Russo-Ukrainian War. Another controversy with the PTS and its international current

We return to the analysis below., the characterization and policy of the PTS and its Trotskyist Fraction for the Fourth International against said war, position that we consider wrong as a whole, expressed again in a recent note by comrade Claudia Cinatti published in La Izquierda Diario[1].

Pablo Vasco

Let's start with an elementary methodological question: for every Trotskyist or even Marxist militant, The analysis of any given political situation always has the class struggle as its organizing axis.. That is to say, break down as best as possible how the relationship of forces between the social classes in conflict is found and what its most likely dynamics is. Leaving this element aside or minimizing it leads to economic analysis and characterizations or superstructural geopolitics., but to a greater or lesser extent alienated from the real social structure and therefore erroneous.

It seems to us that this substantive methodological flaw makes the note under debate, which strongly invalidates their conclusions. Dice, for example: If every war is waged beyond the strictly military, in the case of the war in Ukraine the extent of the battlefield is global and encompasses the economy, politics, geopolitics and even the class struggle”. Like what"even", as if the class struggle were the least important component in this and every other situation, Even if it's a war? The class struggle is well present there and in multiple forms: within Russia and Ukraine, imperialist invaded the first and semicolonia invaded the second, and also within NATO countries.

But we are not only facing a dehierarchization of newsroom. Cinatti's note is entitled“The logic of escalation and the multiple fronts of the war in Ukraine”. And indeed there the war is analyzed frommultiple fronts: «The third decade of the new century thus projects a new form of cold war…Compared with the strength it had in the first cold war, energetic, military, geopolitical… but not sinceThe front decisive: the class struggle. Definitely, the author attributes Russian military “tactical setbacks” to“The Ukrainian army supplied by the United States and NATO decided to launch a counteroffensive” and to“weapons generously provided by the Pentagon”. That is to say, unilateralism limited to the military aspect.

Even in a war, the military factor is not the key

If military power were the determining factor for the victory of this or that side, all the results of the armed conflicts would be sung in advance. With that criteria, given its obvious superiority in terms of the most modern and sophisticated weapons, the imperialist United States would be invincible for all eternity. Fortunately for humanity and for the socialist revolution, this has not been, it is not and will not be.

To cite a categorical case of inequality of military force, the triumph of Vietnam over the occupation of Yankee imperialism in 1975 has no centrally military explanation, but politics, of the class struggle: heroism, high morale and popular support of the Vietcong communist guerrillas versus the low morale of the Yankee troops and the massive anti-war mobilizations within the invading North America itself. closer in time, with its peculiarities, this was also expressed in the harsh US military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The supply of NATO weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces is an undeniable fact, given the imperialist interest in strengthening its interference in the entire region. However, that provision is limited. Even Cinatti acknowledges that“Biden has not crossed the 'red line' of equipping Ukraine with precision weaponry that can reach Russian territory.". So, What is the reason for the advance of the Ukrainian troops and the parallel retreat of the Russian offensive?? Among the more than 2.500 words of his long note, the author does not make even the slightest reference to the tenacious resistance of the Ukrainian population against the invasion of their country. At the beginning, Putin foresaw a lightning Ukrainian surrender, take the capital kyiv and install a puppet government there. Could not. Then it occupied the Russophone areas of the Ukrainian south-east -Donetsk, Luhansk, Jerson y Zaporiyya- and mounted the cheating plebiscite of sung result. It didn't work out either, because it does not have effective troops to consolidate control. And then it stalled and now it's going backwards, so he had to appeal to 300.000 reservists, with the consequent increase in protests in Russia despite the harsh repression. In these last days, his missile strikes on civilian facilities in Ukraine express more desperation than offensive solidity and no one can rule out that Putin appeals to use his nuclear arsenal, which obviously would unleash very serious consequences.

In addition to the issue of weapons, There is another underlying explanation for the Ukrainian advance: the high morale of its troops and population, who rightfully defend their territory, in stark contrast to the low morale of the Russian troops and population, that more and more feel said war as what it really is: completely oblivious to his interests. German general and military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, who the PTS like to quote, highlighted the qualitative importance of the moral components in a war by considering thatThey constitute the spirit that permeates the war as a whole and in its first stage establish a close affinity with the will that moves and leads the mass., practically emerging with her, because the will is itself a moral quantity.[2].

• A proof of low Russian military morale is the abandonment of supplies, including state-of-the-art T-90 tanks, some even with their instruction manual unopened. According to reports from early October, "Ukrainewould have captured 460 russian battle tanks, 92 self-propelled howitzers, 448 infantry fighting vehicles, 195 armored vehicles and 44 multiple launch rocket systems, although the real number is probably higher.[3]. And it's a disbanded retreat, without first destroying or rendering this weapon useless even knowing that it will remain in the hands of the enemy.
• “I refuse to continue my service in the special operation on the territory of Ukraine, for lack of permission and moral exhaustion”, says the letter from a military section chief to his superiors, found in the city of Izyum after the flight of Russian troops[4].
• “Recent videos on social media…show Russian recruits shivering, lighting fires in the fields at night in sub-zero temperatures: ‘That will not be a situation where you have high morale during the winter’. Another video shows reservists from the Omsk region asking when they will be paid; local officials say they don't have the funds…”[5]
• “‘I get criticized for driving people into depression with my news… well, the timing is such that there will be no good news in the near future', Aleksandr Kots wrote, a pro-Kremlin journalist traveling with the Russian army... 'We don't have enough people... fatigue has set in... there are no more forces left to hold on to the won territories.'”[6]
• There are similar symptoms coming even from the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary battalion created by the millionaire Prigozhin whose members earn between 4.000 Y 5.000 We raise funds with member contributions[7]. In Russia itself, the departure of hundreds of thousands of citizens to other countries so as not to be summoned, and the fact that the Kremlin recruits among imprisoned criminals in exchange for lowering or annulling their sentences, confirm the growing social discontent towards the war.

logically, the morale of the Ukrainian troops defending their country to liberate it from the invasion of a foreign imperialist power and, instead, Russian forces' conviction slips, sent by Putin to die in a war that is not their own. To this basic factor, which is the level of morale and political conviction on the opposing sides, the PTS note does not make the slightest reference. It is the consequence of minimizing the class struggle, to which is added its erroneous characterization regarding the very nature of the war.

what kind of war, what tasks for revolutionaries

“What is the actual situation?”, the PTS wonders in his note. and it is answered: “Impossible to know for sure”. Then just acknowledge the obvious, “The Ukrainian offensive has changed the dynamics and has accelerated the rhythms of the war”, and only anticipates ambiguities: “A new very fluid political-military situation has opened up, a tense transitory phase…”

Actually, what is new about war is that it strengthens one of the open hypotheses: the possibility that Ukraine could win and Russia lose. For now, apart from the reluctance towards Russia's strategy by its partners China and India, only the Chechen dictator Kadyrov and now his Belarusian counterpart Lukashenko promise him some military support, while many of the governments of the countries in the region of Russian influence distance themselves: Armenia, Tajikistan, increases, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

from now, no one has the crystal ball. But one could be much more “certain” if at least the opinions of trade union and political organizations in Ukraine were taken into account., Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe that are independent of their governments and opponents, starting with the organizations of Trotskyism. But the PTS and its International Trotskyist Faction, and especially lacking any implantation in the region, They don't even bother to check.

Behind that foreign sufficiency to a revolutionary method is his erroneous characterization of the war, that according to the note“it has increasingly taken on a character of a ‘proxy war’ of the United States and NATO against Russia through the Ukrainian side”. proxy war means a proxy war, for the account or on the land of others. That is to say, the PTS is almost on the verge of defining it as a war between imperialisms, which is a blunder, in fact functional to Putin.

nothing to see. As we have been holding it from the LIS, this war combines two conflicts: the inter-imperialist confrontation between Russia and NATO-USA to gain influence and the just war of national liberation or self-defense of the invaded Ukraine against the invading Russia. Of course, the necessary internationalist solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance in no way implies political support for the Zelensky capitalist government. Upside down: it is necessary to denounce that he takes advantage of the war situation to attack the rights of the working class and favor the capitalists.

As our colleague Sergio García points out in another note of controversy with the PTS: “In wars there is no room for propaganda outside of the actual military struggle., nor for supposed neutralities or defeatisms within the invaded country, that only lead to favoring the invading power. Nor can a revolutionary party be built within Ukraine without being an active part of the workers' and popular resistance so that it can triumph over its oppressors in Putin's Russia.. Just a distant look, western left, may not see that this location is essential for a revolutionary policy throughout Eastern Europe. And those who do not position themselves in this way cannot advance in having revolutionary organizations throughout this immense region.. Happily the LIS with this policy, in a difficult situation, continues to organize workers and youth, moving forward with our ukrainian section, Belarusian and with colleagues in Russia today persecuted by the regime.”[8]

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[1] https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/La-logica-de-la-escalada-y-los-multiples-frentes-de-la-guerra-en-Ucrania

[2] Clausewitz, Carl Von; On War (About the war); Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey. 1984. Book threeOn Strategy in General (About the strategy in general), Chapter one.

[3] https://www.larazon.es/internacional/20221006/qw7yksfsrfgr3oq3poppkjby4a.html

[4] https://www.tf1info.fr/international/guerre-ukraine-russie-contre-offensive-ukrainienne-des-lettres-de-soldats-russes-confirment-l-epuisement-moral-des-troupes-2232514.html

[5] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/10/06/ukraines-military-success-is-reshaping-russia-as-well-as-the-war

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/05/attempts-to-play-down-retreats-ukraine-russia-war-kremlin-military-failure

[7] https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2022/10/07/moral-desploma-wagner-ejercito-privado-putin-guerra-rusia-ucrania-trax/ 

8 https://lis-isl.org/2022/09/30/cambios-en-la-guerra-de-ucrania-motivos-consecuencias-y-debates/