“Your Money is not Charity…”

In yet another dramatic move Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went to Washington to meet American President Joe Biden and seek “weapons, weapons and more weapons” in his first overseas trip since Russia started its “special military operations” ten months ago. Russia didn’t attach much importance to the event and Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Pescov said nothing good would come from the much-publicised parley. But Zelensky succeeded in getting more sophisticated arms, more precisely Patriot missiles, with striking range deep inside Russian territory. The US Administration finally announced after a lot of theatrical acrobatics that a Patriot battery would be shipped to Ukraine as part of the latest ‘aid package’. While addressing the US Congress Zelensky made a passionate and balanced appeal to American law makers because he was aware of people who have the power to save his country or doom it by withdrawing “aid”. But he was candid enough to state the ground reality of American benevolence! What he said was not that innocuous: ‘your money is not charity but an investment in global security and democracy’. True, it is an investment. But it has nothing to do with ‘global security’. Nor does it promote democracy in any part of the world. What matters most to the Biden government is how to boost their military-industrial complex. And the Ukrainian war has opened golden opportunities to the merchants of death worldwide. The ultimate losers are Ukrainians. At the press conference Biden was straightforward to admit the fact that ‘The United States had given Ukraine “what they needed” at the expense of more than twenty billion dollars, but decisions regarding the kinds of arms provided had to be made jointly with NATO and European partners’. For one thing Biden’s western allies are not interested in going to war with Russia despite their moral and logistics support to Ukraine. They are not looking for Third World War on European soil. Here lies the crux of the matter. They want to remain unaffected while making sure that Ukraine is able to win in the battlefield.

What all they want is to make Ukrainians their cannon fodders. The Anglo-American axis is the real actor in this war theatre. Americans have nothing to lose, they have everything to gain. So far the United States and its allies have done precious little to stop the war and mitigate the sufferings of Ukrainians. They could but they have not. The war is now 10 months old and as things are it will continue. Meanwhile, Russian troops have already erased a number of Ukrainian towns from the face of the earth and crippled energy infrastructure in order to deprive civilians of heat, light and running water in winter. In truth ‘General Winter’ may be a game-changer for Russia! America and NATO hope for an easy victory for Ukraine. But there won’t be many people to celebrate because the script of more devastation is in the making. It is unlikely that Russia would surrender its gains achieved after a heavy cost.

Incidentally, ‘102 years ago, on December 22, 1920, the viii All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened, which adopted a plan for the electrification of Russia---the GOELRO plan. The initiator and inspirer of the GOELRO plan was V I Lenin. To draw up the plan, a state commission was created, which included over 200 of the best Russian engineers and scientists headed by G M Krzhizhanovsky.’

The GELRO plan transformed Russia from an agrarian economy into an industrial one. By 1935, USSR took second place in Europe and third in the world in this indicator. Many in the West initially dismissed Russia’s dream of electrification as pure fantasy but in reality it was over-fulfilled before time. Socialist spirit worked.

 The extensive electrification and subsequent industrialisation of Ukraine was the result GOELRO plan. What a tragedy ---Russia is destroying the vast electricity network of Ukraine that owes its genesis mainly to the erstwhile USSR and Lenin’s historic programme of action.

Zelensky likened the on-going war to the battle of the Bulge, one of the major battles of the Second World War. It was the same time of year, even. The comparison suggested that, just as Americans and Western Europeans presented a joint and ultimately victorious front against Hitler in 1944. But there is a difference. Americans are not going to die for Ukraine; Ukrainians keep dying. In Belgium in 1944, American troops were fighting on the ground. This chilly December only Ukrainians are fighting the Russians with American guns. He forgot to mention how the Red Army defeated the Germans. Quite expectedly American audience responded to Zelensky by valourising him.

26-12-2022

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Frontier
Vol 55, No. 28, Jan 8 - 14, 2023