The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 28th April 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 28th April 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Russia has condemned the UK’s decision to send depleted uranium (DU) shells to Ukraine, saying the move marks an “all out escalation” after the British Ministry of Defence confirmed the radioactive weapons were already in Kiev’s hands. The Russians say they now control over 90 per cent of Bakhmut and the Wagner forces say that the numbers of Ukrainian deserters is on the up and up as the Russian mop up operation enters its final stage on the front-line city of the Donbas.
More and more Ukrainian soldiers are giving up the fight. According to the Wagner Group, they are dropping their arms and running away after being told to fight to the death in Bakhmut. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Russian ‘foreign legion’ that offers convicts pardons in return for six months service in the Donbas, says “revolts have begun among the servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces in Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka. They are dropping their arms, rising and leaving”.
Meanwhile Brazilian president Lula da Silva has renewed his call for an end to the fighting during top-level talks with the Portuguese leadership in Lisbon last weekend.
Lula said that it was necessary to "choose a third way" to build peace for the conflict in Ukraine. "I don't want to please anyone. I want to build a way to bring the two (Russia and Ukraine) to the table," he said.
In a joint declaration, Lula and Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed their commitment to international law, the UN Charter, and peaceful resolutions of conflicts. They said Portugal and Brazil support the full functioning of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, and signed by Russia and Ukraine in July 2022 to establish a maritime humanitarian corridor for grain and fertiliser export from the two countries.
At the United Nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrapped up his month-long presidency of the Security Council with a call to move the world forum’s headquarters from New York to a neutral city in the Global South following the refusal of the USA to issue visas to accredited Russian journalists to cover their country's presidency of the UN Security Council.
Last week the Sunak government confirmed that the UK has already started delivering DU ammunition for the Challenger 2 tanks Britain is shipping to Ukraine and that no attempt would be made to track where the weapons are used.
Depleted uranium is the main by-product of uranium enrichment and it is a chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal. This dense metal is used in munitions for its penetrating ability and as a protective material in armoured vehicles. Air, soil, water and vegetation could potentially be contaminated and affected by its residues.
The Russians have denounced the UK for “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity” in supplying these DU shells to the Zelensky regime that, they say, are likely to “cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainians and inflict “tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex” in the region.
The Kremlin said that: “It has by now become self-evident that the West intends this country to become not only an anti-Russian military ‘shooting range’, but also a radioactive landfill – with all the ensuing grave consequences for the health of local residents and the environment in the region.”
Russia’s envoy to Britain, Ambassador Andrei Kelin, warned that DU munitions will be a “terrible thing… for the agriculture and for the people” of Ukraine, saying radioactive residue could contaminate the country’s water and soil “for at least six generations”.