the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 26, 2024
As the war enters its 3rd year, Ukrainian President Zelensky and his top military generals are now looking to draft another half million men into the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian Parliament has been debating whether to lower the draft age from 27 to 25. The reason they have not done that so far is because there are so few Ukrainian men who are in their 20s. This is a consequence of the economic crisis that began in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke apart and former Soviet states, like Ukraine, became independent. As a result of the economic collapse, many Ukrainian families could not afford to have children and many young Ukrainians began leaving the country to look for work. The discussion in Ukraine today about sacrificing another generation of young men to war is one horrifying sign of the human destruction that has taken place in this war.
The true number of dead and wounded soldiers are not known at this point because both sides in this war have been hiding the real casualty figures. Some estimates are that about 500,000 soldiers have been killed or wounded. Other estimates range up to one million. Clearly thousands of civilians in both Ukraine and Russia have been killed. About 6 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave the country and millions of other were forced to leave their homes. The economic infrastructure of Ukraine has been devastated by the war and the economy in Russia is also suffering.
The Ukrainian people have been the pawns in what is essentially a U.S. war against Russia. Ukraine, with a much smaller population, has been able to continue the war only due to weapons supplied by the U.S. The U.S. government pays for the weapons. U.S. weapons manufacturers profit from selling the weapons. Ukraine is supplying the soldiers … and the deaths!
In the past year, this war has been fought to something of a stalemate. Neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian armies have been able to gain much ground, but the deaths continue to mount up on both sides. Despite the use of modern weapons with drones and GPS surveillance, much of the war has become the trench warfare of World War I.
It seems as if this war is reaching some limits today. Certainly, the political leaders of the U.S. and their NATO allies are glad to continue to have Russia weakened, militarily and economically, by this war. The U.S. will pursue its own economic and political interests, regardless of the deaths and destruction in Ukraine. For the U.S. ruling class, the destruction of lives of young men is just the cost of their wars.