11 April: A superpower war between Russia and the U.S.

UKRAINE WAR TRUTH 40: A superpower war between Russia and the U.S., not Russia and Ukraine

Superpower rivalry 2: Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine is in essence a war with the U.S., but neither of the two superpowers for the time being wants to call it that way to avoid an unstoppable escalation. Proxy wars avoid a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, which might quickly escalate across the nuclear threshold, which everybody is still a bit afraid of. Keep in mind that nuclear-tipped ICBMs might be launched in anger as one of the two commanders-in-chief could get mad and give the fateful order before his entourage can stop him. Neither Russia nor the U.S. – for their own reasons – want the war to end quickly, while European politicians are much too enamored of “war hero” Zelenskiy and following the U.S. lead to do anything about it.

The U.S. is arming Ukraine as much as possible without provoking Russia too much and is imposing sanctions to destroy the Russian economy. The Ukrainian people are entitled to defend themselves against Russian aggression, but delivering ever more lethal weapons may help them win a battle, but not the war. Sanctions are also weapons of war. Those imposed by Russia on the U.S. are designed to bring Russia to its knees and even make the Russian people suffer so much as to ignite an uprising to overthrow the Putin regime. This is also unlikely to succeed, besides inflicting unmentionable suffering on the Russian people, who themselves are exploited and oppressed by the Tsarist regime. But faced by ever increasing Western hostility, the Russians will be much more inclined to rally around the regime than to oppose it, at least initially, until the pain becomes unbearable. The U.S. wants regime change in Moscow and even the dismembering of Russia into several weaker states.

Russia doesn't want the war to stop until it has achieved its aims. Those include demilitarization and de-Nazification. The Ukrainian army is still fighting back, so demilitarization has not been achieved and there are still no doubt many armed fascists infiltrated in the anti-Russian resistance, so the Kremlin can't declare victory in de-Nazification. The Russian military is now focussing on conquering the Donbass ostensibly to protect the Russian speakers – but it seems many of them identify more with Ukraine. It is also conceivable that Russia won't stop even if it conquers the Donbass and wants to try again to attack Kiev and impose its rule on the whole of Ukraine. Putin doesn't seem to consider Ukrainians as a separate people, but as part of the Russians and could therefore prolong the war to try to conquer the whole country and incorporate it into Russia. Putin wants to go down in history as the Tsar who reversed the fall of the social-imperialist Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian people wants the killings and the suffering to end, but Zelenskiy is still basking in the glamor of a war hero and totally playing the Western card. Peace talks are bogged down, and nobody – besides the Chinese – is pushing for an early successful conclusion. Nobody knows how long the war in Ukraine will last, but the U.S. and Russia have just started their war for supremacy. Russia can't win, but if U.S. imperialism is not stopped in its tracks, it will move on to attack its ultimate enemy: China.