U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles being fired from an undisclosed location in Ukraine, November 19, 2024. Photo: Lachen Pyshe Telegram via AP
Almost three years ago, Russian troops invaded Ukraine, a country in eastern Europe that shares a long border with Russia. The U.S. under Biden immediately began pouring massive amounts of arms and other forms of military support into Ukraine, and mobilized NATO countries to do the same. (NATO is a military alliance controlled by the U.S., whose members include most European countries. Over the past three decades the U.S. has led this military alliance to newly admit countries directly surrounding Russia.)
The war in Ukraine became a proxy war between the imperialist powers of Russia and the U.S. The Ukrainian people and soldiers have been used as cannon fodder to advance U.S. imperialist interests. This war has taken an enormous toll on the Ukrainian people. This week has seen an escalation that holds the danger of spiraling out into direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia—both imperialist powers with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over.
Biden Green Lights Missile Attacks Deep Within Russia
On November 18, Joe Biden announced that the U.S. had given its approval to Ukraine to use U.S.-made ATACMS1 missiles. These missiles enable Ukraine to launch attacks deep inside Russia, with weapons and technical know-how provided by the U.S. This is a qualitative escalation of the war, which holds the threat of even further escalations.
Ukrainian leaders have pleaded with the U.S to allow its use of ATACMS since shortly after the war began. Biden refused for about two years, arguing that he didn’t want to risk a direct conflict that could pull the U.S. into open warfare with Russia. Now, he is willing to make that gamble—and in doing so significantly raise the level of violence in Russia and Ukraine and increase the risk of the war engulfing more of Europe, and possibly beyond. Shortly after Biden’s announcement, similar missiles supplied by England began hitting Russian targets. And on November 19, the first U.S.-supplied ATACMS were fired into a military facility 70 miles inside Russia.
In response, on the same day—the 1,000th day of this gruesome war—Russia declared that from now on it will consider using a nuclear weapon if it is attacked by a non-nuclear country (like Ukraine) that is backed by a nuclear power (like the U.S. or England).
Russia’s ambassador to England said that England is "now directly involved” in war with Russia. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, declared that the U.S. and British missiles hitting Russia gave the war “elements of a global character... We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities. If anyone else doubts this, then they are wrong—there will always be a response."
Think about the extreme danger the U.S. is provoking, and how Russia is responding. These are imperialist gangsters not just refusing to back down but prodding each other into back-and-forth responses that hold the danger of the use of weapons that could wipe out human civilization.
The Imperialists' Interests Are Not Our Interests
For almost three excruciating years the war in Ukraine has been an inferno of death and destruction. Entire towns and villages have been obliterated, major cities bombed, farmland poisoned, water supplies made toxic. Heavily armed forces of Russia—one of the world's two top nuclear powers—and Ukraine, backed by U.S.—the other top nuclear power—are lined up against each other over a distance of roughly 1,500 miles. About one million Ukrainian and Russian people have been killed or maimed. Millions of Ukrainians have been “displaced” from their homes, and millions live as refugees across Europe. In the first half of 2024, three times as many people died in Ukraine as were born. Now Ukraine convulses with even greater violence, and the threat of nuclear war.
This war has nothing to do with “defending democracy,” as Biden, Harris, and others claim. A year after the war started, the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian got to the heart of the matter:
The U.S. and its “allies” are extensively arming Ukraine in order to use Ukraine as a means of furthering their own imperialist interests—weakening Russia (and those allied with it), while strengthening the “western” imperialist alliance (NATO) headed by the U.S., which is itself a vehicle for military aggression”.
(From “Sean Penn’s Delirious Madness And the Danger of Nuclear War”)
Adding to the explosive uncertainty in this situation is the fact that the Trump/Vance regime will take power in January. Both Russia and Ukraine are now furiously trying to make further advances in the war, consolidate gains they have made, and inflict as much damage as possible on their opponent, before Biden leaves office.
Both Trump and Vance have been harshly critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy.2 Whether, and how, the U.S. would continue this war under Trump is not certain. Also uncertain is the impact an end to the war without a clear-cut U.S./NATO victory would have on the NATO alliance, on Eastern Europe, and on world relations generally.
What is certain is that the interests of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, and the interests of humanity, are not represented in this conflict. As Bob Avakian said years ago:
The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests—they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelming majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for another way. (BAsics 3:8; BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian)
[R]ight now, the danger of war between nuclear armed imperialist powers is once again increasing, with the intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China, and particularly now the war in Ukraine, which began with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia but quickly turned into a war in which the U.S. and Russia are (so far) indirectly fighting each other, with the U.S. (and its “allies” in NATO) heavily arming and essentially directing the Ukrainian forces, utilizing Ukrainian soldiers as “cannon fodder” in this war with Russia.
All this powerfully illustrates the literally life and death importance of my statement that:
We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.
From Bob Avakian’s social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #42, “Imperialism—and Imperialist War: What is, and is not, its fundamental motivation, nature and role, and how it can be finally ended.”
A Seismic Escalation
The use of U.S.-supplied ATACMS by Ukraine was the spearpoint of a series of intensifying moves and counter-moves, an “escalatory spiral” in the Ukraine war. Other developments include:
November 17—Russia launched massive drone and missile strikes across much of Ukraine. Kyiv, Ukraine’s largest city, was hit particularly hard. So was Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. These attacks are intended to terrorize civilians and severely damage Ukraine’s ability to generate power as the brutal Ukrainian winter approaches.
November 19—The Biden administration announced a new military shipment of $7 billion to Ukraine, including drones, ammunition, and mortars. This is in addition to the $275 million the U.S. has pledged to deliver before Biden leaves office.
November 20—Biden said the U.S. is sending massive amounts of anti-personnel land mines to Ukraine. These mines have been renounced and condemned by more than 160 countries who have signed the “Mine Ban Treaty” because of the direct and long-term danger these weapons pose to innocent civilians. Neither the U.S. nor Russia signed this treaty. Ukraine is already the most heavily mined country in the world.
November 20—Reports indicated that some of the 10,900 North Korean troops recently arrived to support Russia have begun participating in battles against Ukrainian forces.
November 20—Two underwater telecom cables in the Baltic Sea were reportedly cut. The cables are used in high-level communication among NATO members in Northern Europe, which considers the Baltic Sea a “NATO lake.” European officials said the damage was an act of “sabotage.” It came weeks after the U.S. issued a warning against the possibility of undersea sabotage of NATO facilities by Russia.
November 21—Ukrainian military officials said they are “95% sure” Russia used an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to hit a target inside Ukraine. ICBMs are a cornerstone of nuclear war preparations by the U.S. and Russia.3 They are capable of carrying nuclear bombs to hit targets thousands of miles away. They have never been used in war, and Russia denies it used an ICBM against Ukraine.
November 22—The Ukrainian government canceled meetings of its Parliament for the first time ever. It said it did this because it feared Russian bombing attacks.
November 22—The British defense secretary concluded that the front line in the war is now “less stable” than it has been since the war began in February 2022.
By November 22, CNN summed up that events of the past week marked a “seismic escalation” of the war in Ukraine.