Putin started by justifying his invasion on the grounds of defence of the right of the peoples of Donetsk and Lugansk to self-determination. This pretext was always utterly cynical. After all, tens of thousands of Chechens died fighting Putin’s forces for precisely that very same right. But Putin quickly abandoned that excuse. His war aims shifted overnight to regime change in Kyiv and at the very least the permanent partition of Ukraine: i.e. the incorporation of Ukraine’s economically developed industrial area into Russia, alongside the installation of an impotent and compliant puppet regime in the west. Even the outright annexation of the whole of Ukraine is still not ruled out.

To justify this outrage, Putin has explicitly dredged up the most barbaric detritus of Tsarism. After the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks had liberated the enslaved nations of Tsarist Russia and granted them statehood and autonomy, up to and including the unconditional right of secession. They even created alphabets for the first time for previously solely vernacular languages. In stark rejection of this democratic tradition, Putin has explicitly resorted to Great-Russian chauvinism and Russian Orthodox medievalism by rubbishing Ukraine’s very national identity, dismissing it as an artificial construct “created by Bolshevik Communist Russia”, and adding the sinister comment: “We are ready to show you what genuine de-communisation means for Ukraine”. Meanwhile he is frantically hurling about insolent rationalisations, including a wish to “fight fascism” – this from the spider at the centre of a vast worldwide web of fascist and far-right conspirators, including his American stooge Trump.

Putin is motivated by a determination to enhance still further the right of plunder for Russia’s degenerate gangster plutocrats. His timing is prompted by the manifest loosening of the military grip of US imperialism, graphically demonstrated most recently by its rout in Afghanistan. But another motivation is his compulsion to assert his bravado as his authority begins to crumble at home. He is alarmed by the full-scale uprisings he has barely succeeded in suppressing in Belarus and Kazakhstan, Russia’s two closest allies; and at the growing discontent within Russia itself, which he rules solely by thuggery and fear. The invasion was met almost immediately with a flurry of protest. The Russian army is suffering unexpectedly high initial casualties, and there are signs of discontent from within the armed forces, including cracks within the general staff. These are ominous warning signs; incipient splits at the top are always evidence of a coming groundswell of discontent from below. Putin’s adventure in Ukraine could well prove as catastrophic to him personally as the war in Afghanistan was for Gorbachev. So our first emphatic conclusion must be: no excuses, no alibis, no hint of justification for Putin’s act of sheer banditry. 

We must equally expose the hypocrisy of the Western powers. The USA waged countless coups, invasions and wholesale wars to impose regime change on countries throughout the world from Guatemala to Vietnam to Iraq. The EU brazenly broke up Yugoslavia at the cost of massacres, ethnic cleansing and civil wars. In flagrant disregard of their previous assurances to Gorbachev in 1991, and of the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, they absorbed former Warsaw Pact countries and even former constituent parts of the USSR into NATO, bringing this explicitly hostile military alliance right up to the borders of their Russian rivals. They promoted “colour revolutions” in a range of countries surrounding Russia and formerly within its sphere of influence, including Ukraine, where they fostered the growth of the Azov Battalion and other openly fascist paramilitary forces.

The meddling of the Western powers in Ukraine has no other motive but the exploitation of its population and its economy. Still intent on swallowing up the rich agricultural, industrial and energy resources of the region and consolidating their strategic advantage, they are waiting for the Russian invasion to collapse, leaving them to pick up the spoils. Meanwhile, London is awash with roubles and infested with Russian billionaires, and the Tory Party thrives on their patronage. To call on Biden and Johnson to intervene in defence of democratic rights flies in the face of history.