Fighting in the south-east of Ukraine between government forces and Russian-backed separatists continues.
According to the Ukrainian authorities: the separatists have suffered a series of military setbacks, their morale is low, and desertion from their ranks is rife.
According to the separatists: the Ukrainian forces have suffered a series of military setbacks, their morale is low, and desertion from their ranks is rife.
What is clear is that for several weeks three major urban centres — Donetsk, Lugansk and Gorlovka — have been subjected to daily military bombardment. This cannot have failed to have resulted in widespread casualties and physical destruction.
Less clear is the extent to which the separatists are able to continue to rely on support from within Russia.
The Ukrainian authorities are simultaneously claiming that (factions within) the Russian authorities are preparing to abandon the rebels, and that (factions within) the Russian authorities have stepped up supplies of new fighters and military equipment to the separatists.
Russian fascists and ultra-nationalists organised around the newspaper Zavtra, the TV station “Djen” and the fascist “think tank” Izborsky Club are continuing to politically agitate and raise material support for the separatists.
And there is certainly reliable evidence that new fighters and high-tech military equipment are continuing to cross the Russian-Ukrainian border into Ukraine.
What began as a popular protest against government corruption and indifference to economic and social decline in the south-east has now become a political project by Russian fascists to recreate Novorossiya, and a means for certain factions within the Russian authorities to destabilise Ukraine.
It has also become an opportunity for Ukrainian politicians to drape themselves in the Ukrainian flag and deflect opposition to their anti-working-class economic policies by invoking the need to defeat the “Russian mercenaries” in the south-east.
