Ukraine:
U.S. Allows Expansion of War into Russia

Sep 16, 2024

The U.S. government and the NATO countries that follow behind it seem ready to approve Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to attack far inside Russian territory. That would be another escalation by the U.S. of the war in Ukraine, which has gone on for over two and a half years now.

From the beginning, the U.S. has dictated how Ukraine fights this war. The U.S. and NATO have provided the Ukrainian government with almost all of the weapons, including missiles. Russian president Putin has warned that if Ukraine uses NATO missiles to attack Russian territory, that he would consider it to be an attack by the U.S. and NATO.

Sometimes the U.S. has put some restrictions on what Ukraine does with the missiles and other weapons, claiming they did not want to provoke Russia into a bigger war. But then the U.S. government continues to cross these so-called “red lines,” like approving the use of cluster bombs and invading Russian territory. They keep pushing Russia to see how far they can go. Now the U.S. looks ready to risk a response by Russia that could explode into a wider war, even direct war between the U.S. and Russia.

This war in Ukraine came out of the rivalry between the U.S. ruling class and Russia. Ever since the Russian workers’ revolution in 1917, the U.S. government has been threatening the Soviet Union and then Russia. Since World War Two, the U.S. has put military bases and U.S. troops all over Europe, right up to the Russian border. The U.S. has missiles and bomber squadrons in Europe, aimed at Russia, pushing against Russia.

Putin finally reacted to these threats with his own brutal response, invading Ukraine. Putin was the neighborhood gangster, protecting his turf against the U.S. ruling class, the big gangster which is trying to control the entire world.

Ordinary working people are caught in the middle of this rivalry between gangsters. Already, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died. Millions of civilians have been displaced. Towns have been blown up and destroyed.

Now this rivalry between gangsters threatens even more and wider destruction. The longer this war goes on, the more the war escalates, the more likely it explodes into a bigger war. The people of the entire world are being held hostage by this rivalry between these gangsters, because it can lead to a world war.

This threat of a world war flows out of the normal functioning of the capitalist system. But the ordinary people of the world have no reason to fight each other. The working people of every country—the U.S., Ukraine, Russia and everywhere else—are the victims in any war.

Working people have the power to get rid of these gangsters and their system that thrives on war, but only when they are ready to challenge the capitalists’ control of society.