Ukraine Reloaded

This article provides the background to a war that could have been avoided and which has now put the world on a nuclear footing last seen 60 years ago.

On 24 February Russia finally invaded Ukraine after weeks of speculation. But how the hell did we get to this? This piece outlines the historical background behind the conflict that takes account of a valid and pertinent Russian perspective.

Russia believes it is under threat from NATO. In order to understand this predicament, it is necessary to look back to the chaotic period following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia was described as an economy under transition as it began the slow difficult transition to a market based economy, with heavy reliance on hydrocarbon resources, that has underpinned its economy. During this period, corruption was rife and a group of oligarchs took advantage of the chaos and became very rich in the process, much to the detriment of ordinary Russians.

The breakup also had considerable geopolitical ramifications. This revolved around Russia’s relationship with NATO, German reunification and the former Warsaw Pact. There were unresolved issues that failed to properly exorcise the Soviet ghosts. They’re haunting presence now stalks Ukraine. These are the issues that will be explored in this article.

‘New’ NATO

During negotiations in 1990 on German reunification, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker stated: “NATO will not move one inch further east.” In an interview in 2014, Mikhail Gorbachev brought this statement into context. He said:

The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a singe Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context.

He added:

The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.

For Russia, Bakers comment meant no further expansion into Eastern Europe. NATO denies any pledge was ever made. Stalemate? A 2016 paper published in International Security, Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion, details the negotiations that took place following the collapse of the Berlin wall on November 9 1989, based on previously unreleased documents. Russia’s claim that the US indicated no NATO expansion has been consistently raised by Russian leaders to this day. Even Boris Yeltsin, who was sympathetic to the west, stated in a letter to President Bill Clinton that:

“the treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany signed in September 1990 [. . .] excludes, by its meaning, the possibility of expansion of the NATO zone to the East.”

There’s no dispute over Bakers comment. Indeed Baker agreed with Gorbachev when he stated that “a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable,” during talks in February 1990. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher concurred. This was the foundation on which German reunification negotiations were based on. Although there was no formal or legal agreement on NATO expansion, the discussions that took place amounts to what was basically a ‘gentleman’s agreement’.

A key element in the reunification talks was the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), known as the Helsinki Final Act. It was signed on August 1, 1975. This Agreement laid the foundations for détente and created a period of stability during the cold war. This also led to arms reduction initiatives, particularly the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. CSCE was superseded by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1994. The paper notes a comment from the US State Department that:

“Gorbachev will be open to using CSCE to guarantee pan-European security and diminish the need for military alliances or Germany’s membership in NATO, [but] is likely to insist on establishing parameters for Germany itself.”

The Soviet response was that CSCE was “laying the basis for substantive guarantees of stability” in Europe. The US took the position that CSCE would be complimentary to NATO.

On December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved. The change was dramatic and chaotic. Many central and eastern European nations turned to the EU for economic support, with some becoming members of the EU. Gorbachev, who came to power on 11 March 1985, instigated a broad process of reform within the Soviet Union known as ‘perestroika’. This was accompanied by increased transparency or ‘glasnost’, catalysed by a major disaster in the heart of Ukraine (see below).

Blowing the lid of the Soviet regime created instability within Russia, as the beans from a bureaucratic and incompetent system exploded over the country:

all previously withheld information concerning the activities of the State and its administrative bodies could henceforth be disclosed and publicly debated. The lifting of the taboos imposed by the Communist regime, of which intellectuals and liberated dissidents took full advantage, allowed critical judgement to be passed on the history of the Soviet Union and on its political, economic and social structure.

There were similar reactions in other countries, with a push towards democratic reform. Leading the charge was Poland. Although the transition was largely peaceful, violence in Romania and the former Yugoslavia overshadowed the process. It was the establishment of the Commonwealth of Sovereign States by Russia, Belarus and Ukraine that formally dissolved the Soviet Union, along with Gorbachev’s position as President of the USSR. Filling in the power gap was Boris Yeltsin, who had just recently been elected president of Russia (more on him below).

Gorbachev formally stepped down on Christmas Day, and the Russian Federation was established the following day. A new era had arrived. But the elephant in the room is NATO itself. The cold war had effectively begun early in the morning in New Mexico USA on July 16, 1945.

The Bomb

[O]n the morning of July 16, in the New Mexico desert 120 miles south of Santa Fe, the first atomic bomb was detonated. The scientists and a few dignitaries had removed themselves 10,000 yards away to observe as the first mushroom cloud of searing light stretched 40,000 feet into the air and generated the destructive power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. The tower on which the bomb sat when detonated was vaporized.

As everyone knows, the bomb was dropped on Japan - not once but twice - the official narrative being that using such extreme force was the only way to guarantee Japan’s surrender at the end of world war 2. But there is also evidence that Japan was ready to surrender before the bomb was dropped. This has for many years been a contentious issue. By developing the bomb the US wittingly or not, kickstarted the arms race and sent the Soviet Union into high defence mode with a genuine fear that perhaps they might be next on the nuke list.

In 1949, NATO was formed. In 1956, following the establishment of the Warsaw Pact in 1955, the Pentagon hatched a plan to nuke the USSR. In 2015, the US National Security Archive published a series of declassified documents that outlined a detailed plan for a major nuclear strike:

The SAC [Strategic Air Command] study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and “friendly forces and people” to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the “systematic destruction” of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw. Purposefully targeting civilian populations as such directly conflicted with the international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on people per se (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby).

The same archive reviewed declassified documents on the nuking of Japan. It notes:

The bombings were the first time that nuclear weapons had been detonated in combat operations. They caused terrible human losses and destruction at the time and more deaths and sickness in the years ahead from the radiation effects. And the U.S. bombings hastened the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb project and have fed a big-power nuclear arms race to this day.

It points out that prior to the nuclear attack, the US used the tactic of firebombing Japanese cities with incendiary bombs. For some historians:

the urban fire-bombing strategy facilitated atomic targeting by creating a “new moral context,” in which earlier proscriptions against intentional targeting of civilians had eroded.

This created a problem in which:

the Air Force had a policy of “laying waste” to Japan’s cities which created tension with the objective of reserving some urban targets for nuclear destruction.

Oswald C. Brewster, a project engineer with the Manhattan Project, warned in a letter to President Truman about the ramifications of using the bomb (Doc.14):

That goal, he feared, raised terrifying prospects with implications for the “inevitable destruction of our present day civilization.” Once the U.S. had used the bomb in combat other great powers would not tolerate a monopoly by any nation and the sole possessor would be “be the most hated and feared nation on earth.”

Another note (Doc. 22) involving scientists engaged in the project, which included Nobel Prize winner James Franck, outlined concerns. They rejected:

a surprise attack on Japan and recommended instead a demonstration of the bomb on the “desert or a barren island.” Arguing that a nuclear arms race “will be on in earnest not later than the morning after our first demonstration of the existence of nuclear weapons,” …that an “atomic attack against Japan would `shock’ the Russians”.

Doc. 27 provides an interesting insight into nuclear arms control as early as 1943. Known as the Quebec agreement, this:

stipulated that the neither the United States nor Great Britain would use the bomb “against third parties without each other’s consent.” Thus, an impulse for unilateral control of nuclear use decisions predated the first use of the bomb.

It was recommended that the agreement be revoked to allow the bomb to be used.

Doc.71 outlines how Truman was informed of the effects of the bomb on Hiroshima, ‘with Truman recognizing the “terrible responsibility” that was on his shoulders.’

Docs 92 - 94 outlines further reports on the aftermath of the bombs, particularly the effects of radiation on people. Initially dismissed as propaganda, a US delegation to Japan following its surrender confirmed the findings (emphasis added):

A month after the attacks [Lieutenant General Leslie Richard] Groves’ deputy, General Farrell, traveled to Japan to see for himself the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His vivid account shows that senior military officials in the Manhattan Project were no longer dismissive of reports of radiation poisoning. As Farrell observed in his discussion of Hiroshima, “Summaries of Japanese reports previously sent are essentially correct, as to clinical effects from single gamma radiation dose.” Such findings dismayed Groves, who worried that the bomb would fall into a taboo category like chemical weapons, with all the fear and horror surrounding them. Thus, Groves and others would try to suppress findings about radioactive effects, although that was a losing proposition.

Doc.96 alludes to Truman’s comments on using the bomb:

“You know the most terrible decision a man ever had to make was made by me at Potsdam. It had nothing to do with Russia or Britain or Germany. It was a decision to loose the most terrible of all destructive forces for the wholesale slaughter of human beings. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, and I weighed that decision most prayerfully. But the President had to decide. It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities, and I still think that they were and are. But I couldn’t help but think of the necessity of blotting out women and children and non-combatants. We gave them fair warning and asked them to quit. We picked a couple of cities where war work was the principle industry, and dropped bombs. Russia hurried in and the war ended.”

Estimates of US causalities were apparently over estimated.

What these documents don’t outline is the actual cover-up that followed the bombings. This report from Greg Mitchell, who has researched the topic extensively, outlines how the US suppressed film footage of the aftermath of the bombings, showing graphic details of widespread devastation. He notes:

While the suppression of nuclear truths stretched over decades, Hiroshima sank into "a hole in human history," as the writer Mary McCarthy observed. The U.S. engaged in a costly and dangerous nuclear arms race. Thousands of nuclear warheads remain in the world, often under loose control; the U.S. retains its "first-strike" nuclear policy; and much of the world is partly or largely dependent on nuclear power plants, which pose their own hazards.

Here’s a trailer for the film Atomic Cover-up:

Despite US restrictions, a year after the bomb, journalist John Hersey reached Hiroshima. This article covers his report. It points out that:

When the U.S military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the American government portrayed the weapons as equivalent to large conventional bombs — and dismissed Japanese reports of radiation sickness as propaganda.

He published a 30,000-word essay in the The New Yorker that:

was fundamental in challenging the government's narrative of nuclear bombs as conventional weapons.

There was no information released about the radiological effects from the bomb. Information was closely monitored as reporting on the bombings was restricted. But accounts leaked out. This concerned the US Government:

because the U.S. had just won this horribly hard-earned military victory, and were on the moral high ground, they felt, in defeating the Axis powers. And they had avenged Pearl Harbor. They had avenged Japanese atrocities throughout the Pacific theater in Asia. But then reports that they had decimated a largely civilian population in this excruciating way with an experimental weapon — it was concerning because it might have deprived the U.S. government of [its] moral high ground.

In summing up, the article notes that Hersey’s piece:

just really imbued the event with a sobriety that really hadn't been there before. And also it just completely deprived the U.S. government of the ability to be able to paint nuclear bombs as conventional weapons. ... [Hersey] himself later said the thing that has kept the world safe from another nuclear attack since 1945 has been the memory of what happened in Hiroshima. And he certainly created a cornerstone of that memory.

In conclusion, during the temporary US occupation of Japan following surrender, the military conducted a thorough investigation of the effects of the bomb and its aftermath, shooting film footage of ground zero and survivors, and documenting radiation sickness. All this was suppressed. There can be no doubt that in the immediate years following the bombings, the US fully understood what they were dealing with. Yet despite this, an insane arms race was sparked, where both sides continued to develop even more powerful nuclear weapons with the full knowledge of what they were capable off.

From the Soviet perspective, extensive intelligence networks operating in the UK and US were able to monitor the bombs’ development. The Soviets had been running their own bomb program. This was accelerated following the bombing of Japan. It’s likely that the Soviets would have been aware of some of the after effects of the bombings.

So why the arms race? Its quite clear that the US and the Soviets distrusted each other despite having been allies. Russia had lost 20 million people during the war, the greatest casualty rate of any country during the conflict. The country had been devastated. Joseph Stalin had no intentions of allowing the west to harbour a strategic advantage with such a powerful weapon. It’s also worth noting here given the current context, that there were factions within Ukraine who supported the Nazis and that this influence persists to this day.

Despite the horror and devastation from the Japan bombs, more powerful weapons emerged along with a first strike strategy. Going back to the 1956 plan, a list of ‘urban-industrial areas’ were ‘identified for “systematic destruction.”’ Moscow and Leningrad were top targets. The bombs that would be used were at least 100 times as powerful as the Japan nukes. The sort of devastation they could cause doesn’t require much imagination. The strategy claimed that ‘intentional’ targeting of civilians would not take place. But the flawed logic of that assumption is obvious, as so devastatingly illustrated in Japan. In short, what was being planned was virtually a carbon copy of what was actually done in Japan, the goal being maximum destruction and maximum shock - the ultimate in shock therapy (see below). For the record, the US nuclear stockpile by 1961 had reached 22,230.

The North Atlantic Treaty

On the 4 April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, aka the Washington Treaty at the time. It is based on the UN charter Article 51. The UK laid the groundwork:

British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin spoke of the need for a “treaty of alliance and mutual assistance”, a defensive alliance and a regional grouping within the framework of the UN Charter.

The United States would only agree to provide military support for Europe if it were united. In response, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom signed the Brussels Treaty in March 1948, creating the Western Union. Designed to strengthen ties between the signatories while providing for a common defence system, the Brussels Treaty ultimately became the basis for the Washington Treaty.

Its original remit was to form a buffer against Soviet expansionism, or as the the first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay proclaimed, “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down".

Initially NATO’s influence was relatively benign. But with the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, that dynamic changed. This was followed by the incorporation of West Germany into the alliance on 9 May 1955. That prompted the formation of the Warsaw Pact in direct response. The Iron Curtain was now firmly in place.

Fast forward to the collapse of the Soviet Union and NATO’s future hung in the balance. In a sense, NATO’s future took on a life of its own. The former Warsaw Pact countries, freed from the shackles of Soviet control, saw NATO as a framework for security, in case Russia returned to prominence in the future. In the chaos that ensued after the cold war, security was priority. There was also the prospect of economic support from the EU and eventual membership. In addition, NATO was shifting its emphasis more towards a political alliance rather than purely military. There was of course the issue of NATO expansion. But ironically Russia for a period played an active role within NATO.

To smooth international relations, NATO created the Partnership for Peace program (PfP) in 1994:

This program was open to all of the former Warsaw Pact countries and the rest of Europe, and was designed to open larger collaborations toward overall peace and stability in Europe.

Russia gained special consideration within PfP, given its unique geopolitical circumstances. PfP was not a formal arrangement, and did not provide non-members much access to the alliance or its decisions. It was, however, a recognition that NATO could not act unilaterally in Europe, especially outside its area.

The following map shows the situation in 1994:

European Nato Members, 1994 (blue); Present NATO members which were formerly PfP members (green); PfP members (orange); States which desired PfP membership (red)

Over time though Russia drifted away from NATO as various conflicts and political disagreements created a conflict of interest. Declassified documents published by the US National Archives shed light on ‘What Yeltsin Heard’:

Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that U.S. officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership for Peace was the alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to it, while simultaneously planning for expansion after Yeltsin’s re-election bid in 1996 and telling the Russians repeatedly that the future European security system would include, not exclude, Russia.

All this adds to the debacle over NATO expansion. Although Yeltsin welcomed the idea of the PfP, NATO expansion was still a red line that should not be crossed.

By the time Putin came to power at the turn of the century, the inevitability of the initial enlargement of NATO was generally accepted. But that changed when the US started deploying anti-ballistic missile bases in eastern Europe. Russia:

saw these deployments as actions directed against it, believing that the United States sought to gain strategic advantage over Russia by eliminating Russia’s nuclear deterrent threat.

Under Putin, Russia’s political and economic prowess became stronger. As such, Russia was able to wield more influence. Then Ukraine became a focal point during the period of political unrest from 2004 onward as well as an invasion of Georgia in 2008. This set back relations with NATO, culminating in the annexation of the Crimea that was triggered by the 2014 coup.

Ukraine - The real story behind the crisis

NATO may have succeeded in bringing a degree of stability to a group of countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the current conflict in Ukraine is linked to NATO expansion. And not everyone agrees that NATO should have remained as a bona fide entity. During the 1950’s, the peace movement emerged as civil society became aware of the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Spearheading the movement in the UK was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was formed in February 1958. Right from the outset, CND has been critical of NATO:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is a nuclear-armed military alliance which is an obstacle to a peaceful world and global nuclear disarmament. It currently comprises 30 member states, including the United Kingdom. NATO was first established during the Cold War, and since its inception has expanded both its sphere of influence and the scope of its activity, destabilising international relationships as it does so.

The CND briefing goes on to say:

As the countries of eastern Europe embraced free market economics and multiparty democracy, the US moved rapidly to integrate them into its sphere of influence via NATO. This would prove to be an effective strategy, as witnessed by the support of those countries for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It outlines how NATO expansion exacerbated tensions with Russia and how:

the increasing NATO presence in the region has been a contributory factor to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

NATO is against the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The establishment of nuclear weapons in eastern Europe violates the NPT:

NATO’s nuclear policies conflict with the legal obligations of the signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Articles 1 and 2 of the NPT forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapon states, but US/NATO nuclear weapons in Europe are located in non-nuclear weapons states. The alliance rejects a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and maintains that nuclear capabilities remains a core element of its strategy.

But its not just eastern Europe that NATO is expanding into:

NATO and Colombia concluded a partnership agreement in 2018, ‘with a view to strengthening dialogue and cooperation to address security challenges’. This despite the fact that the Latin American states and the Caribbean are a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone under the Tlatelolco Treaty, agreed in 1967.

Its sums up that the UK and other countries:

should be opting for diplomatic solutions to complex political problems, not participating in an alliance that is backing Russia and China into a corner through military expansionism. This will not help stop a war, instead the danger is it will start one.

This article from Counterpunch sums up the role of NATO as a vehicle for US imperialism. It points out that:

Russia is less expansive than NATO and is a lesser threat to global liberty. NATO’s global military activity has been well-documented and critiqued. To focus on Ukraine, it is important to note that NATO should not be viewed as a legitimate critic of imperialist action.

It adds:

The United States, NATO’s largest member, maintains global dominance with military force. On February 18, 2022, Foreign Policy published an article by Matthew Kroenig titled “Washington Must Prepare for War With Both Russia and China.” In this article, Kroenig stated that:

“First, Washington should increase defense spending. Contrary to those who claim that constrained resources will force tough choices, the United States can afford to outspend Russia and China at the same time. The United States possesses 24 percent of global GDP compared to a combined 19 percent in China and Russia. This year, the United States will spend $778 billion on defense compared to only $310 billion in Russia and China.”

This puts a clear perspective on just where the global balance of power resides. In short, the US spends more than double the combined defence budgets of both Russia and China. Yet both are cited as major US security threats. But double standards are the norm as this makes clear:

America’s ‘defence’ of Ukraine is entirely self-interested – all it takes is a glance at its relationship with Palestine to demonstrate that the American state does not legitimately have an interest in the right to national self-determination.

It puts the conflict into clear perspective:

It should go without saying that NATO’s imperialism does not mean that Russia is benevolent. The Russian state is repressive. Contrary to lofty comparisons between Putin and Stalin, it is also capitalist. In particular, it continues to embody the kind of gangster capitalism that America supported in the country in the Yeltsin years.

And it’s the capitalism angle that will be covered in the next section.

Shock Therapy

The writing was on the Berlin wall long before it fell. Indeed the first word that appeared was ‘Solidarity’. That was the trade union that emerged in Poland from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in 1980.

Solidarity (Solidarność) logo

The protests that took place in Poland during the ‘80’s would form part of an apparently unrelated series of events that would change the world on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In August 1980, Lech Walesa became the face of Solidarity. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union he subsequently became president of Poland in 1990. In May of the previous year, Margaret Thatcher was elected British Prime Minister. Two months following Walesa’s emergence, Ronald Reagan was formally elected president of the USA. Thatcher and Reagan would become the architects of a new world order, taking the form of a global economic system and ideology that would become known as neoliberalism. It underpinned a concept known as ‘shock therapy’ or disaster capitalism, whereby countries rendered weak could be taken advantage of, with the population and its leaders in a state of shock through economic collapse, war, or natural disaster. The fall of the Soviet Union opened up the prospect of a gold mine for investment and economic expansion - the neoliberalisation of the east.

The doctrine of free market economics developed by Milton Freedman at the Chicago school of economics formed the basis of the ideology. Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine outlines how Poland became the first post-Soviet country to be subjected to economic reform and how the rest of the former Soviet Union would follow suit, including the greatest prize of all - Moscow.

Strikes and stoppages took place around Poland as people rushed to become members of Solidarity. It became a forum for denouncing the systemic corruption and totalitarianism of the incumbent communist order. This was a threat to Moscow. It wasn’t long before a major clampdown took place and the union was forced underground. But it continued unabated and with the rise to power of Gorbachev and the reforms that followed, Solidarity returned to prominence in 1988. The changes taking place in Poland weren’t lost on Thatcher and Reagan. As Klein noted, they:

saw an opening, a crack in the Soviet armor, even though Solidarity was fighting for the very rights that both leaders were doing their best to stamp out at home.

In August, Solidarity swept to power. Even though the elections were rigged and the communists took a majority of the vote, they lost control and Wałęsa eventually became president in December 1990. But the euphoria was short lived. The economy was in free fall. Poland approached the IMF for help. But:

No such aid was on offer. Now in the grips of Chicago school economists, the IMF and the US Treasury saw Poland’s problems through the prism of the shock doctrine. An economic meltdown and a heavy debt load, compounded by the disorientation of rapid regime change meant that Poland was in the perfect weakened position to accept a radical shock therapy program.

Solidarity’s aim was to shift the Polish economy towards a Scandinavian type of moderate socialism. But the state of the economy tied the new Governments’ hands. Eventually a deal was brokered with the IMF - with strings attached:

Poland became a textbook example of Friedman’s crisis theory: the disorientation of rapid political change combined with the collective fear generated by an economic meltdown to make the promise of a quick and magical cure - however illusionary - too seductive to turn down.

Like a row of dominoes, Poland was first in line. Two months after the IMF prescribed its medicine, the Berlin wall came down next door. The MTV flag was planted in the rubble - a sign of things to come?

On the 11 March 1985, Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He would eventually instigate reforms. An unprecedented disaster in the heart of Ukraine though would act as the catalyst for change. A year later on the 26 April 1986, No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant underwent a catastrophic meltdown:

improper testing at low-power, resulted in loss of control that led to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. As safety measures were ignored, the uranium fuel in the reactor overheated and melted through the protective barriers.

The disaster exposed the rot in the Soviet system. The subsequent response was a disaster in itself and a total farce. Emergency crews sent in to deal with the disaster were oblivious to the risks. Many died from radiation exposure. Five personnel involved in running the plant were prosecuted the following year in a criminal trial. The disaster caused a radioactive cloud to migrate over Europe. Traces of contamination were found in Scandinavia, the UK and other countries within Europe. Belarus and Russia were the worse affected. In 2006, Gorbachev stated in an article:

The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. Indeed, the Chernobyl catastrophe was an historic turning point: there was the era before the disaster, and there is the very different era that has followed.

The disaster ignited Ukrainian nationalism. This wasn’t helped by initial cover-ups by the Soviet authorities. But this wasn’t something the Soviets could sweep under the carpet for long:

The relationship between Ukrainians and Russians has long been contentious. Many Ukrainians regard Russians, who make up half of the population of the Soviet Union, as oppressors intent on assimilating them and eradicating their culture and identity. By contrast, many Russians prefer to view themselves as paternalistic elder brothers, bringing with them the advantages of their own proud heritage.

Given the history, many Ukrainians would see the 2022 invasion in the same light. Indeed unrest with Ukraine had bubbled under the surface since the Stalin era:

The persistence of Ukrainian dissent is underscored by the fact nearly 40 percent of all known political prisoners in the USSR are Ukrainian, more than two times their proportion in the overall Soviet population.

When the Yeltsin era arrived, the prize was up for the taking. Prior to this Gorbachev was put on the ropes. With Poland sucked into the Chicago vortex, the message was that ‘the Soviet Union had to follow Poland’s lead on an even faster timetable’. That’s what happened when Gorbachev was displaced by Yeltsin, in what Klein describes as:

…one of the greatest crimes committed against a democracy in modern history.

What followed was ‘the Pinochet option’, making reference to the CIA engineered coup that brought General Augustus Pinochet to power. The Chicago inquisition was imposing the same formula in Russia. The result was two coups and a wrecked economy. On August 19:

the communist old guard drove up to… the Russian parliament. In a bid to halt the democratization process, they threatened to attack…. Amid a crowd of Russians determined to to defend their new democracy, Yeltsin stood on one of the tanks and denounced the aggression as “a cynical right wing coup attempt”.

The tanks pulled out and Yeltsin emerged as a hero. But when he took control he intended to entrench his power. He promised to save mother Russia if he was granted special powers and a year to perform an economic miracle. Parliament agreed. But it wasn’t a miracle, it was shock therapy that would destroy Russia, with a little help from his American friends. The change happened so quickly and suddenly that the country was taken by surprise. But that’s the whole idea of shock therapy, to stay ahead of the curve so that nobody can catch up and realise what’s happening.

The country turned against Yeltsin, but he had no intentions of letting go his special powers, which had now expired. He declared a state of emergency, with the west standing firmly behind him and a sensationalist media accusing the Russian parliament of being communist hardliners, suffering from ‘a Soviet mentality - suspicious of reform, ignorant of democracy, disdainful of intellectuals or ‘democrats’’.

Yeltsin then initiated a power grab by abolishing the constitution and dissolving parliament. Parliament then voted overwhelmingly to impeach him. Bill Clinton was behind Yeltsin all the way. This sparked the second coup:

Despite the fact that Russia’s constitutional court once again ruled Yeltsin’s behavior unconstitutional, Clinton continued to back him, and Congress voted to give Yeltsin $2.5 billion in aid. Emboldened, Yeltsin sent in the troops to surround the parliament and got the city to cut off power heat and phone lines to the White House parliament building.

Given the standoff, the only way forward was an election. But then news broke that Solidarity in Poland had just been kicked out. Elections would be risky because:

too much wealth hung in the balance: huge oil fields, about 30% of the world’s natural gas reserves, 20% of its nickel, not to mention weapons factories and the state media apparatus with which the Communist party had controlled the vast population.

Yeltsin then played the Pinochet option, destroying the parliament building and engaging in a brutal clampdown on protesters:

Communism may have collapsed without firing a single shot, but Chicago-style capitalism …required a great deal of gunfire to defend itself - … to defend Russia’s new capitalist economy from the grave threat of democracy.

The Chicago influenced apostles then frantically worked to neoliberalise Russia in their creators image. Enter the oligarchs who stepped in to exploit the gold rush. What was unique about Russia was that the neoliberal conversion was contained within Russia and it was Russian elites who made the real killing. Although western elites made the best of investment opportunities that had arisen, the US imperialists would make sure that such opportunities would not be squandered again, as was later confirmed in Iraq. The result of all this was Yeltsin losing support of the Russian people. His position was teetering on the edge of collapse. But there’s nothing better than a good war to bring things back into perspective. Russia began a brutal clampdown in Chechnya and with a lot of help from the oligarchs, he won the 1996 election.

But the party was about to end rather dramatically. In 1998, the Asian financial crisis hit. It found Russia vulnerable. With the economy in ruins the country fell apart- and so did Yeltsin. On top of that, Chechen ‘terrorists’ were suspected of a swath of bombing attacks on Russia. Waiting in the wings was a ‘steely and vaguely sinister Vladimir Putin’. Russia’s former KGB man was about to step into the limelight. He followed the terror attacks with a bombing campaign against Chechnya towards the end of 1999. With Yeltsin spiralling downhill with alcoholism, Putin was poised to become president of Russia:

with the war in Chechnya foreclosing serious debate, several oligarchs engineered a quiet handover from Yeltsin to Putin, no elections necessary. Before he left power, Yeltsin took one last page out of the Pinochet playbook and demanded legal immunity for himself. Putin’s first act as president was signing a law protecting Yeltsin from any criminal prosecution.

The net result of the rapid destruction of Russia was an unprecedented inequality that still persists today. But rather than draw attention to the corruption and greed endemic within the Chicago school gospel, the US media focused on corruption within Russia. As Klein sums up:

The real problem with the blame-Russia narrative is that it pre-empts any serious examination of what the whole episode has to teach about the true face of the crusade for unfettered free markets.

The problem though is that Putin’s reforms since coming to power has been limited. The Russian economy has grown and the people are grateful for the relative stability that eventually arrived following the Yeltsin era. But not everyone has benefited. Inequality is still high and oligarchs still remain embedded within the system. But the lessons from history are clear and deep suspicions of the west are understandable. As soon as Russia slipped from the empire’s grip, attention was turned to Ukraine. In the last article I analysed the infiltration of US corporate interests in Ukraine and US interference in the politics of Ukraine. Western politicians like to take advantage of fascist elements within countries. Ukraine was no exception. The presence of Neo-Nazi factions created the perfect situation for a classic division strategy.

The Nazi connection

The Azov Battalion would play a pivotal role in Ukraine, with its roots in Ukraine’s past collaborations with Nazi Germany. It started with Operation Barbarossa on July 17, 1941, with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic spearheading the offensive against Russia. Many Ukrainians and others from neighbouring countries saw the Soviet system as repressive and accepted the Germans as liberators. Some of these factions would contribute to the holocaust, with around 3,000,000 Ukrainians and other non-Jews executed. A key player was Stepan Andriyovych Bandera, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist who worked as a Nazi agent leading the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN):

In the early months of World War Two OUN leader Andriy Melnyk alongside Stepan Bandera were recruited by a Nazi intelligence organization to commit espionage and sabotage against the Soviet Union. They agreed to this work under the pretext that Ukraine would be given autonomy following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The OUN was even supportive of the extermination and forced relocation of Jews, Tatars, Roma people, and Poles in Ukraine.

Bandera, despite the atrocities he committed during the war, was awarded ‘the title of Hero of Ukraine which is the highest title any Ukrainian citizen can receive,’ by Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko in 2010.

During the Nazi occupation, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU) was set up. This was the civilian occupation regime that ran the country. The politics of today’s Ukraine stems from the RKU.

The Euromaidan protests in 2014 were taken over by two far right organisations, Svoboda (“Freedom”) and Right Sector. Members associated with Svoboda have promoted Nazi ideology. In December 2012, the European Parliament was highly critical of Svoboda stating that “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles," appealing "to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with" Svoboda. In 2014, US ambassador in Kyiv, Geoffrey Pyatt, stated that he was "positively impressed" by the party’s role in parliament, that, "They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides." Jewish organisations condemned Svoboda. A group of 30 Israeli politicians serving in the Knesset accused Svoboda of "openly glorifying Nazi murder" and "Nazi war criminals". In May 2013 the World Jewish Congress described the party as "neo-Nazi" and called for European governments to ban them.

According to a May 2016 report by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions on his official visit to Ukraine from 8 to 18 September 2015:

While the majority of the “volunteer battalions” are said to have, from a military perspective, now been incorporated into the formal structures of the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (the National Guard or otherwise), there remain a number of potentially violent militias, such as the Right Sector, that acted seemingly on their own authority, thanks to a high level of official toleration, and with almost complete impunity, both in the Donbass region and in wider Ukraine.

The report revolved around ‘concerns regarding the absence of accountability for violations in the context of demonstrations in 2014 and during the conduct of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.’ It recommended to the Ukrainian Government that:

ultranationalist groups and other armed militias, such as Pravvy Sektor, Svoboda and “Self-defence”, should be declared illegal and effectively disarmed, disbanded and prosecuted, or brought under the control of the law.

Leading Svoboda is Oleh Tyahnybok, a far right extremist who promotes hate. He pushed for the recognition of the OUN and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In April 2005, Tyahnybok co-signed an open letter to President Yushchenko calling for a parliamentary investigation into the "criminal activities of organized Jewry in Ukraine."

Then there is the Azov Battalion, which was consolidated further after the Euromaidan protests, by Right Sector. Azov formed in May 2014. It was subsequently incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine in November and expanded into a regiment. It has become well known for its association with Nazi symbols.

Leading the unit was Andriy Biletsky, who stated that:

the Ukrainian nation’s mission was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”.

In April 2015, a military exercise called Operation Fearless Guardian
began. It purpose was to train the Ukrainian military. This resulted in the dispatch of 290 American paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. This training was supposed to include Azov, however a row in Congress forced a decision to rescind training to the unit. Rep. John Conyers addressed the House of Representatives:

“I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions.”

(MANPADs are portable surface-to-air missiles that can be used against low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters.)

However, as reported in The Nation, the amendments were overturned just a few months later following pressure from the Pentagon. A detailed explanation follows:

The Pentagon’s objection to the Conyers-Yoho amendment rests on the claim that it is redundant because similar legislation—known as the Leahy law—already exists that would prevent the funding of Azov. This, as it turns out, is untrue. The Leahy law covers only those groups for which the “Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.” Yet the State Department has never claimed to have such information about Azov, so funding to the group cannot be blocked by the Leahy law. The congressional source I spoke to pointed out that “even if Azov is already covered by Leahy, then no there was no need to strip it out of final bill.” Indeed, the Leahy law cannot block funding to groups, no matter how noxious their ideology, in the absence of “credible information” that they have committed human-rights violations. The Conyers-Yoho amendment was designed to remedy that shortcoming.

Considering the fact that the US Army has been training Ukrainian armed forces and national guard troops, the Conyers-Yoho amendment made a great deal of sense; blocking the avowedly neo-Nazi Azov battalion from receiving US assistance would further what President Obama often refers to as “our interests and values.”

The article sums up by saying:

What is clear is that by stripping out the anti-neo-Nazi provision, Congress and the administration have paved the way for US funding to end up in the hands of the most noxious elements circulating within Ukraine today.

A declassified UK article offers additional input to the debate, in an interview with international relations expert David Speedie. He sits on the American Committee for US-Russia Accord. Of points made, an important element in the conflict is the Minsk agreements. Kyiv refused to implement Minsk leading to an impasse. Fighting has been taking place in the east since 2014, involving outfits such as Azov along with other Ukrainian forces. According to Speedie:

“Unless the pro-Russian forces in the Donbas are firing on their own, most of the casualties have been on the side of the East [i.e. rebels], including civilians.”

Since the build up of Russian forces on the Ukraine border, the UK and US has been pouring arms into the country, which are “raising the stakes”. Then there is the question of nuclear deployment. In 2019, President Trump pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that banned these weapons in US and Russia. This immediately increased tension between the US and Russia. Speedie cited the the ‘Austrian solution’ as a possible way forward:

in 1955 Nato and the Soviet bloc agreed Vienna could stay neutral.  

“And 65 years later that’s still in place,” Speedie observed. “So the idea of Ukraine as a buffer state between Nato and Russia is not the worst idea in the world, especially if hostilities end.  

He added:

“So much could be done for Ukraine if it’s not a pawn being torn in two directions between these two geo-political giants. If it were done properly there really isn’t a loser here. Ukraine would have investment from all sides, it would have reasonably harmonious relationships, it would have a set up that recognises its internally schismatic makeup.”

What happened after Yeltsin?

Commenting on the post Soviet era NATO, Speedie noted, “The Russians feel like it’s a case of the triumphalist West flexing its muscles after winning the Cold War,” and:

“They had a decade under a president [Boris Yeltsin] who was not only ineffectual but in my opinion down right destructive. Russia lost 70% of its economy, the demographics were horrendous in terms of life expectancy, communicable diseases. Russia in the 90s was a disaster area.

“And then you have a president [Putin] who brings a degree of stability. Ok he’s not a card carrying Scandinavian democrat, but many Russians are looking for stability rather than some sort of US imposed idea of liberal democracy.”

For a while that was the case. But the oligarchs hadn’t gone away. Neither did the gangsters. So who is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin?

After graduating in law from Leningrad State University in 1975 (now Saint Petersburg) he served in the KGB for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He went into politics in 1991 at the end of the cold war. He became part of Yeltsin’s administration in 1996, assuming the position of prime minister in August 1999, before dislodging Yeltsin a few months later, becoming president.

His first term as president was highly successful, GDP increased by 72% and Russian self-assessed life satisfaction rose significantly. This was helped by oil and gas price hikes at the time, which has been vital to the Russian economy. However change was in the wind. With allegations of fraud during the December 2011 Duma elections, the scene was set for the 2012 presidential elections. According to OSCE observers, there were irregularities in the election:

“There were serious problems from the very start of this election. The point of elections is that the outcome should be uncertain. This was not the case in Russia. There was no real competition and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt,” said Tonino Picula, the Special Co-ordinator to lead the short-term OSCE observer mission and Head of the delegation of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

This would mark the beginning of an increasing concentration of power in Putin’s hands. This was largely on the back of the failures of the past that made Putin. In other words he was in the right place at the right time. Putin’s personality and image has been carefully crafted by the Kremlin. A paper published in the Journal Politics & Policy, outlines these issues, making this observation:

In Russia, personalism and the institutionalization of electoral advantage coexist in a mutually reinforcing structure to ensure electoral victory. Mr. Putin used his popularity to mold institutional arrangements that limited competition and enhanced electoral resources, including his personalist appeals. This mutual dependence between institutions and personalism distinguishes the Putin regime from the Yeltsin epoch. The Yeltsin administration ceded significant power to the oligarchs and regional bosses, essentially decentralizing the capacity to build personalist appeals. This process led to bossism and machine politics at the regional level that sapped the power and authority of the central state. In contrast, the Putin regime concentrated that power in Mr. Putin in his capacity of both president and prime minister by strengthening the power vertical. More generally, since taking office, Mr. Putin has renovated and strengthened the institutional structures to support rather than constrain his personalist appeals.

The trigger that began the protests against Putin and his ruling party can be traced to the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, on 7 October 2006. She exposed war crimes in Chechnya. Since then Putin has continued to consolidate his power, particularly more recently by amending the constitution to extend his presidency to 2036.

But the power nexus in Russia is fragile as this paper, Oligarchs and Corruption in Putin's Russia: Of Sand Castles and Geopolitical Volunteering, reveals. Power in Russia is concentrated within a tight political circle and a handful of oligarchs, with Putin in the centre, with little accountability. There is a wider orbit of oligarchic influence that may find its way into the inner circle. The wider impact of this precarious arrangement is widespread extreme inequality in Russia as the country’s wealth becomes concentrated within the hands of a few. The figures are revealing:

The top 10 percent of Russian wealth-holders own 89 percent of total household wealth; the corresponding figure is 73 percent in China and 78 percent in the US, the only two countries with more dollar billionaires (but lower wealth concentration) than Russia.

Since the Yeltsin era, capitalism in Russia has came under increasing state control. This is the interface where the oligarchs compete and where extreme wealth can be extracted. It has led to widespread corruption whereby:

Public procurement in many sectors, including infrastructure, defense, and healthcare, has seen regular overcharging of the state treasury by private suppliers, sometimes at prices equal to double or triple times the market rate and with kickbacks to the state officials involved.

Embedded within the system is the so-called Silovarchs, former security agency personnel, some of whom have become part of Putin’s inner circle. Intense competition has led to widespread scandals and economic vulnerability within Russia.

Vital to Russian interests is the oil and gas industry, which effectively props up the Russian economy. But even here:

Russia’s state control over abundant energy resources generates easy rents, fuels corruption, and reduces pressures to diversify the economy. Through vested interests, corruption reinforces the reliance of Russia’s budget on revenues from oil and gas. Such reliance has historically held the country hostage to the global energy markets.

The paper makes this intriguing point:

In Russia, corruption is not so much cement as it is water holding together a sand castle. To remain effective as a source of systemic cohesion, corruption will require active top-down “management,” lest the castle that Putin built be torn apart by conflict among predatory elites, collapse economically, or be undermined from below. Too little or too much water, and the sand won’t hold.

Because of the lack of legal security at home, the oligarchs shift their wealth abroad. There’s a saying that, ‘there are no billionaires in Russia, only people working as billionaires’. This pulls the oligarchs into the orbit of west, which is only too happy to launder illicit Russian money. There are some prominent examples:

In 2010, Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank, paid $500,000 to Bill Clinton for a speech whose timing coincided with the review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US of a sensitive purchase by Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency, of a Wyoming uranium mine.

Of the money being laundered in the west:

Funds obtained through bribery, stolen from the Russian treasury, or plundered from the Russian bank deposits find safe haven in the West through luxury investments and, most importantly, through secret bank deposits.

Its not just Russia though. Money laundering has become an immense dark industry. Ironically the Kremlin wants checks and balances on this flow of illicit money abroad. The US has taken steps to legislate against such activities, but the biggest money laundering centre in the world is the City of London.

The Legacy of the 2008 Financial Crisis and a Decaying System

It seems that the US and its allies have spotted Putin’s sand castle in the distance, creating some ripples. Now with a full scale invasion, the inexorable rising tide of US global hegemony has washed over the sand. Putin has taken the biggest risk of his political career. The spin of the wheel is not going his way and the fragile Russian economy is floundering with the imposition of sanctions. We’re now in a situation similar to the Cuban missile crisis. Once again the nuclear menace has returned to stalk us.

In a follow up article I’ll analyse the ramifications of the invasion and how the world is responding.