By ERNIE GOTTA
Following the death of war criminal Henry Kissinger on Wednesday, Nov. 29, Russian President Vladamir Putin sent his condolences to Kissinger’s widow. In the message he praised Kissinger as a “pragmatic statesman” and an “extraordinary man,” and stated that he would retain “fondest memories of him.”
The praise should come as no surprise as Putin and Kissinger both viewed the world through an imperialist lens that aimed to subordinate the interests of weaker nations for the profit of their own capitalist class. For Putin this means gaining a deeper control of former Soviet spaces as well as expanding past those boundaries into the Middle East and Africa.
Dr. Volodymyr Ishchenko, a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität in Berlin, discussed the contradictory nature of post-invasion Russian society at a Nov. 1 New York University panel discussion at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. Dr. Ischenko explained that while there is a sense of patriotism among the well to do, and some semblance of stability among workers in the military industry, there is also a general notion that the war is criminal. Many, he said, just want it to be over.
Reports also show that the brutality of the war in Ukraine is in the beginning stages of driving forward a process of demoralization and discontent among a growing number of Russians and especially among troops on the front lines. As in any invasion and with any occupying force, working-class soldiers who are daily forced to commit brutal acts and confront the ongoing resistance of Ukrainian working people find themselves in a difficult moral situation.
To understand this phenomenon it’s helpful to think about the rebellion that occurred among the U.S. troops in Vietnam. The history of the soldier resistance in Vietnam can be viewed in the documentary film “Sir, No Sir!” by David Zeiger or you can read about it in the book by Fred Halstead, “Out Now!”. It shows how the resistance of a handful of soldiers can cascade into a broader mass movement. The movement that was partly led by soldiers, along with the resistance of the Vietnamese people, made it impossible for Kissinger and Nixon to wage the war.
It is difficult to fully understand the views of broad sections of Russian society because the repression against antiwar sentiment is heavy, in addition to new laws against the LGBTQIA+ movement. After nearly two years of an unjust war and occupation in Ukraine, what do these changes in Russian society tell us? What does this mean for the potential of a fightback against the brutality of the Putin regime? What does it mean in Ukraine to fight for self-determination? Can we continue to build an international solidarity movement that provides material support for Ukrainian workers and political support for antiwar Russians?
As we think about these questions, it is also important to remember that Russian imperialist aggression did not start in Ukraine. This article will first briefly look at several examples of recent Russian military aggression and expansion, leaving aside the decade-long war with Chechnya that ended in 2009 and the wars against Georgia in the 1990s and in 2008.
Since the attack on Chechnya, Russian troops have been forced to wage several other brutal campaigns to expand the ability of the Russian capitalist class to extract profit from weaker nations. In Ukraine, the casualties have been especially heavy. Reuters reported (Dec. 1), “A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, a source familiar with the intelligence said on Tuesday.”
As Putin’s new call for 170,000 additional troops to bolster the military will bring more opposition, we ask the question, is it possible that the Russian working class—war weary and fed up with repression—can build an effective political protest movement in Russia?
Russia in Syria
Since 2015, Russia has continued bombing Syria to help prop up the dictator Assad, who has faced a popular uprising across the country. A recent article in Al Jazeera states, “Russian and Syrian attacks in October focused on cities and villages in the countryside of Idlib and Aleppo. This escalation resulted in the total deaths of 66 civilians, including 23 children and 13 women, and left more than 270 people injured, with 79 children and 47 women among the casualties, according to a Syrian volunteer emergency rescue group.”
Russia has consistently flexed its military capability in Syria, another indication that Putin has been serious about earning respect as the leader of a new imperialist power. For example, the extension of runways at the Russian base at the Khmeimim airfield allowed for the deployment of long-range bombers with nuclear capabilities. In collaboration with Syrian authorities, the Russian military has conducted round-the-clock patrols at the port of Latakia due to “terrorist threats.”
These patrols coincided with joint military exercises between Russian and Syrian air defense units. Russian military power will also be on display worldwide. Al-Monitor reported in 2022, “On Jan. 20, the Defense Ministry of Russia announced naval exercises involving more than 140 ships in all the zones of responsibility of the fleets. This means that by February [2022] almost all combat-ready ships, submarines, boats, and support vessels will be simultaneously and synchronously withdrawn to training ranges in the Mediterranean, North Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, Northeast Atlantic, and Pacific Ocean.”
Russia in Belarus
Belarus has provided an important staging area for the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine shares a 700-mile border with Belarus. The Ukrianian capital of Kyiv is closer to Belarus than to Russia. Joint military exercises between Russia and Belarus allowed 30,000 Russian soldiers to be deployed in preparation for the invasion.
Following the destruction of the Soviet Union, Belarus stayed within the Russian sphere of influence, while countries like Lithuania and Poland would eventually join NATO. Russia has a major influence over the economy and military of Belarus. Belarus depends heavily on Russian subsidies. The Washington Post writes, “The cornerstone of Minsk’s economic dependence on Moscow is subsidized crude oil. Russia supplies it to Belarus at below-market prices. Belarus, in turn, refines it and sells it internationally. This profit accounts for a hefty part of Belarus’s gross domestic product.”
Russia also played an important role in 2020 with the threat of a special military intervention to help prop up Belarusian President Lukashenko. When mass strikes and protests threatened to topple the government over controversial election results, Putin stepped up and announced he was ready to deploy the military if necessary. Lukashenko used this support to brutally repress the movement and jail labor leaders and political opponents. NPR notes, “More than 37,000 people were detained in the year ending May 2021, according to a new report by the United Nations.”
Russia in Kazakhstan
One month prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army was deployed to Kazakhstan at the request of President President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to stop an uprising of thousands of working people. The strikes and mass protests started near oil fields that bring billions of dollars to the Russian and Kazakh economy each year. The protests were sparked by the rising prices of fuel, corruption, poverty, and inequality.
The movement threatened the stability of a region where Russia, China, and the U.S. compete over resources. The use of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military organization dominated and led by Russia, helped secure the Putin-aligned Kazakh regime.
The New York Times wrote, “The intervention by the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian version of NATO, is the first time that its protection clause has been invoked, a move that could potentially have sweeping consequences for geopolitics in the region. The turmoil in Kazakhstan has once again exposed the vulnerability of the strongman leaders the Kremlin has trusted to keep order. It has also presented Russia with yet another opportunity to reassert its influence in its former Soviet domain.”
Russian troops show signs of demoralization in Ukraine
Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine could be a page out of Kissinger’s playbook in Vietnam. The recent documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” highlights the brutality of the early days of the occupation. One doctor filmed during an operation on a child hit by shrapnel from a bomb says, “Film how these [censored expletives] are killing children. Show this Putin bastard the eyes of this child and all of these doctors who are crying. That’s how he ‘saves people.’ Show it. It’s good that the press is here. Keep filming.”
Despite the recent failure of a counteroffensive by Ukraine and less than adequate military supplies, fierce opposition by a largely working-class volunteer army has caused heavy losses on the Russian side and slowed their initial military advance. Nearly 50,000 Russian troops have died in Ukraine, and morale among the soldiers is dropping. Thousands are refusing to report after being conscripted, and thousands more are deserting from the military. Raids have become a daily occurrence as “draft dodgers” try to find ways to hide or flee the country.
Tactics like feigning mental instability to avoid military service are reminiscent of stories of American youth in the 1960s and ’70s trying to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War. The New York Times reports, “In Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, Ivan Bryzgalov, 22, checked himself into a psychiatric hospital—a common tactic—to try to shake off the law enforcement officers who he said had arrested and beaten him for briefly marching in a holiday parade wearing a Ukrainian T-shirt.”
The Putin regime has raided public spaces and homes while trying to find those who have not reported for duty. The Instagram page for a group called “Go By the Forest” claims to have assisted more than 20,000 army deserters. In a post on Dec. 4, they write, “November will be remembered for raids—according to our statistics, the number has reached 73. The record day was recorded on November 30, when we were informed of 9 raids at once in Moscow.” Their posts describe all types of abuses from the Russian authorities, including students and workers with military deferrals being taken into custody, fined, and beaten, and passports and cell phones confiscated.
There is also a potential for broader radicalization among the soldiers as the death toll rises and demoralization grows. According to AP News, “In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand (code) of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s—people who refuse to fight. As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.”
One soldier told AP, “I imagined that there, on the other side, there could be young people just like us. And they have their whole lives ahead of them … Bones, tears—all the same, they are the same as we are.”
There’s no question that the atrocities committed by Russian troops during the invasion and occupation against workers just like themselves will have a lasting traumatic effect. The antiwar struggle in the U.S. took an important turn when 43 GIs at Fort Hood, Texas, were arrested for staging a sit-in, refusing to be deployed to oppress antiwar protestors during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. Many of these soldiers had seen the horrors of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam first hand and were not going to point their weapons at antiwar workers and students in the U.S. An African American soldier explained their perspective. “Most of them have seen action,” he said. “They have done the job they have been trained to do. And we were sent back here to Ft. Hood to control the situation in the streets. We—the Black soldiers at Ft. Hood, the ones who are aware—are not going.”
Another more recent examples reflect the attitude of many U.S. soldiers in and returning from Afghanistan or Iraq. Fred Linck, an Iraq veteran and member of Workers’ Voice, during his 2018 Connecticut Senate campaign, had this to say about his experience as part of the U.S. occupying force, “I came to see that being in Iraq, we were making things worse, not better. We were not making anyone safer. And that the things I had done were going to hurt for a long time. And that the scars I will carry are small in comparison to those of the society we decimated in the Middle East. As my time in the military came to a close, I started asking myself: For all the blood spilled in Iraq and Afghanistan, did we make anyone’s lives better? For all the money spent did we make this world a more just or equitable place? For the 22 suicides that veterans commit each day from the trauma of fighting an unjust war, is anyone safer? No. But the rich made billions of dollars.”
The Ukrainian resistance to occupation, the demoralization of Russian troops, and a nascent antiwar sentiment movement across Russia could create a situation that simultaneously brings out the masses in opposition to the war and creates the space for soldiers to refuse orders and stop fighting. In September 2022, Reuters wrote, “Security forces detained more than 1,300 people in Russia … at protests denouncing mobilization, a rights group said, hours after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s first military draft since the Second World War.”
The article continued, “The Vesna opposition movement called for protests, saying: “Thousands of Russian men, our fathers, brothers and husbands, will be thrown into the meat grinder of the war. What will they be dying for? What will mothers and children be crying for?”
Today, military wives and families are playing a leading role in criticizing Putin and calling for soldiers to be demobilized. It’s difficult to determine their exact position on the war, especially facing harsh repression. On Dec. 5, 2023, Reuters interviewed Maria Andreeva, a wife of a deployed soldier. “Our position at the start was: Yes, we understand why it is needed, we support it, we occupied a rather loyal position,” she said. “But now the position—including mine—is changing because we see how we are being treated, and how our husbands are being treated.”
The article continued, “Protests planned by the women did not secure the authorities’ approval to go ahead. The women have been accused of being backed by Western-based dissidents and opposition parties—slurs without foundations, Andreeva said. Their ‘Way Home’ Telegram channel has 23,000 members.”
A Dec. 25 Guardian article pointed to the history of women and military wives leading antiwar protests in Russia. The article states, “Russia has a history of female-led protests during wartime. Wives and mothers led an anti-war movement during the first Chechen war in 1994 that helped turn public opinion against the conflict and played a role in the Kremlin’s decision to stop the fighting. The women were organized in well-run groups such as the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia (CSM), which had hundreds of regional hubs across the country, and, crucially, their message was aired on Russian television at a time when media was not fully subordinate to the state.”
Today our task in the international workers’ movement is to build solidarity with the Ukrainian fight against Putin’s invasion and occupation. We encourage readers to look at campaigns like “Workers’ Aid to Ukraine,” organized by the International Labour Network for Solidarity and Struggles.
We also have to build solidarity with the Russian antiwar movement and those troops who leave the army and flee Russia, the conscripts swept up in raids who refuse to report for duty, the military families who oppose the abuse in the army and increasingly oppose the war, and oppressed communities that are coming under repression as a result of the war. There are groups all around the world—like Russians Against the War in Sweden, Go by the Forest in Tbilisi, Georgia, and Defense Zone in Germany—that oppose the war in Ukraine, organize protests, provide logistical and legal support to soldiers fleeing the war, and build solidarity with political prisoners who are facing oppression because of the war.
Photo: Police arrest antiwar protester in St. Petersburg. (Dmitri Lovetsky / AP)