect” their views?
Secondly, does anyone really believe that China’s policy – on one hand, abstaining in UN votes and blaming ‘NATO’, on the other, continually sending pointed signals that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine, must be respected” – “reflects” anything other than the policy of an assertive new imperialist power? In his first trip abroad after the pandemic, to Kazakistan – a former Soviet republic with a large Russian minority – Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered “strong support to Kazakhstan in protecting its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Despite the Russian ‘alliance’, Russia is inevitably also an imperialist rival, and China prefers Russia in the position of vassal rather than equal, a position Putin has offered up on a plate with his disastrous Ukraine invasion. Kazakistan and the other central Asian states now see China, rather than Russia, as their key security guarantor. Xi’s major coup, the lavish state visit to Saudi Arabia in December, during which the two countries signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” and Chinese and Saudi firms signed 34 investment deals, represented a major move into traditional American and more recently Russian territory; China was confident enough to declare itself in support of mainstream Gulf Arab positions as against both Israeli and Iranian positions, while expecting no issues with its strong relations with both those states as well. Xi declared the visit a “defining event in the history of Chinese-Arab relations.” Meanwhile, with Putin’s invasion leading to the rupture of the enormous Russian-German economic relationship and the collapse of Nordstream, Germany opened the way for a major Chinese shipping group to buy a large stake in the strategic port of Hamburg.
It would be foolhardy to confuse the clear and assertive policy choices of a rising imperialist power with some kind of ‘anti-colonial’ consciousness of ‘a fifth of the world’s population’.
Xi Jinping and MBS: Strategic partnership for anti-imperialism … err …
Iran
The mullah regime in Iran has, like China, consistently abstained on UN resolutions condemning Russia, while at the same time holding back from support for the invasion, which goes against Iran’s dogma of allegedly being against invasions (after its experience of being invaded by Iraq), especially when involving “great powers”, due to its own experience of being sanctioned by the US. We can leave aside the obvious hypocrisy here – ie, Iran’s massive interventions in Iraq and especially Syria, bolstering Assad’s genocide regime – because that is “explained” as “defending Syria,” whereas a blatant invasion cannot be explained away like that.
Unlike China, however, Iran has become more directly involved on Russia’s side in killing Ukrainian civilians with its supply of killer-drones to Russia.
Can Iran’s position be explained as a reflection of the “anti-imperialist consciousness” of the Iranian masses, due to decades of US bullying? In other words, does the position of the blood-drenched mullocracy “reflect” the views of ordinary Iranian people, such as the youth and women who have been out in the streets for months protesting the reactionary dictatorship, and who the regime has been gunning down and hanging? How likely is such an idea, at least to anyone with an inkling of class analysis?
Not much, it seems. According to a poll of 1014 people in June-July by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and IranPoll, since the onset of Russia’s invasion, favourable views of Russia have dropped from a slight majority of 56% to a minority of 40%, while unfavouable views of Russia have surged from 42% to 57%, including 32% who now hold “a very unfavorable view.” This should not be seen as contradicting the fact that the vast majority still hold a highly unfavourable view of the US. While 28% chose an overriding statement that Russia had acted in legitimate self-defence, double that number, a clear majority of 55%, chose a statement that Russia is violating the principle that no country should invade another. Specifically on who was to blame for the war, Russia and the West came out about equally, while very few blamed Ukraine.
Iran’s intervention via killer-drones thus goes against the mass of Iranian opinion, and has even led to high-level criticism, with thirty-five former Iranian diplomats issuing a call for Iran to declare neutrality, and strongly criticising this intervention. Iran itself claims the drones Russia is using were sent before the war began, and claims it has sent no new drones since – whatever the truth, it indicates how embarrassing Iran’s actual position is.
Far from representing “popular anti-imperialist opinion,” Iran’s pro-Russia intervention is a high-risk strategy adopted by a sub-imperial power. Like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and Argentina, Iran is a BRICS candidate state, and it operates within this framework of sub-imperial rivalry. Iran hopes to swing Russia to its side in its shadow war with Israel in Syria; for years now, Russia, which operates Assad’s anti-aircraft system, has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah positions as long as it avoids hitting the Syrian regime. Russia, for its part, in accepting Iranian drones, risks moving Israel to a pro-Ukrainian position.
Yet, to date, neither change has occurred. On the contrary, citing its Ukraine military needs, Russia withdrew its S-300 anti-aircraft system from Syria in August, seemingly leaving the field even more open to Israeli bombs, while also reportedly demanding Iranian forces leave western Syria (ie, the side closer to Israel). However, Israeli bombing has markedly declined in recent months, since the signing of its Mediterranean gas demarcation agreement with a Lebanese government which includes Hezbollah. And there are no signs yet of a change in the Israeli position, with Israel abstaining on a UN resolution calling for Russian reparations to Ukraine, and Ukraine voting in support of anti-Israel and pro-Palestine UN resolutions countless recent times.
Whatever the case with this interesting sub-imperial geopolitical positioning, it is clearly unrelated to the views of the Iranian regimes enemies, ie, its people, those being gunned down in the streets.
Putin, Turkish & Iranian despots Erdogan and Khameini: more strategic alliances for … anti-imperialism!
Palestine
One country where we might expect the pervasive hypocrisy of western governments to be so overwhelming that a majority may adopt a pro-Russian position simply out of somewhat justified spite would be Palestine. While such a position would not be justified, it would be somewhat understandable and difficult for most of the world to criticise without further engaging in rank hypocrisy. It would be even more understandable given Ukrainian president Zelensky’s sickening pro-Israeli statements, which look all the more pathetic given Israel’s steadfast refusal to lend Ukraine a hand.
So when we read that in a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in April, the high figure of 32.3 percent of Palestinians believed Russia had a right to invade, we are perhaps not surprised. However, the problem is that a greater number – 40.2% – believed that “Russia is waging an unjust war against its neighbour.” The poll of 1014 people was conducted with Palestinians living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. In other words, although the western governments backing Ukraine with a host of advanced weaponry to resist the illegal and barbaric Russian invasion prefer to condemn every act of justified Palestinian resistance to the illegal and barbaric Israeli occupation and instead arm Israel to the teeth and give diplomatic cover to even its most flagrant violations, still the humanity of Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle shines through strongly enough for the largest part of the population to identify with another victim of a similar war of colonial dispossession and extermination. Western leftists need to remember that Palestinians are people, not just their ‘project’; they are just as capable as other people of weighing complex issues.
After all, Putin’s white nationalist regime is not exactly any great friend of the Palestinians, with Putin famously declaring “I support the struggle of Israel” during Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge blitzkrieg against Gaza, which killed over 2,300 Palestinians while some 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled. From the time Russia began terror-bombing Syrian civilians to save Assad in 2015, Putin and Israeli prime minister and Likud leader, Zionist extremist Benjamin Netanyahu, never stopped having high level meetings – Netanyahu met with Putin more than with any other world leader. In 2018, Netanyahu was one of only two world leaders standing next to Putin in Red Square commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany, alongside Serbia’s Alexander Vucic. Netanyahu even produced a massive billboard showing himself with Putin for the 2019 elections.
Putin and BFF Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu: Who else would you invite to the 60th anniversary of the Red Army’s victory than the ethnic cleanser of Palestine? What’s a little illegal occupation between friends?
Ireland
While Ireland may not be conventionally seen as part of the ‘Global South’, it is after all a former colony, for hundreds of years, of Britain – indeed the ongoing British control of Ulster can be likened to the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘republics’ carved out of Ukraine by its former colonial master.
Sinn-Fein, Ireland’s largest party, with its history of resistance to British colonialism, has declared its unequivocal support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russian colonialism at its Ard Fheis (congress) on November 5, 2022, declaring that “The Ard Fheis unequivocally condemns any form of imperialism or colonial aggression; we oppose the denial of national self-determination and all violations of national sovereignty throughout the world, without exception; ee affirm that the rule of international law must be emphasized and reinforced, respectful of the exercise of national self-determination, sovereignty and democracy in all nations.” Sinn Fein therefore demands:
The total cessation of the war in Ukraine;
The complete restoration of the national sovereignty of Ukraine;
The immediate withdrawal of all Russian armed forces;
The maintenance of all political or economic sanctions until these objectives are achieved.
Sinn Fein’s democratic vote would seem to be more representative of the views of a formerly colonised people than abstentions by Modi’s violently chauvinist regime in India, its rival Pakistan, China’s one-party state carrying out forced assimilation against a million people in its internal colony Xinjiang, the bloody Iranian mullahs currently gunning down the women-led uprising, the brutal Wagner-backed dictatorships in Mali and CAR and the like. Also worth noting that “The Ard Fheis’s keynote speaker was Omar Bargouthi, a founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which Sinn Fein supports,” in other words, Sinn Fein are consistent in their approach.
The above relies on a somewhat eclectic variety of national or supranational surveys and it is difficult to vouch for the degree of validity and reliability without significantly deeper research. However, it is difficult to find any better tentative data, and certainly none at all that suggests any groundswell of support for Russia and its invasion, in the Global South of anywhere else. Despite their significant differences, every survey indicates that majorities around the world condemn the Russian invasion, are sympathetic to Ukraine and have a rather low opinion of Russia; they also all indicate quite strongly that, whatever the situation before 2022, approval of Russia and Putin has crashed everywhere in the world since the invasion.
This is also backed up by global surveys. For example, an Open Society survey carried out in 22 countries in July and August, covering 21,000 people, two thirds of whom live in the Global South, found “strong and widespread support” for the view that peace requires Russia to “withdraw from all parts of Ukrainian territory it currently controls.” Majorities in nearly all countries held this view, the exceptions being Senegal (46 percent), India (44 percent), Indonesia (30 percent), and Serbia (12 percent). Among the countries with the strongest support for this view were Kenya (81%), Nigeria (71%), Brazil (68%), Columbia (67%) – all higher than in the US, Japan, France and Germany – and South Africa (59%). Any difference between populations of the North and South were comprehensively absent.
A partial contrast was provided by an Ipsos survey of 19,000 people in 27 countries in March and April, but this focused not so much on attitudes but on what action should be taken, with questions related to sanctions, ‘getting involved militarily’, taking some kind of unspecified ‘action’, taking Ukrainian refugees and so on. In this case, it is not surprising that the higher levels of support for some kind of action were in Europe, and to a lesser extent the US. The Ukraine war is, after all, in Europe; and western countries can obviously better afford both military support, and withstanding the impact of sanctions, than can poorer countries. However, what confuse the ‘anti-imperialist’ argument in this case was that the countries where the largest numbers were against any kind of ‘action’ or ‘interference’ included Hungary, the European state led by the intensely far-right Orban government, Israel, widely considered an extreme outpost of western imperialism, the Saudi monarchy, often considered (somewhat incorrectly) as an unreconstructed US-client regime, and Turkey, a NATO member. Indeed, the assertion that “doing nothing in Ukraine will encourage Russia to take further military action” received the lowest support among the 27 countries in Israel and Hungary, the only countries voting below 50 percent for this view (compared to 71 percent in India, for example). Reality can be rather difficult for campist “thinking.”
Sub-imperialism
I wrote above, in relation to the relatively powerful states leading the abstention or otherwise ambivalent party on Russia’s horrific imperialist war of conquest against Ukraine:
“Rather, what these countries and governments have in common – China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel – is their sub-imperialist (or in some cases arguably imperialist) nature. Far from their positions on the war reflecting any “anti-colonial” consciousness of their people (or reflecting their oppressed and exploited peoples at all), they rather reflect the geopolitical positioning, their global bargaining position, between US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialism, taking advantage of the war to assert their own sub-imperial interests, regional influence and conquests, and oppressive rule over internal and local colonies.”
Patrick Bond , Ana Garcia , Miguel Borba describe “sub-imperial” powers as “featuring the super-exploitation of their working classes, predatory relations regarding their hinterlands, and collaboration (although tensioned) with imperialism, especially as intermediaries in the transfer of both surplus labor values and “free gifts of nature” (unequal ecological exchange) from South to North.” Bond cites John Smith that “dependent economies like Brazil seek to compensate for the drain of wealth to the imperialist centres by developing their own exploitative relationships with even more underdeveloped and peripheral neighbouring economies,” and David Harvey who notes that “each developing centre of capital accumulation sought out systematic spatio-temporal fixes for its own surplus capital by defining territorial spheres of influence.”
But by attempting to carve out such “territorial spheres of influence,” their collaboration with global imperialist powers will also be punctuated by bouts of competition, as their minor exploitative aspirations sometimes come into conflict with the exploitative needs of larger global powers. This “tensioned collaboration” with imperialism was called by leading dependency theorist Ruy Mauro Marini “antagonistic cooperation.” According to Harvey, as the opening of the global market “created openings” for new large regional states “to insert themselves into the global economy.” But “they then became competitors on the world stage.” Importantly, though, becoming (partial) competitors does not make them in any sense “anti-imperialist,” but, on the contrary, these larger centers of economic and military power within the Global South have “aspirations to follow Western expansionary precedents, using instruments of (corporate-oriented) multilateral power.”
It is not surprising that a moment of global crisis such as that ushered in by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is precisely a perfect moment for a large string of sub-imperial powers to assert themselves, to position, to use the crisis to improve their bargaining position in relation to US and European imperialism – even those often most often considered “western allies” – and, at the same time, with now decrepit Russian, and also globally ascendant Chinese, imperialism; a moment when all are under pressure to do some kind of deal to get them onside.
While this is not the final word on the causes of the abstention and/or effective neutrality or even pro-Russian orientation of a large number of powerful ruling classes in the Global South, it is a far better explanation than the one which tries to claim the vast billions of people of the Global South as their “anti-colonial” project, alleging they are a multi-billion mass of group-think. In this alternative scenario, their ruling elites – those responsible for the “super-exploitation” of these working classes, and of the peoples in the “even more underdeveloped and peripheral neighbouring economies,” are merely reflecting this allegedly “anti-colonial” consciousness of those they oppress and exploit, who in turn naturally support this global stance of their oppressors and exploiters. As we have seen, this is not only inherently illogical, and in conflict with even the most basic concept of class analysis, but also at odds with most of the empirical evidence of popular opinion in the South.
Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs 5-7 August 2022.Iranian children killed by regime from 20 September to 30 September 2022
By Michael Karadjis
On October 13, I read two news items next to each other:
“Iran’s resilient protest movement. Nearly a month after Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police, demonstrations have continued to shake nearly 20 cities, even as the government cracks down on protesters and stifles internet access. Human rights organizations estimate that the crackdowns have left nearly 190 people dead—28 of whom were children—while thousands more have been detained or wounded.”
“Palestinian strikes. Israeli forces killed an 18-year-old Palestinian teenager named Osama Adawi in the West Bank on Wednesday. Adawi’s death is the latest in a spate of clashes between Israeli forces executing raids and Palestinian protesters; so far, over 100 Palestinians living in the West Bank have been killed this year. On Wednesday, Palestinian businesses in east Jerusalem went on strike to protest against the raids.”
This was October 13, but it could have been literally any other day.
We read every day that Israel and Iran are arch-enemies, and, sure enough, they aren’t friends. Israel continually threatens – for decades – to bomb Iran, it regularly hits Iranian and Hezbollah military assets in neighbouring Syria, and its leaders fiercely campaign against any US attempt to revive the JCPOA or ‘Iran nuclear deal’, signed by Obama in 2015 but scrapped by Trump in 2018. For its part, Iranian leaders regularly make fiery denunciations of the Zionist regime, predictions of its immanent collapse, and somewhat laughable threats to help bring this about.
Yet both are monstrous regimes that deserve to be utterly condemned by anyone with a progressive bone in their body.
For the US and other western imperialist states, Israel’s crimes against humanity, massive violations of human rights, flagrant violation, for many decades, of the most basic rules of international law, its apartheid, its ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, are met with mild rebuke at best, full-scale encouragement at worst, but whatever the case, ongoing economic, diplomatic and military support and the absence of any kind of sanction; yet for the same powers, Iran’s crimes against humanity, massive violations of human rights, gender apartheid and the like deserve condemnation, economic sanctions and so on.
Unfortunately, this has led a certain section of the western left, especially among those who have a hollow and class-free conception of “anti-imperialism,” to simply reverse the hypocrisy of western leaders, by vigorously denouncing Israel (sometimes to the point of placing the Israel issue at the centre of world politics, in a dangerous tendency), while providing every kind of rationale for the actions of the Iranian theocratic despots, in some cases hailing the mullahs as “anti-imperialist,” and quite often appearing to be sucked in by the hollow support for Palestine expressed by the regime. Many of these people denounce today’s glorious uprising of long-oppressed Iranian women, daily confronted by the bloody regime’s bullets, as a CIA-orchestrated ‘regime-change’ operation or ‘colour revolution’, two of the counterrevolutionary tropes these “leftists” have adopted over the last two decades to condemn people fighting against oppressive and fascist regimes.
Internationalism, by contrast, demands 100 percent support and solidarity at all times to the popular masses fighting for their liberation against all oppressive regimes.
The fact that both are monstrous regimes yet are engaged in hostility is no contradiction: there is no law that says “good” governments like each other, “bad” governments like each other, and conflict only occurs between “good” and “bad” ones, even if one were naïve enough to believe in such terms; while US president Biden recently claimed that the Ukraine conflict was part of a global conflict between democracy and authoritarianism, no serious person believes such fairy tales (and in any case, how would Biden, who wrongly sees Israel as a democracy, explain its steadfast refusal to provide Ukraine with any of its advanced missile defence equipment?). The world is not in some Manichean conflict between good and bad, and the very concept of good and bad governments is, for the most part, absurd.
Even if we use Biden’s “democracy versus authoritarianism” meme to distinguish between governments which currently are some kind of democracy and do not systematically repress, jail or kill political opponents and those that do (and ignore everything else, such as poor people dying in the US due to lack of health insurance, or state violence against the Black Lives Matter uprising), this would tell us nothing about alliances throughout the world: during the Cold War decades of 1945-1990, the ‘democratic’ US installed, financed, backed and armed dozens of brutal dictatorships throughout Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and even southern Europe. US support today to brutal dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, to the Israeli apartheid regime, to military coups in Honduras, Bolivia and elsewhere, tell us that ‘democracy’ and ‘dictatorship’ are not exports of like from a mother country.
Comic-book explanations of the conflict
In other words, there is nothing unusual about two brutal regimes being enemies. But why Iran and Israel? One may well ask, since both Israel and Iran have a policy of uprooting and “cleansing” millions of Arabs (in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria) as they strive to dominate the region, and since they are effectively separated from each other by the mass of largely Sunni Arab humanity that they both see as Untermenschen, why can they not be allies rather than competitors in this?
Hostility can have many causes; let’s first knock on the head the comic-book explanations. Some wide-eyed “anti-imperialists” believe that Iran, despite its class nature as a brutal capitalist tyranny, is somehow motivated by genuinely emancipatory, anti-imperialist intentions, and via Hezbollah aims to liberate Jerusalem and the Palestinian people. Others who are less sure about such motivations nevertheless believe this alleged Iranian quest to “liberate Palestine” is a remaining impact, via osmosis, of “the Iranian revolution” some half a century ago, somehow pressuring the mullah-fascists from below to engage in regional “liberation” moves. And the reactionaries and racists running Israel pretend to be in full agreement with these starry-eyed leftist admirers of reactionary mullahs, except rather than term it liberation of Palestine, they tell the world that the mullahs are, for reasons unknown, determined to “destroy Israel” and drive them into the sea.
Of course, all this is the purest of fantasy. The mullahs couldn’t care less if the Palestinians were exterminated, and all the bluster about Palestine is done from a safe distance. So unless any serious observer believes that the Iranian regime is either so emancipatory that it wants to liberate Palestine (while oppressing everywhere else it occupies), or so irrationally imperialistic that it aims, come what may, to conquer Israel through several countries in between and annex it to an Iranian empire, then we can now move beyond the realm of fantasy.
“Rivalry”?
The most common explanation for hostility between various capitalist powers is simply ‘rivalry’. Capitalism is built on competition; national capitalist classes rival each other; their state machines reflect this rivalry with policy. It is never as simple as that, but it is a good basis from which to start. However, state regimes also have to maintain support of their own populations, or at least consensus to rule; and this is achieved through hegemonic ideologies which can be based on ‘nation’, ‘race’, religion or other ideologies, which can take on a life of their own and not always correspond neatly to economic interests abroad. Let’s explore these concepts.
If we look at Israel and Iran and decide their conflict is based on ‘rivalry’ for domination of the Mideast region, there are some problems with a simplistic understanding of this.
If we begin by way of contrast, the region-wide conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran would appear to have a firm basis in ‘rivalry’; both are medium-sized capitalist states in the same region (as is Turkey, which likewise rivals both); both claim to be ‘Islamic’ governments representing the hundreds of millions of Muslims in the region; and therefore, there is a logic to their rivalry, because a larger sphere of influence within the region for one or the other means more trade, more investment, more goods sold, more economic deals and links, more profit. We can say they are engaged in ‘sub-imperialist’ rivalry, which has taken on quite an active form in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen in particular. The fact that one is led by a monarchy allied to the Sunni religious hierarchy and the other is run by the Shia religious hierarchy by no means determines who all their allies are; on the contrary, both act out of ‘national interests’, and countless examples can be given for this. However, it does give them a mobilizational arm when necessary, so a degree of sectarianism can be used when necessary to bolster support in some region or another against their competitor in their geopolitical rivalry.
But can we say the same of Israel and Iran? Israel as a colonial-settler state and mini-imperialist power is in the unusual position of being the absolutely leading economic power of the region (the only indisputably ‘First World’ economy), yet not being able to directly “rival” neighbouring capitalist classes in the region itself, because it is effectively locked out of it. High-tech Israeli capitalism is spread far and wide throughout the rest of the world instead. Unless Israel were ever to allow a just peace settlement with the Palestinians – something which essentially defies the very nature of Zionism – then Israeli trade and investment in the region will remain at its current absolutely negligible and in most cases non-existent level. It can therefore not be engaged in ‘rivalry’ with Iran (or Saudi Arabia or Turkey) at least in this common understanding of the term.
For example, despite having relations with Egypt, alone within the Arab world, for over four decades, Israeli exports to Egypt were under $100 million in 2016–2017 (0.1 per cent of total Israeli exports), and Israeli imports from Egypt were around $50 million a year at that time, a similar percentage; likewise, Israel’s share in Egypt’s total exports of goods in 2016 was 0.3 per cent, and its share in Egypt’s imports of goods was 0.1 per cent. Egypt is 39th in the world in value of Israeli trade ties. This is despite Egypt being a very large country directly bordering Israel. While trade has increased and there is potential for better economic relations via Mediterranean gas politics, none of this could be considered to be part of “rivalry” with Iran, or anyone else in the region; while Egypt and Iran have trade relations, they are geographically distant, trade is small-scale, and as a solidly Sunni country, not a potential part of any Iranian-dominated region. All the same points could be made about Jordan, Israel’s immediate neighbour, which established diplomatic relations with it in 1994: Israeli exports to Jordan around 2017 stood at some $50–100 million per year, about 0.1–0.2 per cent of total Israeli exports to the world, Jordan being Israel’s 51st largest trading partner!
Israeli trade and economic cooperation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), by contrast, has shot up to $1.4 billion just in the first 7 months of 2022, following the establishment of diplomatic relations in 2020, and the free trade agreement signed this year, the first with any Arab country. Yet interestingly, the UAE also has multi-billion dollar trade ties with Iran, indeed the UAE is Iran’s second largest trading partner, and a major conduit for Iranian economic links with the world in the context of western sanctions. Indeed, despite the popular, but false, analysis in the mass media which suggests the Israel-UAE rapprochement was directed against Iran, the UAE is currently busy upgrading its relations with Iran. But it would take a brave person to decide that Israeli-Iranian conflict is due to “rivalry” merely for the small UAE market; on the contrary, the UAE excels precisely in having excellent relations with both.
Of course, Israel would like the opening provided by the UAE to extend to the major prize, the Saudi market, but currently the value of underhanded Saudi-Israeli trade is around $11,000 per year, basically a grain of sand on a beach in terms of economic value. And in any case, being the main actual rival to Iran in the region, Saudi Arabia’s negligible trade with Israel is hardly due to Iranian rivalry! Rather, while Saudi trade with Iran is valued at some fifty times the value of its trade with Israel, it is still only in the hundreds of thousands; in opposite fashion to the UAE, Saudi Arabia maintains only the most minimal relations, trade or otherwise, with both Israel and Iran (the decade-long daily excitable claims that Israel and the Saudis are forever on the verge of establishing relations notwithstanding).
Rather, the essence of the ‘conflict’ – largely a ‘phoney war’ as will be discussed below – is rooted in hegemonic mobilisation: the Zionist and Iranian ethno-theocratic projects both need the “great enemy” of each other to justify themselves. The Iranian “threat” to Israel – whether the “liberatory” or the expansionist-genocidal – is an entirely manufactured threat, but the need for such a major “threat” is crucial to the ideological foundations of the late Zionist state, as it is likewise to the ‘Islamic Republic’ state.
Israel felt so unthreatened by Iran during Iran’s much more “revolutionary” era of the 1980s, just fresh from the revolution and with the firebrand Khomeini still in power, that it armed Iran in its war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and openly advocated Iranian victory, as is extremely well-documented. But following the US destruction of Iraq in 1991, Israel began to vocally declare Iran to be its worst enemy.
According to the article ‘The Forever Threat: The Imminent Attack on Iran That Will Never Happen’, Israel has been making noises about launching an imminent attack on Iran, often “within weeks,” since 1994. For example, on December 9, 1997, “The Times of London headline screamed, ‘Israel steps up plans for air attacks on Iran’. The article, written by Christopher Walker, reported on the myriad “options” Israel had in confronting what it deemed ‘Iran’s Russian-backed missile and nuclear weapon programme’.” The Forever Threat shows dozens of similar headlines from the past quarter century about Israel being ready to attack Iran any day now. When an Israeli attack on Iran is not just generally a possibility but is “imminent” in 1994, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015 and onwards, we start to get what the title of the article means: it will (likely) never happen because there is no Iranian threat to Israel to require it.
This continually repeated “imminent” threat, the permanent call on Israelis and the whole region to be on tenterhooks expecting Armageddon any time, the permanency of a state of advanced paranoia, xenophobia and existential “threat” to Israel and the Jews, serves a purpose: Israel may never attack, but the daily threats that it is always around the corner are their own goal.
For many years now, Zionist ideology has been in crisis. The success of the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; the growing questioning of Israel’s savage treatment of the Palestinians; the obvious contradiction between being a “Jewish state” and democracy; support around the world for Palestinian statehood; are all manifestations of this.
But if Israel and “the Jews” are under existential threat, then Israel and its allies have something with which to homogenise Israeli and Jewish opinion about the need for a Jewish homeland. As the alleged “threat” of another Final Solution coming from the oppressed and terrorised Palestinian “terrorists” looks more and more ridiculous to rational people, what can rescue this charade better than a powerful regional state, with a regime that similarly relies heavily on bloated “anti-Zionist” rhetoric, allegedly developing a nuclear bomb with which to wipe out Israel? Israel had found itself the necessary “new Hitler.”
As for Iran, for how many decades has the “road to Jerusalem” gone through either Baghdad, or Damascus or some other unfortunate Arab capital over the bodies of tens of thousands of Arabs? Iran and its proxy forces can slaughter Arabs in Baghdad, in Ramadi, in Mosul, in Aleppo, in Homs, in Damascus, in Qaysar, and claim to be fighting the great battle for Jerusalem! [and an either ethically corrupt or criminally ignorant section of the western “left” can help spread this literally other-worldly propaganda]. The reactionary ‘Islamic Republic’ regime has also been in a long-term crisis of legitimacy, demonstrated by repeated popular upsurges over the last decade and a half, in every case met with bloody repression. The ideological clap-trap about allegedly being a ‘rejectionist’ state in relation to Palestine is key to the regime’s propaganda arsenal throughout the region, and among a section of its own people.
The Iranian regime of Ahmedinejad was particularly adept at pushing rhetoric to the limits and playing into the hands of Likudnik hawks and neo-con nutjobs. While it is true that his statement that Israel will “disappear from the hand of time” was deliberately mistranslated by Zionist and imperialist hacks to Israel will “be wiped off the face of the Earth,” this mistranslation was made more believable by other vile Ahmedinejad noises and actions: Israel could hardly believe its luck when he organised a Holocaust-denial conference and invited, among others, David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Perfect for Zionist homogenisation: a “holocaust denying regime wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and is building nuclear weapons to do it with!”
In reality, the geographic distance between Iran and Israel is precisely what makes this propaganda game safe for both. This was also the case for past reactionary Arab dictatorships claiming the ‘rejectionist’ mantle, namely Gaddafi’s Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; the further away, the louder you can bark. This has also been the case with Erdogan’s Turkey for much of the period since 2009.
It was only the actual contiguity of a Lebanese Shiite population under brutal Zionist occupation in southern Lebanon for over two decades that led to the growth of Hezbollah and thus actual confrontation between Israel and an Iranian-backed force; this was a genuine national liberation struggle, where Iran just happened to be in the right place to be able to gain political credit from afar. But Israel was evicted from Lebanon in 2000 – 22 years ago – and as such Hezbollah has not the slightest interest (let alone ability) in using its position to “liberate Jerusalem” or even to fire a rocket; apart from the 2006 flare-up, the Israeli-Lebanese border has been particularly quiet.
However, the phoney “war” atmosphere requires Israeli strikes when Hezbollah or Iranian-backed forces inside Syria get within striking distance of the occupied Golan. Not because these forces want to use this position to “target Israel” – on the contrary, their presence has only ever been used to kill Syrian people – but because the entire Zionist case that Iran is out to destroy it would go up in smoke if Israel let them be when in “its vicinity” and nothing happened. The fact of the matter is that while Israel has struck Iranian assets in Syria hundreds of times (in open cooperation with Putin’s Russia, which controls Syria’s air defence system and allows all this …), neither Iran nor Hezbollah has ever initiated an attack on the occupied Golan, and possibly only twice have ever even returned fire.
It would certainly be difficult to see Israel’s bombing of Iranian and pro-Iranian targets in Syria as “rivalry” with Iran for influence – economic or otherwise – within Syria. On the contrary, while Israel and Iran agree on one thing – the preservation ofthe Assad regime, and the crushing of the anti-Assad decade-long uprising – Israel knows well it can never gain any support among the Syrian population – pro- or anti-Assad – as long as it occupies the Syrian Golan Heights. Despite bombing Iranian forces – Assad’s allies – Israel never attempted to aid the anti-Assad forces; there was not a singular instance where Israel bombed Assadist or even Iranian or Hezbollah forces while in active conflict with the opposition. And it is no coincidence that Israeli strikes on pro-Iranian forces have increased precisely as the threat to the regime from the largely defeated rebels has receded; as then Israeli Defence Minister, far-rightist Naftali Bennet put it, “Iran used to be an asset for the Syrians [ie, as long as it was useful in crushing the rebellion] … but now it’s a burden.” Similarly, the opposition has always emphasised the need to recover the stolen Golan and expressed its solidarity with Palestine. Rather, Israel’s key alliance within Syria has always been Assad’s most strategic backer, Putin’s Russia, the main actual rival of Iran for domination over the recovered Assadist state and its resources.
Strategic positioning and competition
Nevertheless, there may have been an element of quiet “rivalry” involved in bombing Hezbollah when looked at closely: for many years, Israel and Lebanon (with Hezbollah in the Lebanese government) have been engaged in hard bargaining over demarcating the gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea (and, ironically perhaps, Assad’s Syrian regime also has a demarcation dispute with Lebanon over the gas in the sea in Lebanon’s north).
Therefore, with the just-signed historic US-negotiated Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement – with a Lebanese government that includes Hezbollah, and led by Hezbollah-allied president Aoun – enabling demarcation of drilling rights in the gas fields of the Mediterranean Sea – there is reason to believe that Israel-Hezbollah “tensions” may relax; indeed, notably, the most recent Hezbollah threat of sabotage action was related directly to pressure on Israel’s position during the bargaining over this treaty. It may be too early to say, but it is notable that, while Israel struck Iranian and pro-Iranian targets in Syria at an unprecedented rate throughout 2022, as of late October there have been no more such attacks since September 17 – some six weeks – the maritime agreement, signed on October 11 and welcomed by Hezbollah and Syria as well as the two signing countries being a possible explanation.
At a larger level, the ideological positioning, while driven by the requirements of internal hegemonic mobilisation, has also gained a life of its own as a strategic tool for Israel in the region, in Israel’s drive to open up more of the Arab market via avenues such as the Abraham Accords signed between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, further bolstering relations Israel already has with Egypt, Jordan and Oman, and attempting to drive open the Saudi and further Gulf markets. In particular, by drumming up the Iranian “threat,” Israel’s major military and “security” industries aim to profit via cooperation with the military and repressive forces of these regimes.
Ironically, however, that does not necessarily mean most of these regimes do feel “threatened” by Iran – only Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival, with a large Shiite minority in the east, and Bahrain, where a Sunni monarchy rules over a disenfranchised Shiite majority, have an Iran problem, and while Bahrain has been in the forefront of rapprochement with Israel, the Saudis, as we have seen, are very much the rearguard, at most, of this move.
Rather, for the UAE, Egypt and Jordan, what they share with Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Assad regime is seeing the regional Muslim Brotherhood (sponsored by Qatar and the Erdogan regime in Turkey) as a strategic enemy: a movement which attempts to combine Islam and democracy, no matter how precariously or dishonestly, which was active throughout the Arab Spring, including in Syria and Egypt, and in Palestine takes the form of Hamas, is considered anathema. Military and security cooperation with Israel serve the purposes of internal and regional counterrevolution (something they have in common with Iran in fact), not just against the MB but against democratic upsurge more generally. But the bogey of a large and powerful state like Iran with a very loud mouth, large armed forces and a supposed nuclear threat makes much better propaganda for bolstering “security” cooperation and profiteering than the threat from below. So Israel needs to continually pose as a regional “anti-Iran” leader, the regional First World military hegemon that can offer “security.”
Indeed, it is hardly surprising that all the Arab regimes that have cozied up to Israel the last few years are identical to those who have cozied up to the Assad regime, re-established relations with both, or always had them: Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman and Morocco, with the Saudis more quietly supporting from behind but refusing to openly budge on either. This fact renders all discussion of Middle East “camps” the nonsense they are, leftover ashes of what was perhaps a partial reality some half a century ago that many still live in: the regional counterrevolution is largely the same camp, with bumps at the edges.
Longer term, it could be projected that Israel’s ideology of the phoney “Iran threat” could be related to a kind of future strategic competition between Israel and Iran: competition for this very position of regional cop as recognised by world imperialist powers. There is little doubt that Iran’s role in crushing the Syrian revolution, while the US looked on and did deals, and its role in defeating ISIS in Iraq in cooperation with the US, was widely appreciated, but the stripes gained were looked upon with apprehension by Israel. Of course, most readers would say this is far-fetched, which it is, for now: the mantle of regional cop, especially for US imperialism, clearly belongs to Israel. But the emergence of a powerful, relatively ‘modernised’, non-Arab state of 70 million people from imperialist sanctioned isolation to imperialist-blessed prominence, via the nuclear accord and its possible revival, cannot but be seen as a threat to its position by Israel in the longer term.
In this sense, Israeli leaders are not wrong that US-Iranian nuclear negotiations, and the possibility of a new deal, are an existential threat to Israel, but in a very different way to what they claim. If western imperialism’s need to bring Iranian capitalism more fully back into the world capitalist system leads to a deal that allows Iran to peacefully develop nuclear energy, then 30 years of Zionist bluster is out the window and finding a new “threat” of that magnitude will not be an easy task.
Gabbard and Syrian tyrant Bashar al-AssadGabbard at Christians United for Israel conference
By Michael Karadjis
Dedicating an article to a particular US politician may seem overkill, but there are few American politicians that the ‘alt-left’ have lauded as much as reactionary, alt-rightist Tulsi Gabbard, former Democrat representative from Hawaii. For example, here is professional campist and apologist for mass murder, “journalist” Ben Norton, singing her praises back in 2019:
“Yeh I’ve been really impressed by Tulsi Gabbard … she’s really been hitting hard at the regime change war problem … Tulsi [her admirers are all on first name basis with Gabbard] is great because she has made this the key part of her platform.”
This is just one of hundreds, or thousands, of similar examples from the last decade or so. So no doubt they were impressed that Gabbard recently quit the Democratic Party, especially as she began by claiming they were led by an “elitist cabal of warmongers.” However, most of them quoting this – and many did – would have stopped there, embarrassed by what came after (though in many cases still not embarrassed enough to not cite her!). Let’s have a look at more of Gabbard’s resignation speech:
Gabbard resigns from “woke,” “anti-white,” “anti-God” Democratic Party
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.”
Have you ever seen a bigger right-wing dog-whistle while still making vague signals to the left? So, Gabbard, the ruling class Democratic party is a hotbed of “anti-white racism”! Hostile to “people of faith”! “Undermines the police”! Believes in “open borders”! Yes, the alt-left, the campist-tankie left, can have her. Of course, none of this is new – anyone who looked knew that Tulsi Gabbard has been an out and out reactionary for years, well, always.
Unlike many, this was too much even for Norton, who now declares her “a right-wing sheepdog [who] cynically tries to lure anti-war people into the GOP.” Yeh, Ben, that’s what we said when you were singing her praises. Norton recently quit the red-brown propaganda-for-tyrants site, Grayzone, apparently because he felt his co-thinker, Max Blumenthal, was taking conspiracist thinking a little far with his conversion to Covidiocy. Will be interesting to see how Grayzone explains their idol’s talk about the dangers of “anti-white racism” and the like.
It’s rather obvious from her resignation which direction she is heading after the Democrats. Earlier this year, Gabbard was invited and spoke to the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she spoke alongside Glenn Beck at the Ronald Reagan memorial dinner. She declared, not wrongly, that she finally found where she belonged, which helps us understand where her new “home” will be (where in reality it always was).
Gabbard: Apologist for genocidal Assad regime
Gabbard was good at hoodwinking the red-brown, tankie, campist “leftists” because they are not only easily fooled by definition, but also tend to be consciously and defiantly ignorant. One of the issues that really endeared them to Gabbard was her apologism for genocidal mass-murdering Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad, who she personally visited in 2017. Her explanation for this was that she was for peace, and therefore it was necessary to talk to everyone involved, including Assad. This was a very thin smokescreen, however, as she propagated almost all Assadist talking points.
She declared herself against an (actually non-existent) “US regime-change war” against Assad, leading tankies to see her as one of them, deciding she was “anti-war”, as in Norton’s quotes about “regime change” above. In reality of course, the only US bombing war in Syria since 2014 has been the air war against ISIS (which destroyed ISIS in Syria), which also hit anti-ISIS Islamist rebels, especially, from the first day, Jabhat-al-Nusra; this US intervention welcomed by the Assad regime. Far from being anti-war, Gabbard accused the US of not bombing them enough. She welcomed the onset of Russia’s terror bombing of Syria on behalf of Assad in 2015, claiming, falsely, that the “US has not been bombing al-Qaeda/al-Nusra in Syria” (the US bombed Nusra targets hundreds of times, killing large numbers of civilians in the process, and often enough, even mainstream anti-Assad rebels), and proceeding to state “but it’s mind-boggling that we protest Russia’s bombing of these terrorists,” despite the fact that the vast majority of Russia’s bombs, and Assad’s bombs, hit mainstream rebels, not “al-Qaeda.”
Returning from her trip to Assad’s palace, Gabbard made videos calling for an end to the imaginary “US regime change war,” which showed vast footage of the massive, unending destruction of entire regions as far as they eye can see that Assad’s bombing had wrought, implicitly blaming it on the US, or on the anti-Assad rebels, who only had small arms: the cataclysmic destruction in the footage is clearly the work of an airforce and advanced missiles, possessed only the regime and Russia.
But of course tankies, campists and red-browns think someone is progressive and anti-war when they support a genocidal tyrant who has killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed entire towns and cities throughout his country. Well, each to their own I suppose, so for argument’s sake, let’s go with that.
With exceptions, most of these same tankies and campists and even many red-browns pretend to be very pro-Palestine. It is their one alleged point of honour. If you point out massive repression by an Assad, Putin or Khameini, they can “what about Israel” you in response? “Why doesn’t the US stop Israel?” Since every genuine leftist has supported the Palestinian struggle their entire political lives, and has never stopped condemning the unconditional US support for the regime of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, this whataboutism is irrelevant and stupid, of course, but it gives them something to say. So, OK, let’s again go with that.
Gabbard: Hard Zionist
It therefore takes a very, very deliberate kind of ignorance to not know that Gabbard is also a hard Zionist (and of course there is zero contradiction between being a Zionist and an Assadist – virtually the entire global far-right achieve that, not just Gabbard). So then why do they extol someone who should be their enemy? Because she’s pro-Putin? Yeh well, so is Netanyahu! The bottom line is, her support for the Assad regime and Putin are far bigger priorities for the alt-left than the alt-left’s symbolic pro-Palestine views. Indeed, given Assad’s murder of thousands of Palestinians in Syria and his destruction of their camps, their support for Palestine while shilling for Assad is not only hypocritical, but also anti-Palestinian.
But let’s look at Gabbard’s well-known Zionism. Here is Gabbard at the Christians United for Israel convention, alongside John Hagee, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and every other kind of hard US reactionary. Here she is in the far-right Breitbart, exclaiming “Put yourself in Israel’s shoes”, as she defends staying for Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress, where he was invited by the Republican Party rather than by the Obama US government, when nearly 60 Democrat reps boycotted. Gabbard stated that the US-Israel relationship “must rise above the political fray, as America continues to stand with Israel as her strongest ally.” During Israel’s genocidal Operation Protective Edge, Gabbard co-sponsored a congressional resolution that said that Israel exclusively “focused on terrorist targets” and that Israel “goes to extraordinary lengths to target only terrorist actors”!
Not surprisingly, she got a “Champion of Freedom” award at the Jewish Values Gala, held by the World Values Network, founded by Trump supporter Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Here is a photo showing Gabbard with Shmuley and Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson, another big Trump supporter who believes Palestinians are “a made-up people”.
In 2017, Gabbard co-sponsored H.Res.23, which supports the U.S. policy of vetoing “any one-sided or anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolutions that seek to impose a negotiated settlement on Israel and Palestine.” It also condemns boycott and divestment campaigns and sanctions that target Israel. Then in 2019, Gabbard voted for an AIPAC bill condemning Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).
Gabbard with her hard-line Zionist friends
Gabbard: Islamophobe extraordinaire and “hawk” on the “war on terror”
One thing Gabbard’s pro-Assad and pro-Israel stances have in common is that they both accord with the very Islamophobic and “war on terror” basis of her politics. Both the Assad regime and Israel leaders, when they mercilessly bomb civilian infrastructure, medical facilities, schools, refugee camps, anything really, and murder with impunity on a daily basis, claim they are targeting “radical Islamic terrorists.” The US and Russia claim the same in their imperialist wars.
Therefore, among other things, for Gabbard this also includes:
Being a hard-line supporter of Modi, the BJP and Hindutva chauvinism; Modi had been personally implicated in the murderous anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, which killed around 1000 people. Due to this, for about a decade, the US had refused to give Modi a visa. For Gabbard, this was a “great blunder,” claiming “there was a lot of misinformation that surrounded the event in 2002.”
Loving bloody Egyptian tyrant al-Sisi (given that Sisi is allied to both Assad and Israel, this works well), who she visited in 2015, and declared “President el-Sisi has shown great courage and leadership in taking on this extreme Islamist ideology”
Left: Gabbard with India’s Hindu-chauvinist and pogromist leader Modi. Right: Gabbard with bloody Egyptian dictator al-Sisi.
While opposing non-existent US “regime change” war, on the “war on terror” Gabbard declares “I’m a hawk.”
On a more humorous note, the ignorant Gabbard declared she wants to fight “radical wasabi ideology.”
The rest of her politics isn’t much different, even if she now claims to no longer be a homophobe, and one wonders how long that phase will last given the territory she is openly moving into. Her right-wing baiting about the danger of “anti-white racism” reveals a more reactionary Gabbard than even many of those aware of her real politics realised. For example, Gabbard claimed US could not possibly be a racist country, since Ahmaud Arbery’s killers were found guilty. That would certainly be news to the hundreds of African-Americans murdered by cops and vigilantes where the killers have gone free; apparently, Black Lives Matter was all about nothing.
Several years ago Gabbard refused to sign letter by 169 Democrats opposing far-rightist Steve Bannon being appointed appointed as Trump’s advisor; little wonder she has received praise fromBannon who claimed she “would fit perfectly [in the Trump administration] … She gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic terrorism stuff.” As well as praise from Nazis and white supremacists David Duke and Richard Spencer, from the leading right-wing economic/defence/security think-tank the American Enterprise Institute, from Fox News heavy-weight far-rightist Tucker Carlson, whose show Gabbard regularly appears on, really you name it, from almost anyone on the right.
So if tankie and campist leftists want to keep citing Gabbard of all people as an “anti-war” voice in support of Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine or Assad’s genocidal reign of terror in Syria, please go for it: she suits you.
The four Ukrainian regions being annexed to Russia, joining Russia to its previous Crimea conquest, and almost cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea.
by Michael Karadjis
Interesting that in a 37-minute speech to justify Russia’s brazen annexation of four regions of Ukraine, Putin didn’t mention “Nazis” or “de-Nazification” once, these silly tropes that some gullible western lefties believed. Instead, it was all about the glories of 1000 years Imperial Russia, while appealing to the most reactionary segments of western society with a lot of mystical, religious, traditionalist nonsense like the following:
“They [ie, the western globalists] have already moved on to the radical denial of moral, religious, and family values. Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. Now I would like to return to what I said and want to address also all citizens of the country – not just the colleagues that are in the hall – but all citizens of Russia: do we want to have here, in our country, in Russia, “parent number one, parent number two and parent number three” (they have completely lost it!) instead of mother and father? Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery? Is that what we want for our country and our children? This is all unacceptable to us. We have a different future of our own. … This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people, and not only in our country but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself.”
Indeed, the West is guilty of ‘Satanism’ and all these crimes against traditional religion and morality, and therefore … Russia should annex 15 percent of Ukraine! Because these regions are allegedly populated by Russians (well, most of the population are not ethnic Russians, but the majority of the population have been violently expelled or massacred) and it is the great historic mission of the glorious Russian Nation to lead the Crusade against this moral degeneracy of western society. If Putin thus sounds like any typical far-right US Christian fundamentalist or Trumpist or 21st century European fascist it is no accident, nor is it anything new for anyone watching: Putin has positioned his regime as head of the global far-right for many years now. Not just all this ‘moral’ bullshit, but also on the question of race, nation and ‘civilisation’; for many years he has espoused a version of ‘Great Replacement’ theory, warning the white race and European and Christian culture that it was in danger of disappearing due to immigration of lots of non-Europeans into the European heartland. No wonder he dropped the crap about fighting “Nazis” in Ukraine; while it might have fooled some lefties, his main audience were and are the western far-right, who probably found it a little confusing, especially all those Nazis everywhere in the world who have been waving the Putin flag for years.
If Putin’s hard authoritarian but ‘parliamentary’ state is still far from fascist in its rule inside Russia (as opposed to its murderous colonial rule in Donbas), Putinism is, nevertheless, fascist ideologically. That’s why it’s no surprise that Putin here quotes a genuine historical Russian fascist, Ivan Ilyin, who Putin calls a “true patriot,” with a lot of mysticism about “the spiritual strength of the Russian people.” That’s why today’s leading Russian fascist high priest, Alexander Dugin, praised Putin’s speech to the sky, proclaiming “This is a manifesto of Tradition. I can’t imagine how profound the consequences are. It was an eschatological, religious speech”
This goes together well with the glorification of The Russian Nation and Empire, the centrepiece of his speech he continually returned to. “The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia. (Applause.) For the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls.”
While we sometimes hear that Putin wants to restore the USSR, he made it abundantly clear he wanted nothing of the sort. After denouncing the ‘elites’ who dissolved it, he explained “But it doesn’t matter now. … Actually, Russia no longer needs it today; this isn’t our ambition. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who, by their culture, religion, traditions, and language, consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single country for centuries.” Of course, Putin liked the size and shape of the USSR, because it was a very large country where countless other nations and ethnicities were dominated by The Russian Nation; but that had already existed for centuries before the USSR as the Tsarist Russian Empire, Putin’s ideal, his speech full of glorification of Tsars like Catherine the Great, talk of ‘Novorossiya’, the Tsarist Empire’s name for its colonisation of Ukrainian lands, and so on. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, still contained the fiction of an equal union of republics, of peoples, in its name, and that is what Putin hates, has been railing against for years, the original sin of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in recognising the right of self-determination of Ukraine and the other subject peoples of the old Russian Empire, as Putin here denounces “the [Bolshevik] government quietly demarcated the borders of Soviet republics, acting behind the scenes after the 1917 revolution.”
It’s true that this hard right and medievalist ideological rant was peppered with nods to the western left and the former colonial world with his denunciations of western imperialism. Putin quite rightly denounces the West for “the worldwide slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India and Africa, the wars of England and France against China,” for the “exterminat[ion of] entire ethnic groups for the sake of grabbing land and resources” and so on. Yet he somehow manages to omit the fact that Tsarist Russia was in every sense a key participant in these centuries of colonial expansion, plunder and extermination; the fact that Russian colonialism expanded by land, subjugating nations and ethnicities from the Black Sea to the Caucasus, central Asia and Siberia, rather than by sea, is irrelevant. Indeed, in the 19th century Marx and Engels considered the Russian Empire to be at the very centre of reaction in Europe. Putin does complete somersaults with reality by imagining a centuries-old ‘Russophobia’ by some imaginary collective ‘West’ (for most of these centuries Britain and France were mainly at war with each other, and with other Western states, at least one of which was always aligned with Tsarist Russia) that allegedly wanted to make Russia one of its colonies, but Russia resisted this “by creating a strong centralised state,” ie that of the Tsars.
Indeed it is only due to this Russian colonialism, carried out by this “strong centralised state,” that Ukraine (’Novorossya’) came to be under Russian control (aided in the 20th century by Stalin’s Holodomor in the 1930s, when 4 million Ukrainians were starved to death while its borders were sealed to prevent the starving escaping); and it was only due to Russian colonisation of Crimea and dispossession of its Indigenous Tatar population, finalised once again by Stalin’s genocidal expulsion of the entire Tatar population in the 1940s, that Putin was even able to conduct the previous fake “referendum” under military occupation there in 2014.
Somehow, Putin thinks a good way to fight centuries of imperialism is to be ultra-imperialist, to invade a country and conquer great chunks of it; from the start, this war had nothing to do with NATO, with “Nazis” or any other such nonsense, but has been entirely a war of pure and simple imperialist conquest, of the Black Sea coastline with its vast natural resources and strategic position.
These new “referendums” again take place under brutal military occupation, where those who “vote” essentially have guns to their heads; when the majority of the population of Donbas have fled or been driven out and hence get no “vote” (indeed half the population was already in exile before February, having fled during Russia’s occupation of parts of Donbas in 2014-22); after the Russian military have savagely bombed the Donbas populations for months; where there was not a single instance of Donbas crowds welcoming the Russian invaders as “liberators”; where no polls over the last 8 years have ever shown significant support for joining Russia; where ethnic Russians were just over a third of the population in two of the regions, and considerably less in the other two; and and even then, there is no way of knowing what the actual votes were, even given these entirely manipulated and violent conditions – they are almost certainly pure concoctions, as are all “votes” in “referendums” and “elections” throughout the world under dictatorship, terror and occupation.
Yet some people who should know better have been giving this murderous farce and blatant land theft the benefit of the doubt. We are expected to believe that those that Russia has been bombing into oblivion for months just voted to join their torturer. No doubt, as per Putin, out of fear of the West’s Satanism and gender-bending practices.
Cataclysmic destruction of Russian-speaking Ukrainian city Mariupol by Russian invasion; Putin claims, ironically, that his invasion aims to “liberate” these people from “genocide”.
We’ve all heard it time and time again. Whether it is an argument in support of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, or just as often, opposed to it but claiming both sides are equally at fault, we hear that that “the Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.”
Here’s just one example among thousands of examples regurgitated, with never a simple fact-check, all over the left and right media: According to pro-Putin writer Max Parry, “For what the late Edward S. Herman called the ‘cruise missile Left,’ the 14,000 ethnic Russians killed in Donbass by the Ukrainian army since 2014 are ‘unworthy victims,’ as Herman and Noam Chomsky defined the notion in Manufacturing Consent.”
The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have over-reacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.
Therefore, even many of those who oppose the Russian invasion equally oppose the Ukrainian resistance, and in particular its receipt of arms, because if Ukraine gets the upper hand, it will just continue to do to the “ethnic Russians” what it was previously doing, the same as what Russia is now doing to “the Ukrainians.”
While not quite as colourful as Putin’s claim that Ukraine was committing “genocide” against the ethnic Russians in Donbas, these claims are nevertheless serious and merit clear examination.
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Let’s look at the claim again:
“The Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.”
Is any of this true?
Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?
“The Ukrainian army killed.”
Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.
For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?
“ethnic Russians”
Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.
So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021.
However, what about the last part:
“between 2014 and 2022.”
Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.
But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.
In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. Let’s just look at the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022.
The year by year figures were 87 fatalities in 2017, 43 in 2018, 19 in 2019, and 12 to September 2020.
The OSCE report as of 11 January 2021 reports “The total number of civilian casualties in 2020 stands at 128: 23 fatalities and 105 injuries.”
The OSCE Status Report as of 13 December 2021 reports “since the beginning of 2021, the SMM has confirmed 88 civilian casualties (16 fatalities and 72 injured)” in 2021.
Of these 16 fatalities in 2021, 11 were from the first half of 2021: according to the OSCE Status Report as of 14 June 2021, “Over the past two weeks, the SMM corroborated four civilian casualties, all injuries due to explosive objects. This brings the total number of civilian casualties that occurred since the beginning of 2021 to 37 (11 fatalities and 26 injuries). Again, the majority of the casualties (27) were due to mines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive objects.”
Meanwhile, the weekly OSCE Status Report as of 6 September 2021 reported “a fatality, bringing the total number of confirmed civilian casualties since the beginning of 2021 to 62 (15 fatalities and 47 injuries).” Hence, of the 5 fatalities in the second half of the year, 4 were before September.
From these three 2021 reports, we see a continual decline in fatalities in Donbas: 11 in January-June, 4 in June-September, 1 in September-December.
This trend continued into 2022. The OSCE Status Report as of 7 February 2022 reports “The Mission corroborated reports of a civilian casualty: a 56-year-old man suffering a leg injury as a result of small-arms fire on 29 January 2022 in the western part of non-government-controlled Oleksandrivka, Donetsk region. This is the first civilian casualty corroborated by the Mission in 2022.” In other words, to 7 February 2022, 2 weeks before the Russian invasion, there had been zero fatalities in Donbas in 2022.
Therefore, this is the trend in what Putin calls the “genocide” of the ethnic Russians in Donbas, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides:
2016 – 88 deaths
2017 – 87 deaths
2018 – 43 deaths
2019 – 19 deaths
2020 – 23 deaths
2021 – 16 deaths, including:
– 11 deaths (Jan-June)
– 4 deaths (June-Sep)
– 1 death (Sep-Dec)
2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).
As we can see, the rate of death has continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.
The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.
But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.
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The aim of this is not to let the Ukrainian government and army off the hook. Both the Ukrainian army and the Russian-backed separatist militia have committed war crimes (mostly in 2014-15), all of which should be condemned.
There is also room for criticism of the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s virulent Ukrainian nationalism, as a major factor leading to opposition among parts of the Russian-speaking population in the east; the fact that the Maidan was confronted by an anti-Maidan in the east was in itself an entirely valid expression of democratic protest. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed militia, armed by Russia, involving the direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weaponry, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine.
Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, has admitted that it was he who pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”
Simon Pirani argues that neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary as they often are by different people, and in fact the “social aspirations” of the two “were very close,” but “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”
It is important to understand that the Donbas is ethnically mixed; according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians form 58% of the population of Luhansk and 56.9% of Donetsk; the ethnic Russian minority accounts for 39% and 38.2% of the two regions respectively. How ironic that Putin supporters justify the flagrant Russian annexation of Crimea by pointing to the 58% ethnic Russian majority there, when Ukrainians are the same size majority in Donbas! The ethnic Ukrainian population is then evenly divided between primary Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers, but language does not equal ethnicity, and neither language nor ethnicity equal political opinion.
Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin found that in the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia, the majority against. Of the majority against, some 30% supported some kind of autonomy, while a quarter wanted no special status. But in the Ukraine government controlled two-thirds of Donbas, while the same percentage (around 30%) favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just being in Ukraine with no special status (almost none supported joining Russia). Even this should not be read to mean that, therefore, the chunks seized by the separatists are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation – given the dispossession of literally half the Donbas population, it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones.
Hence neither ethnic composition nor opinion shows the two Donbas provinces are “Russian” regions that favour separation or even necessarily autonomy; they are very mixed in all aspects. The borders of the bits that have been seized therefore (the fake ‘republics’) are entirely arbitrary – there was no basis for these seizures in terms of any “act of self-determination;” and since the armed conflict took off after these seizures, neither can the seizures and the militarisation be justified as necessary armed defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan which had not taken place.
The foreign-backed militarisation of the anti-Maidan on the one hand polarised views on the edges, while on the other driving away the middle, including a large part of the original anti-Maidan civilian population; and the more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian, political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any genuine expression of valid opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies. Alienation from this reality, combined with the war itself, led to literally half the population fleeing Donbas – 3.3 million of the original population of 6.6 million – either to other parts of Ukraine (the majority), or to Russia or Belarus.
In this context, it was entirely expected that the Ukrainian armed forces would attempt to regain these regions conquered by separatist militia backed by a foreign power; and ‘valid’ in terms of international law, regardless of one’s views on how Ukraine conducted it. Of course, one may well criticise Ukraine’s reliance on purely military means to regain these regions with complex ethnic/regional issues, almost inevitable given that its virulent Ukrainian nationalist stance precluded a more political approach. But to lay the majority of blame on this military response rather than the foreign-backed military aggression it was responding to is hardly logical.
Whatever the case, and whatever one’s views on the relative responsibility of the two sides over these years, the continual and decisive reduction of fatalities, injuries and ceasefire violations between 2015 and 2022 – from 3128 civilian fatalities in 2014-2015 to 0 in early 2022 – puts the lie to not only Putin’s claim that his bloody invasion, with its countless thousands of deaths, millions uprooted and cataclysmic destruction, was in response to “genocide” of “ethnic Russians,” but also to the more subtle plague on both your houses case that the Ukrainian army was waging a relentless war against “ethnic Russians” in Donbas.
Russia’s conquests in southeast Ukraine: Putin’s expanded Russian empire (Source: Al Jazeera, May 12, 2022)
By Michael Karadjis
As Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s horrific aggression and attempt to conquer and annex the south and east of the country, the quantity of arms being supplied to Ukraine by the United States and other western countries has steadily increased. As the country and people suffering from this naked imperialist aggression, the Ukrainians have every right to receive weapons from whoever wants to send them, regardless of the aims of those countries doing so, or the extraordinary hypocrisy of these imperialist powers.
However, much leftist commentary has increasingly seen this supply of arms as evidence of the war becoming a “proxy” war in which Ukraine, rather than fighting for its very existence, is essentially just acting as cat’s paw for an alleged US imperialist aim of waging “war against Russia,” perhaps even aiming to “Balkanise” Russia. A quick review of some left media just the last couple of days brings up an article that labels the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “U.S. war against Russia” which “threatens world peace;” while even in Socialist Worker, which strongly condemns the Russian invasion and certainly cannot be accused of softness on Putinism, we can read that “today any element of a war of liberation against Russian imperialism is wholly subsumed by, and subordinated to, Nato’s war on Russia.”
An important part of this discourse is the claim that supplying arms goes against the importance of “negotiations,”, which allegedly the US and western states are vetoing, along with the assertion that the US aim is to “weaken” Russia rather than just help Ukraine. Some of this is based on a number of ‘gotcha’ moments when one or another representative of the US ruling class said something a little out of line. Yet a serious analysis will demonstrate that these assumptions and alleged dichotomies have no basis in reality, and the more serious US imperial analysts highlight interests and fears that not only show the ‘gotcha’ moments have little to do with western policy, but ultimately state very similar fears to many of these leftist analysts regarding the potential for a dangerously destabilised Russia resulting from a loss of Russian ‘credibility’, and therefore advocate rather similar limits to US support and stress on negotiations.
‘Negotiations’ versus war?
Writing in Counterpunch on April 29, Richard Rubenstein asks: “If Putin now offered a ceasefire in order to negotiate the status of the Donbass republics and to assert other Russian needs and interests, would the U.S. and Ukraine be justified in refusing to talk in order to punish or “weaken” him?” And answers: “Of course not!”
There is just so much unreality in all these discussions that begin with such statements. “Would the US and Ukraine be justified”? The US and Ukraine are two different countries. What the US does is one thing, but Ukraine is under invasion and occupation. Ukraine is fighting for its existence. If it decides it wants to fight on in order to get as much of its country back as it can and to thus have a stronger position at the bargaining table, that is up to Ukraine, not the US or western leftists. If Ukraine decides it cannot handle the superior Russian firepower any longer and is forced to sign a ceasefire with humiliating conditions, that is up to Ukraine, not up to the US or western leftists. Ukraine’s decisions, in other words, should not be subject to the approval of either western imperialism or the western imperial left. Either way, we should simply demand Russia get out.
Now the first assumption in these endless articles spouting the wisdom of “ceasefire and negotiations” and of Rubenstein’s question above is that Russia is dying to negotiate, and has “reasonable” concerns, or as Rubenstein puts it, “other Russian needs and interests,” which apparently exist inside another sovereign state. I wonder if Rubenstein would seek to justify the ongoing US occupation of part of Cuba’s sovereign territory as due to “US needs and interests.” The related assumption is either that Ukraine is opposed to negotiating, or that many in Ukraine, perhaps Zelensky, would be ready to negotiate, but the US is opposed to negotiations or to any concessions to Russia, and is “banning” Ukraine from negotiating or compromising, or by pumping in arms, it is “encouraging” Ukraine to fight and not negotiate.
This scenario, however, is entirely fictional. No-one making these endless statements has ever presented any evidence whatsoever. They just make it up, because it fits their schema that this is a “proxy war” being waged by US imperialism, which is apparently using Ukraine and Ukrainian lives for its (the US’s) “war on Russia,” as opposed to the actual war of conquest being waged by Russian imperialism against its former colony that stares anyone in the face who wants to look.
It is a remarkably western-centric view, even for the always western-centric Manichean “anti-imperialist” left, to imagine that the millions of Ukrainians who have risen up at the grass-roots level in an extraordinary mobilisation to defend Ukraine’s right to exist as a state and nation are not doing so in their own interests but are merely being fooled into being “proxies” for US imperialism’s schemes.
Ukraine has been either negotiating, or offering to re-start negotiations, more or less continually. It should not be obliged to; Ukraine would be in its full rights to simply say Russian troops need to leave Ukraine and there is nothing to negotiate except the pace and logistics of that withdrawal. But it negotiates anyway because of the position it is in. So when western leftists demand Ukraine do something it is already doing, what they really mean is that Ukraine should surrender to Russia’s “reasonable” demands.
So they should come clean – what do these wise western sages demand that Ukraine do to satisfy Russia so that it will allegedly agree to a ceasefire and negotiations? For the most part, they demand Ukraine accepts Russia’s full program of Ukrainian surrender.
Even on paper, Russia’s demands for Ukrainian surrender – no right to join a security alliance of its choice, demilitarisation, recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and of Donbas – look remarkably like Israel’s “reasonable” demands for Palestinian surrender, including recognition of annexation by force and the whole package. In both cases, justification for calling such maximum demands “reasonable” derives easily from the view that “there is no such thing as Palestine/Ukraine.” Just as western imperialist leaders reject one and support the other, the western imperial left do exactly the same but merely reverse them. In contrast, the Russian and Israeli leaders of small-scale imperialist states engaged in old-style conquest-imperialism have long had a healthy respect for each other’s projects.
Ukraine’s negotiating proposal: No NATO, no military solutions to occupied regions
But are these “reasonable” Russian demands even what Russia is really waging this war for?
Let’s take the NATO demand. It is hard to understand why anyone can still think that Russia launched this war due to its alleged “security concerns” about “NATO enlargement.” NATO enlargement took place in 1999-2004, when 10 countries joined, including the only three “on Russia’s borders,” ie, the three tiny Baltic states. The four that have been allowed into NATO at different moments in the last 18 years were small Balkan states nowhere near Russia, often after long and difficult processes.
Ukraine applied to join in 2008, and the accusation that the US is pushing to “expand” into Ukraine is based on the fact that NATO did not say “no” that year, as its charter prevents it saying no to any European country. Yet 14 years later, Ukraine has still not even been given a Membership Action Plan (MAP), to allow it to begin attempting to meet the conditions of membership. No serious observer thinks Ukraine has any chance of being admitted for many years or decades.
But in any case, Zelensky made the major concession on NATO in negotiations just a few weeks into the war. It’s full elaboration as a written proposal was on March 30. The first few points of the 10-point plan are as follows:
Proposal 1:Ukraine proclaims itself a neutral state, promising to remain nonaligned with any blocs and refrain from developing nuclear weapons — in exchange for international legal guarantees. Possible guarantor states include Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, and other states would also be welcome to join the treaty.
Proposal 2: These international security guarantees for Ukraine would not extend to Crimea, Sevastopol, or certain areas of the Donbas [ie, the areas currently controlled by Kremlin stooges]. The parties to the agreement would need to define the boundaries of these regions or agree that each party understands these boundaries differently.
Proposal 3:Ukraine vows not to join any military coalitions or host any foreign military bases or troop contingents. Any international military exercises would be possible only with the consent of the guarantor-states. For their part, these guarantors confirm their intention to promote Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.
Note the second point also touches on Russia’s other surrender conditions. One of them, the Crimea issue, is further elaborated on in point 8:
Proposal 8: The parties’ desire to resolve issues related to Crimea and Sevastopol shall be committed to bilateral negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for a period of 15 years. Ukraine and Russia also pledge not to resolve these issues by military means and to continue diplomatic resolution efforts.
If anybody can find any evidence of US “rejection” of Ukraine’s plan, any attempt to “ban” Ukraine from making these concessions, please provide sources. Such evidence will not be forthcoming. In late April, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, far-right Republican Senator Rand Paul accused the Biden administration of provoking the war by “beating the drums to admit Ukraine to NATO.” In his response, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the White House would be open to an agreement that resulted in Ukraine becoming “an unaligned, neutral nation.” “We, Senator, are not going to be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians. These are decisions for them to make,” Blinken told Paul. “Our purpose is to make sure that they have within their hands the ability to repel the Russian aggression and indeed to strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table,” he added. While he saw no sign Putin was ready to negotiate, he said “If he is and if the Ukrainians engage, we’ll support that.”
That is not because Biden or Blinken are great peaceniks or not imperialists. It is simply that the “no negotiations” position imputed to them by many excitable leftists is simply not a position that interests the main body of US imperialism (the odd talking head or armchair warrior notwithstanding).
As opposed to the imaginary and evidence-free view that Ukraine may want to negotiate but the West will not allow it to, others claim (just as wrongly) that Ukraine refuses to negotiate, but the US and the West must negotiate anyway. This is a rather odd demand – since Russia is not invading the US or western Europe, and they are not invading Russia, what exactly is the US supposed to negotiate about?
The point being, of course, that these “anti-imperialists” here reveal themselves as super-imperialists: they are demanding that the US and the West negotiate “on behalf of” Ukraine! So presumably, if the US or France “negotiates” with Putin for Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbas to Russia, Ukraine should happily accept being divided up by imperialist powers, and this Kissingerian chessboard ‘realist’ geopolitics is now supposedly the essence of an emancipatory leftist position!
Is there a new US aim to “weaken Russia”?
On a related track, the statement by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on April 25 that the US aims to “see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do these kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine” created great excitement. This is supposedly a declaration either of real, or new, US aims in this war. Now, even if interpreted this way, this would prove nothing about the war of resistance waged by the Ukrainian people against imperial Russia’s attempt to wipe them off the map. Obviously, US imperialism has its own reasons for aiding this resistance (indeed, providing large numbers of the very weapons that it not only did not provide to the anti-Assad Syrian rebellion, but actively blocked others from providing). But if the US aims to weaken Russia via supporting this Ukrainian resistance, that is not a choice made by Ukraine; Ukraine did not invade Russia to give the US an avenue to weaken Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine; if Ukraine’s resistance allows the US to weaken Russia by aiding it, Russia can thank Putin for that.
But in any case, the statement can mean virtually anything; Ukraine simply maintaining its right to existence, or to exist without suffering large territorial losses – a defeat of the aims of the Russian invasion – will weaken Russia. So anyone not advocating a Russian victory over Ukraine could also be considered to be in agreement with Austin. By providing any aid at all since Day 1, the US was helping “weaken Russia.”
Some proclaim that this was not the original US aim, but Austin’s statement heralded a “new” strategic turn in US policy. But if so, they need to explain what has changed in practice. Previously, they claim, the US was aiding the Ukrainian resistance with the aim of helping Ukraine resist the Russian invasion – for its own reasons, of course, but within these confines. Now the US is doing the same thing, aiding the Ukrainian resistance, but with the aim of weakening Russia. Pardon me for being confused about what has changed in practice.
A common claim is that by supplying arms to Ukraine, the US aims to drag out the war, so as to bog down and wear out Russia, the weakening of Russia being paid for by Ukrainian death and suffering. Social media is full of western leftist wits proclaiming “the US will fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood.” Apparently, the reason millions of Ukrainians are resisting the Russian invasion is not because they don’t want to be overrun by a brutal imperialist power, but because they are unconsciously acting against their own interests, dying for a US aim of weakening Russia. If only they knew what these brave and smart western lefties knew, that their real interests lie in accepting colonial oppression, occupation, massacre and dispossession.
The obvious question arising from this assertion that the US wants to drag out the war to weaken Russia is ‘how can the war end more quickly?’ On the one hand, the assertion could mean that by allowing Ukrainians to better resist Russian conquest, these western arms prevent the rapid end of the war via total Russian victory, with its attendant massacres and war crimes, imposition of a fascistic regime of repression, and annexation of a large part of Ukraine. If these leftists advocate a rapid end of the war via this conclusion, so it is not “dragged out,” they should say so openly and stop beating around the bush.
But if they do not mean this, the only other way for the war to end more quickly and not bog Russia down would be for a dramatic increasein the quantity and quality of arms deliveries to Ukraine, so that it could convincingly and quickly evict Russia from its territory; while Russia would still be somewhat weakened by defeat, at least the war would not drag on, and hence the alleged aim of getting Russia stuck there and drained would not be fulfilled. In that case they should be denouncing the US for not supplying Ukraine arms of sufficient quantity and quality to do this, but only enough to fight on but not win. But it is unlikely they mean this either.
So if the idea is not a rapid end to the war via crushing Russian victory, nor via Ukraine swiftly driving out the invader, then the statement has no meaning, it is merely a piece of cheap rhetoric.
But of course, as tankies become pacifists, it is back to demanding “ceasefire and negotiations.” No rapid Russian victory, no total Ukrainian victory, but also no dragging out the war, because as we know, “negotiations” can end the war. That always works, and no-one ever thought of it before.
All Ukraine has to do is surrender to Russia’s “reasonable demands,” leading to a satisfied Russia calling a ceasefire; or if not, the US must negotiate this surrender “on Ukraine’s behalf.” Leaving aside how much this Imperial Left stance contradicts leftist stances in virtually every other struggle by a nation and people against imperialist aggression, occupation and conquest, how realistic is this ‘strategy’ on its own terms?
Russia engaged in a war of old-style conquest imperialism
To answer this, how has Russia responded to Ukraine’s proposals in March, discussed above, for no NATO, for neutrality with security guarantees, no joining any military blocs, a 15-year negotiation on Crimea with no military solutions? With what we have seen since – the complete destruction of Mariupol, the Bucha massacre, all the rest of the horror since. The last thing Russia wanted was for Ukraine to call its bluff.
The problem is that this “anti-imperialist” left do not understand the nature of imperialism; or by claiming that Russia is not an imperialist power, but rather just a large capitalist power with average expansionist tendencies, they imagine the same imperialist logic does not apply.
Russia is engaged in a war of late 19th century style imperialist conquest. Obviously, it is not unique in the world as western media claims, we’ve had Israel, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey and others engage in wars of conquest and annexation in recent decades, greeted by either western indifference, or avid western and especially US support. Pointing out western hypocrisy is politically important as we confront the onslaught of self-serving and laughable propaganda about the world being divided between “democracy and autocracy,” about there allegedly being a “rules-based international order” that no-one ever violated before Putin did, and so on. But fighting hypocrisy does not inform analysis of a concrete situation. These other cases are all of relatively small countries; the largest, Indonesia, was eventually defeated in East Timor (with the aid of a change in imperialist policy, indeed imperialist intervention in defence of east Timor), though not in West Papua. Turkey held back from formal annexation of northern Cyprus which it still occupies; and although it never faced western sanctions, its puppet ‘republic’ is not recognised by any country in the world. Obviously Israel/Palestine is the most globally consequential of these cases.
But this is the first time a major global imperialist power has engaged in 19th century-style ‘direct conquest’ imperialism since 1945. This is not a morality contest here, obviously the US invasion of Iraq was extraordinarily brutal and criminal, but the aim was not conquest as such; and of course both the US and Russia and others have engaged in massive and brutal “interventions” after being “invited in,” but once again this has not been about conquest as such. We need to wrap our heads around this fact.
In late April, Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, stated that Russia planned to forge a land corridor between Crimea and Donbas in eastern Ukraine; this is rather obvious anyway – that is why Mariupol had to be conquered and destroyed, being right in the middle and a key port. These are of course Russian-speaking regions, where the ‘liberator of Russians’ slaughtered them. But he went on, noting that “control over the south of Ukraine is another way to Transdniestria, where there is also evidence that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed.”
In other words, the entire south of Ukraine, its entire Black Sea coast, is Russian imperialism’s aim. Not only linking Donbas to Crimea, but also seizing Odessa and linking Crimea to the Russian-controlled fake ‘republic’ of Transdniestria, which Russia seized from Moldova decades ago (how amazing that a region under effective Russian control is also “oppressing” Russians now!). And if we take the more extreme ‘Eurasianist’ views into account, Moldova – a neutral state, like Ukraine, outside NATO – should probably also be worrying about its existence.
Of course, the enormous mobilisation of Ukrainian resistance has probably put the brakes on the more extreme Russian geographic aims – at this stage it looks like Russia will consolidate the Donbas to Crimea link conquest and will not have the capacity to venture beyond to Odessa – but that doesn’t alter the fact that these are Russia’s aims. And even just consolidating this part of the conquest locks Ukraine out from most of the Black Sea.
The evidence that Russia aims to annex its new conquests can be seen wherein “Russian officials have already moved to introduce the ruble currency, install proxy politicians in local governments, impose new school curriculums, reroute internet servers through Russia and cut the population off from Ukrainian broadcasts” in these conquered regions. Marat Khusnullin, Russia’s deputy prime minister for infrastructure, also stated that Russia intends “to charge Ukraine for electricity generated by the Ukrainian nuclear plant that Russian forces commandeered in the early weeks of the invasion.”
The Black Sea, of course is full of hydrocarbons. Let’s not make things too complicated. Russian imperialism wants them. It certainly doesn’t want its former colony to share any of them, and by cutting it off from most of its sea coast, can effectively blockade it into submission.
Where to now for US policy?
The opinions on where US policy is heading in response to this situation range from ‘the US will continue to escalate until it leads to war with Russia’ to ‘the US will cut a deal with Russia and sell out Ukraine’. The scenario involving the US pressuring Ukraine into making a compromise that is not fully just once it feels Russia has been weakened enough, rather than pushing for full victory, is just as possible, if not more, than the projections of it drifting into war with Russia. Whatever the case, it is clear that the US and other imperialist powers are supporting Ukraine for their own reasons and their interests are not identical.
What then are the US interests involved? Obviously, US imperialism has already ‘won’ due to Putin’s invasion: US ‘security’ hegemony over Europe is now stronger than at any time since the end of the Cold War, NATO is now adding new members, the many years of the Russian-German gas pipeline development have suddenly come to nothing. Obviously, US and western imperialism more generally does not want a Russian conquest of the entire Black Sea; and allowing Russia conquer much beyond where it already held in Ukraine before the invasion would not be good for US or NATO “credibility.” But once that drive is defeated, there may be little appetite to keep backing Ukraine.
The simple fact is that US imperialism has not been in any “war drive” against Russia, and has no interest in one. There were no signs of any US build-up against Russia before the war, and while relations have been tense since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, they have been relatively normal, including a great deal of cooperation in places like Syria. While a certain amount of anti-Russian rhetoric may have characterised some US statements in comparison to the more accommodating Franco-German approach, this can be understood as part of keeping NATO – its tool for hegemony in Europe – “relevant”, in particular among some of the more anti-Russian eastern European ruling elites (and even this had been wearing thin before Putin saved NATO – just a few months ago, a string of east European right-wing populist rulers were increasingly close to Moscow).
But it is important to not confuse this symbolic US-Russia “rivalry” – related to credibility, the size of the countries, military power, Cold War hangovers – to actual inter-imperialist competition. Their economies are just too different in both character and size for the US to see Putin’s hydro-carbon-based economic fiefdom as a serious global competitor – that award goes to rising, hyper-dynamic Chinese imperialism. And getting bogged down in Ukraine is not conducive to the US ‘pivot to Asia’ where its Chinese rival is based, though for this very reason it may be very much in China’s interests.
Yes, massive quantities of arms have gone to Ukraine, but there have also been clear limits: the US blocking of Poland from delivering warplanes for instance; and a no-fly zone has been placed off-limits by the US and the West from the outset.
One problem with confusing some rhetorical flourishes with US imperialist policy is that each of these ‘gotcha’ moments has been walked back by other US government figures. After Austin mentioned weakening Russia, Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained this simply meant “our objective to prevent that [Russia taking over Ukraine] from happening … but, yes, we are also looking to prevent them from expanding their efforts and President Putin’s objectives beyond that, too.” When Biden said that Putin shouldn’t remain in power, this was immediately hosed down by others in the US government. And when Rep. Seth Moulton stated “We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded “President Biden has been clear that U.S. forces are not and will not engage in a conflict with Russia. We are supporting the Ukrainian people as they defend their country.” Finally, in early May, the US government imposed new limits on the intelligence it shares with Ukraine.
Richard Haas, Thomas Friedman, Eliot Cohen: Voices from the US ruling class
Indeed, we can also find ‘gotcha’ moments of a different kind. On May 9, Biden expressed concern that Putin “doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we do about that.”
This concern – to give Putin some “way out” to avoid the kind of destabilisation that could result from an outright defeat for Russia – is likely much closer to real US imperial interests that the imaginary spectre of the US aiming to “Balkanise Russia”, more likely the very thing everyone wants to avoid. Such concerns are consistent with those expressed in several pieces by leading US ruling class strategists in the serious media. While these strategists do not create US policy, the explanations they give for what US policy should be are not only logical, but also coincide with the very limits of Biden’s approach, and express a number of similar concerns.
The first of these is an article in Foreign Affairs by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has served in various US governments since the late 1970s, including for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the Bush administration, as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department from 2001 to 2003 during the lead-up to the Iraq war. So no lightweight. Haas begins:
“In principle, success from the West’s perspective can be defined as ending the war sooner rather than later, and on terms that Ukraine’s democratic government is prepared to accept. But just what are those terms? Will Ukraine seek to recover all the territory it has lost in the past two months? Will it require that Russian forces withdraw completely from the Donbas and Crimea? Will it demand the right to join the EU and NATO? Will it insist that all this be set forth in a formal document signed by Russia?
“The United States, the EU, and NATO need to discuss such questions with one another and with Ukraine now. … To be sure, the Ukrainians have every right to define their war aims. But so do the United States and Europe. Although Western interests overlap with Ukraine’s, they are broader, including nuclear stability with Russia and the ability to influence the trajectory of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.
“It is also essential to take into account that Russia gets a vote. Although Putin initiated this war of choice, it will take more than just him to end it. He and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will both have to consider what they require in the way of territory and terms to halt hostilities. They will also have to decide if they are prepared not only to order an end to the fighting but also to enter into and honor a peace agreement. Another complexity is that some aspects of any peace, such as the lifting of sanctions against Russia, would not be determined by Ukraine alone but would require the consent of others.”
Discussing several scenarios, Haas sees the scenario in which Ukrainian success reaches the point that it attempts to take back all territory seized since 2014, rather than only territory seized in 2022, as a destabilising outcome:
“… it is near impossible to imagine Putin accepting such an outcome, since it would surely threaten his political survival, and possibly even his physical survival. In desperation, he might try to widen the war through cyberattacks or attacks on one or more NATO countries. He might even resort to chemical or nuclear weapons. … Arguably, these aims are better left for a postconflict, or even a post-Putin, period in which the West could condition sanctions relief on Russia’s signing of a formal peace agreement. Such a pact might allow Ukraine to enjoy formal ties to the EU and security guarantees, even as it remained officially neutral and outside NATO. Russia, for its part, might agree to withdraw its forces from the entirety of the Donbas in exchange for international protections for the ethnic Russians living there. Crimea might gain some special status, with Moscow and Kyiv agreeing that its final status would be determined down the road.”
Discussing the lessons learned from the Cold War and the balance achieved which guaranteed peace (between the superpowers that is), Haas notes that these are consistent with the very limitations of Biden’s strategy:
“From the outset of the crisis, the United States made it clear that it would not place boots on the ground or establish a no-fly zone, since doing so could bring U.S. and Russian forces into direct contact and raise the risk of escalation. Instead, Washington and its NATO partners opted for an indirect strategy of providing arms, intelligence, and training to Ukraine while pressuring Russia with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.”
From here on “ … success for now could consist of a winding down of hostilities, with Russia possessing no more territory than it held before the recent invasion and continuing to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction. Over time, the West could employ a mix of sanctions and diplomacy in an effort to achieve a full Russian military withdrawal from Ukraine. Such success would be far from perfect, just preferable to the alternatives.”
The second piece was by long-term imperial columnist Thomas L Friedman in the May 6 New York Times. Like Haas, Friedman is no stranger to being hawkish when he believes such a stance is in US interests, but takes a similar view to what actual US interests are in this case.
He also warned that certain US actions “could be creating an opening for Putin to respond in ways that could dangerously widen this conflict — and drag the U.S. in deeper than it wants to be,” which is all the more dangerous given Putin’s unpredictability, and the fact that “Putin is running out of options for some kind of face-saving success on the ground — or even a face-saving off ramp.”
Moreover, for Friedman, the problem is not only Russia, as “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has been trying to do the same thing from the start — to make Ukraine an immediate member of NATO or get Washington to forge a bilateral security pact with Kyiv” something Friedman clearly sees as against US interests.
Like Haas, he ultimately thinks that Biden has the right balance:
But my sense is that the Biden team is walking much more of a tightrope with Zelensky than it would appear to the eye — wanting to do everything possible to make sure he wins this war but doing so in a way that still keeps some distance between us and Ukraine’s leadership. That’s so Kyiv is not calling the shots and so we’ll not be embarrassed by messy Ukrainian politics in the war’s aftermath. The view of Biden and his team, according to my reporting, is that America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty and beat the Russians back — but not let Ukraine turn itself into an American protectorate on the border of Russia. We need to stay laser-focused on what is our national interest and not stray in ways that lead to exposures and risks we don’t want.”
While much of the western left sees the US making Ukraine its ‘protectorate’, Friedman sees this as an evil Ukrainian plot which the US must be, and is, on guard against. “But we are dealing with some incredibly unstable elements, particularly a politically wounded Putin. Boasting about killing his generals and sinking his ships, or falling in love with Ukraine in ways that will get us enmeshed there forever, is the height of folly.”
Before moving to the third, more hawkish, piece, it is worth noting that the editorial in the May 19 New York Times makes similar points to Haas and Friedman. While stating that the US goal to help Ukraine rebuff Russian aggression “cannot shift,” nevertheless “in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions.” The editorial warns that “a decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. Though Russia’s planning and fighting have been surprisingly sloppy, Russia remains too strong, and Mr. Putin has invested too much personal prestige in the invasion to back down.” Therefore, “as the war continues, Mr. Biden should also make clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster.”
So, apart from the odd gaffe, it seems difficult to find serious US ruling class opinion saying what much of the left is claiming it is saying. Actually, they appear to saying remarkably similar things to each other! Perhaps we can find the evidence in a more serious hawk?
The third piece by Eliot A. Cohen, writing in The Atlantic on May 11, may be such an example. A professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, former Counselor of the Department of State, former editor of The National Interest, the title of his book The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Forcetells us his views on the use military power. Not surprisingly, therefore, this article is more hawkish in tone than those of Haas and Friedman.
Cohen does not necessarily insist Ukraine must take back all territory lost, but he argues that Ukraine must define what its objectives are and that US policy should recognise “it will be up to Ukraine to decide what it wishes to accomplish.” Having borne “the burdens of blood and sacrifice on a scale not seen since World War II” and with a cause “indisputably just,” Ukraine “has every right to decide what it can and cannot accept and strive for.” This is combined with the fact that Russia “has acted with unspeakable barbarity” and these “moral facts” should therefore “modify or even outweigh coolly geopolitical calculations of the European balance of power.” And when the war ends, western objectives should include helping to put Ukraine “in a condition to defeat further Russian aggression.”
Cohen is an unalloyed partisan of US imperialism, but, from this, obviously hypocritical, perspective, we can at least say there appears to be more respect for Ukraine’s self-determination than the more geopolitically-oriented views of Haas and Friedman, with their insistence on distinguishing the US from the Ukrainian interest.
Therefore, it is here we may expect to see some evidence of the alleged US imperialist desire to wage war on, to humiliate, or even ‘Balkanise’ Russia.
In reality, Cohen warns precisely about the dangers involved in Russia’s defeat. He does not want Russia defeated in Ukraine in order to bring it to its knees and humiliate or ‘Balkanise’ it; on the contrary, he argues that while Ukrainian victory is necessary for other reasons, the negative side-effects of this are nevertheless very much against US and western interests.
“But all of this leaves the problem of Russia. … If it is convulsed from within, it is less likely to be dominated by liberals (many of whom have fled the country) than by disgruntled nationalists. Putin may go, but his replacements are likely to come from similar backgrounds in the secret police or, possibly, the military.” And it will be “more than usually difficult to bring it back into a Eurasian order that it, and no one else, has attempted to destroy” with its “utterly unjustified” attack on Ukraine with “its exceptional brutality, the shamelessness of Russia’s lies and threats, and the grotesqueness of its claims to hegemony in the former Soviet states.”
The result will be “the hardest task of American statecraft going forward: dealing with a Russia reeling from defeat and humiliation, weakened but still dangerous.” Indeed, the old Cold Warrior even sees the old Soviet Union as a more “rationalist” enemy, whereas a defeat for Putinist Russia “will be much more like dealing with a rabid, wounded beast that claws and bites at itself as much as it does at others, in the grip not of a millennial ideology but a bizarre combination of nationalism and nihilism.”
Far from wanting to make “war on Russia”, Cohen thinks that apart from strengthening states on Russia’s borders, all the West will be able to do is “hope against hope that the new “sick man of Europe” will, somehow and against the odds, recover something like moral sanity.”
All US and western imperialist wars since 1945 have been against countries in regions of the former colonial world that they aimed to maintain domination of – from Indochina to Iraq and Afghanistan to Panama and Grenada and Nicaragua, and the current drone wars – and the list goes on. Quite simply, there has been no US “war drive” against Russia, not because the US does not engage in war drives, but because post-Soviet Russia has neither been an ideological enemy – quite the opposite – nor powerful enough to be a genuine imperialist rival.
On the contrary, it is Putin’s sudden resort to primitive conquest-imperialism that has thrown the established imperialist modus vivendi between the US, Europe and Russia to the woods, and the western reaction has been crisis management on the run. While the US has, naturally enough, taken full advantage of what Putin has offered them up on a plate by restoring unchallenged US hegemony in Europe via a strengthened NATO, the point is that this is the US goal in itself; there is no US or western interest in massive destabilisation, a huge black hole, in a gigantic country like Russia which, just a few months ago, was plenty lucrative for western capital, and was an integral part of the world capitalist economy.
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