Volodymyr Artiukh: The Western Left doesn’t understand Putin or the world outside the US / Tatyana Margolin & Yelena Litvinov: Putin is trying to silence his critics
Amid Russia’s shelling of Kharkiv, the limits to what we can learn from you are clear. Your knowledge was produced under the conditions of American hegemony, which has reached its limits at Russia’s blood-red lines. The US has lost its ability to represent its interests as common interests for Russia and China. It cannot enforce compliance using military power, and its economic leverage is shrinking. In spite of what many of you claim, Russia is not reacting, adapting or making concessions anymore. It has regained agency and is able to shape the world around it.
Russia’s toolkit is different from that of the US. It relies on brute force rather than on soft power and economy. But brute force is a powerful tool, as you know from the US’s own behaviour in Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan and all over the globe. Russia has mimicked the coercive infrastructure of America’s imperialism, if not its liberal democracy and free market.
But Russia’s mimicry of US imperialism does
not mean dependence. Russia has become an autonomous agent. Its actions are
determined by its own internal political dynamics, and the consequences of its
actions are now contrary to Western interests. Russia shapes the world around
it and imposes its own rules in the same way the US has been doing, albeit
through other means. The Russian warring elites are able to turn their
delusions into the facts on the ground, to make others accept them despite
their will. Russia’s delusions are no longer determined by the US or Europe.
They are not a reaction – they are a creation…
Why we need a new spirit of internationalism. By EDWY PLENEL; March 4, 2022
Noam Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction (Universalizing Resistance)
Putin can’t live with dissent – that’s why he’s trying to silence his critics
Vladimir Putin is currently fighting on two fronts: his brutal military assault on Ukraine is accompanied by relentless repression against any hint of opposition inside Russia itself. His crackdown on Russian civil society started a decade ago, and has peaked since the invasion. More than 7,000 anti-war protestors, including children, have been detained since the start of the invasion, on 24 February. It is also now illegal to use the words ‘attack’, ‘invasion’ or ‘war’ in any publication discussing – well, the war. ..
Rohini
Hensman: The Historical Background to Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine
Nesrine Malik: Let the horror in Ukraine
open our eyes to the suffering of war around the world
