Comrade Manik Mukherjee, Vice-President, All India Anti-Imperialist Forum (AIAIF),
issued the following statement on 7 October, 2022:
We are all aware of the devastating war going on in Ukraine, which started with Russia invading Ukraine. It is nothing but a reflection of the clash between the imperialist superpowers Russia and USA. Even before humanity could recover from the damage inflicted by Covid 19, this war started and more than 6 months have passed coming to the precipice of further destruction.
We see no respite, not even a glimmer of hope of any mutually acceptable settlement between warring countries; rather the war is getting escalated. More and more countries are being roped in the process of supplying arms to Ukraine and the NATO member countries have slapped economic and trade barriers over Russia at the instance of USA. On the other hand, Russia is enjoying the support of a few countries. China did not oppose Russia. India maintained an apparently neutral stand in the interest of its own monopolist class, and joined China and Pakistan in Feb 2022, in abstaining from voting on the U.N. General Assembly resolution adopted to deplore Russian aggression on Ukraine. It has also abstained from voting in the Security Council resolution condemning the annexation of four areas within Ukraine.
The media coverage raised hopes in some people that the summit meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization held on 15th to 16th September, 2022 at Samarkhand, Uzbekhistan would help ending this war. But there, no country including India categorically demanded to end the war; India’s remarks were only perfunctory. Rather, what has been observed after this summit meet of the imperialist countries is that Russia has escalated bombarding Ukraine taking away the lives of more civilians than before. It even threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons. And recently it has announced the annexation of four occupied areas in Ukraine.
AIAIF strongly condemns these aggressive gestures and actions of Russia. The fact is that each of the imperialist-capitalist country has its own vested interest in this ongoing war.
This raging war is the outcome of fierce competition between imperialist powers for domination, capture and recapture of the squeezed and crisis-ridden world market. Whatever immediate causes or pretexts are advocated by the warring countries, these are nothing but mischievous ploys to shield their real face and intentions. USA has an indelible and in-erasable tarred image of invading and aggressively occupying countries across the globe to further its imperialist design.
NATO that was formed as a combination of western imperialist powers to contain Soviet Russia has now appeared as a ferocious power, militarily attacking many countries. After socialism was dismantled in Russia through a counter revolution it emerged as capitalist-imperialist Russia. But it could not avoid the acute market crisis, the outcome of inherent contradiction of capitalism, to mitigate which it got mired into tussle with USA and NATO for grasping a sizable share in the world market. So, a new cold war began with capitalist Russia-China and USA since the 1990s which often culminates in hot wars and skirmishes. Capitalism-imperialism has no other means to survive but to indulge in war and foment war frenzy which provides lubricant to run its rusted wheels of production by artificially stimulating market through militarization of economy.
This benefits only the rich imperialists, capitalists and merchants of war in every country whereas the sufferings of the people at large get aggravated. Loss of lives and of jobs, homelessness, starvation and all other concomitant evils have already engulfed the war-ravaged countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. Now it is the turn of Ukraine.
These are not the last. More the coffers of the super-rich are filling, more miserable the condition of the common people is becoming in every capitalist-imperialist country. Why should people pay for the capitalist crisis and imperialist war? We, the peace-loving people of the world must come forward and demand to stop the war by putting an end to the Russian aggression and NATO/USA provocation. We are firmly opposed to all attempts of unleashing wars by the imperialist powers. Let us all raise our voice to end the war and also to dismantle NATO.