Biden about to give Ukraine permission to strike deep into Russia

Ukraine faces a health crisis as winter approaches. Destroyed infrastructure means less availability of crucial medicines. A Red Cross vehicle was destroyed in the Donetsk region with no official word yet on which side caused the destruction. Shelling has gone on by both the Russians and the Ukrainians. | AP

The New York Times is reporting today what national and international peace forces have known for a long time – the war in Ukraine is much more than a battle between the two countries directly involved. It is also part of a major effort by the U.S. to permanently weaken Russia, thereby extending its economic and political control over Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.

Peoples World, the British daily Morning Star, and much of the European press reported earlier this week that the decision had already been made by the U.S. to allow its NATO allies to permit Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia.

The reports cited Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Ukraine earlier this week where he and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met to discuss the plan with the Ukrainian leaders.

Now the New York Times is reporting that the final approval by Biden will be given to Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister, when he visits with the president today at the White House.

The fact that Biden has to approve British desire to put to use its long-range Storm Shadow missiles in Ukraine puts the lie to those who claim that there is no proxy war going on between the U.S. and Russia, at the expense of the Ukrainian people who do the fighting and dying and the Russian conscripts who are also fighting and dying.

The economic beneficiaries of that war, of course, include the U.S. fossil fuel companies and the armaments makers who are raking in unprecedented profits. By busting up the cooperation between the EU and Russia in the energy sector, the war in Ukraine opened the way for U.S. gas companies to sell their fracked gas to Europe which the Europeans must buy after CIA and Ukrainian cooperation resulted in the blowing up of pipelines that had delivered Russian gas to Europe.

Russia has warned that it views the pending permission for escalation coming from Biden as a serious matter.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said already Wednesday: “The involvement of the U.S. and European countries in the conflict is direct, and each new step increases it.”

Asked how Moscow would respond to such a development, Peskov said: “It will be appropriate,” without providing specific details.

He said the authorization of Ukrainian strikes deep into Russian territory served as “further proof” of why Moscow launched its offensive against Ukraine in the first place, which he said was itself an “answer” to the West’s plans to turn Ukraine into a NATO bridgehead against Russia only a few miles from Moscow itself.

Russia has maintained that U.S. violation of post-Cold War agreements not to expand NATO by, in fact expanding it right up to the borders of Russia, and then with its plans to bring Ukraine into NATO have created the conditions that triggered its invasion of Ukraine. His country, could not, he maintains, allow NATO to expand into Ukraine.

The brutal invasion of Ukraine, however, has been condemned by people around the world who now fear that the latest escalation of the war by the U.S. and its allies could make things worse for Ukrainians and also actually endanger peace around the world. In Ukraine itself the destruction of infrastructure is creating real concerns, including health concerns, as the usual cold winter is about to set in.

Meanwhile, Iran has been seeking technological help from Russia in exchange for what the U.S. says is the Iranian provision of missiles to Russia for its war with Ukraine.  Thus far Russia has been reluctant to provide Iran that assistance. Many believe that the latest escalation by the Biden administration could give Russia the push it needs to start providing that assistance to Iran which can, of course, inflame hostilities in the Middle East.

Inflaming hostilities in the Middle East is only a small danger, however, when compared to the danger of worldwide nuclear war. Both Russia and the U.S. have huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons so any war between the two, direct or indirect, comes with all the dangers connected to that.

None of those concerns are voiced by the New York Times and other supporters of the U.S. war policy regarding Ukraine. The only concern the Times article raised today is whether U.S. approval of long-range missile strikes deep into Russia will help Ukrainians “hold the line” in the Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine in which the Russians have been making slow but steady gains despite the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

The Biden policy of escalation actually has the backing of leaders of both major parties. Most Republican leaders in Washington, led by GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are in full support of Biden’s plan to escalate the war.

Yesterday Russian President Vladimir Putin underlined the concerns expressed by Peskov earlier in the week. He said that Ukrainians cannot by themselves use the more sophisticated long-range missiles and will require Western help. “This will mean that NATO and the U.S. are at war with Russia,” he said yesterday. “And if this is the case, then bearing in mind the change in the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

The New York Times almost brushed off the warning, noting that, time after time, Biden has successfully escalated the war without Russia really taking any serious action in response.

Rather than expressing such confidence the peace forces here and around the world prefer that there be no escalation of what has already been a deadly war that can lead to something much worse.

And now, during the presidential election campaign, it would be wise for candidates to consider that one thing people here and all around the world really want is peace.

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.