New Worker Banner

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

UKRAINE REELING AFTER ATTACKS ON POWER GRID

by our Eastern European Affairs correspondent

THE RUSSIANS continue to pound Ukraine with daily rocket and drone attacks as their troops hold the line all along the western front. Civilians are being evacuated from Kherson in anticipation of a new Ukrainian push on the southern provincial capital liberated in the early day of the war and the Russian authorities briefly suspended their participation in the “grain” deal after a Ukrainian attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet off Sevastopol.

Ukraine is reeling under a hail of drone and missile attacks in the ongoing Russian effort, now into its third week, to degrade the Ukrainian national grid and disrupt its gas supplies. Puppet president Vladimir Zelensky says Russian forces have “seriously damaged” about 40 per cent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, in particular thermal power plants and hydroelectric power plants.

The missile strikes on the energy system were called “catastrophic” at an emergency meeting of the puppet government in Kiev last weekend. Power cuts have led to water-rationing and black-outs across the country. The power grid of Ukraine is on the brink of collapse with more than 40 key facilities hit on Saturday and Sunday.

Last week the Russians suspended their participation in the agreement that allowed for safe passage for Ukrainian grain exports across the Black Sea following massive drone attacks on Russian naval and civilian ships involved in the sea corridor. The Kremlin said the Ukrainian attack had been supported by British military advisers and many expected the Russians to mine the sea roads off Odessa in retaliation. But the Kremlin has agreed to restore the humanitarian corridor following appeals from Turkey and the United Nations and a pledge from the Ukrainian side not to use the corridor as a cover for military operations.

Meanwhile in Moscow the Russian government is considering restoring the old Soviet State Planning Committee to boost production. This new “GosPlan 2” committee would, however, be limited to state security and the defence sector as the post-Soviet bourgeois Russian constitution specifically states that the economy must adhere to market principles.

Russian communists, however, say that strategic planning is the key factor in developing the economy.

Yuri Afonin, the deputy leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), told viewers on Russia-1 TV that: “A strong economy is the basis for victory at the front, for strengthening defence capability and for future development.

“We must think and calculate our steps for years to come to avoid situations like the freezing of Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves in the West that so shocked our liberal economists in high positions. They say, this is not according to the rules of the world. We must understand that now there are no rules in the world.”

Back in the Donbas, Donetsk communists are working hard to speed their merger with the CPRF now that the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has joined the Russian Federation. Although the Donetsk communists backed the anti-fascist revolt that led to the establishment of the DPR in 2014, the communists were squeezed out of the DPR parliament by petty, sectarian politicians who constantly blocked the Donetsk communists from campaigning on their own independent platform.

Now the DPR, which retains its full name, comes under the constitution of the Russian Federation and these sectarian ploys no longer work.

The Communist Party of the DPR will become a regional branch of the CPRF and preparations for its founding conference are now in full swing.