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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

UKRAINIANS TO FREEZE FOR NATO AND THE FASCISTS?

by our Eastern European Affairs correspondent

RUSSIAN ROCKETS and drones continue to pound Ukraine’s power network as temperatures drop below freezing and millions of Ukrainians struggle to heat their homes amidst power cuts and blackouts caused by a relentless assault on their national grid, which the Zelensky regime now calls another Russian “war-crime”. The puppet regime is calling on the Americans to give them Patriot anti-missile batteries to stave off the onslaught and on the front the Russians have launched a new offensive that has broken through the Ukrainian lines in central Donbas.

Supplying Patriot systems would be a major escalation. Former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, now deputy head of Moscow’s security council, warned that if deployed they would become a legitimate Russian target. And although the Pentagon stresses that there are no current plans to supply Patriots from the USA to Ukraine, the Zelensky regime is lobbying the Germans to hand over their own Patriot batteries to the Ukraine armed forces.

Meanwhile the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, has confirmed that he discussed Ukraine and nuclear issues in a meeting with CIA Director William Burns in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in November.

Elizabeth Rood, the chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Moscow, told the Russian media that Burns “did not negotiate anything, and he did not discuss a settlement of the conflict in Ukraine” at the meeting that was called at the request of the USA.

Naryshkin says: “For my part, I confirm Ms Rood’s statement. Additionally, I can note that the most frequently used words at this meeting were ‘strategic stability’, ‘nu­clear security’, ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Kiev regime’.”

Back in Moscow, Communist MP Yuri Afonin says that according to the Polish media some 1,200 Polish mercenaries have been killed fighting for the Ukrainians since February 2022. Speaking on Russian television, the Russian communist said this would suggest that thousands more had been wounded in the fighting.

“If there are 1,200 dead, then, therefore, there are still four to five thousand wounded, and how many Polish mercenaries are there in Ukraine? It turns out that at least 10,000, and, possibly, several tens of thousands,” Afonin said.

“Ukraine and Poland today are the main reserves of Western imperialism in the struggle against Russia. But their potential is also being depleted: the waves of mobilisation in Ukraine have already exhausted almost all the more or less suitable male population, and in Poland, in the end, a pragmatic approach will inevitably prevail. Ordinary Poles will ask themselves: why are our children dying for Zelensky and company?”

Afonin, the First Deputy Chair of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) noted that the struggle that Russia is waging today will be go on for a long time. When the hostilities in Ukraine end, this struggle will not end.

“The West will try to destroy us for many more years, or rather many decades: to destroy our economy with sanctions, to provoke separatist movements and the territorial disintegration of Russia. In order for us to survive in this long and hard struggle, we must change a lot in our country,” he said.

Yuri Afonin said that this situation must be changed “To sustain a long struggle, our society needs to become much more socially just and cohesive.

“The state should get its hands on much larger resources. In this regard, it is necessary to refer to the provisions of the programme of the communists.”