No, Putin is not actually achieving his goals in Ukraine

The ridiculous theory that Russia’s war is going according to plan, debunked.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, on February 27, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com  Apr 1, 2022,

For many, the blunder-filled Russian invasion of Ukraine has demolished the longstanding trope of Vladimir Putin as master strategist. Russia’s inability to overwhelm its weaker neighbor, its massive battlefield losses, the punishing international reaction — all of this suggests that Putin made a terrible mistake.

But others see it differently: Look beyond the haze of mainstream coverage of the war, they argue, and you’ll see that the Russian president has once again hoodwinked the West.

The basic argument is that Putin’s announced war aims — the “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine — weren’t a declaration of an intent to launch a regime change operation targeting Kyiv, as most analysts believe. Instead, Putin’s true objective was more limited: expanding Russian control over eastern Ukraine, with the attacks on Kyiv serving as a kind of feint to tie down Ukrainian forces.

“Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine, that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s),” Bret Stephens writes in the New York Times. Stephens is not alone in this: National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty and prominent Substacker Glenn Greenwald have both recently advanced versions of this claim.

Yet their arguments do not stand up to even light scrutiny: They are not consistent with the structure of Russia’s military campaign, public statements by Russian authorities, or even a basic cost-benefit analysis.

“Putin didn’t really want to take Kyiv is this war’s equivalent to the Biden did not win the election fairly [falsehood]. A clear dividing line between those looking honestly and those who will grasp at any lie to support their point,” writes Phillips O’Brien, a scholar of military strategy and tactics at the University of St. Andrews.

On a deeper level, these arguments reveal the problem with viewing Putin as a master geopolitical strategist: It leads outside observers to misjudge what really moves him.

Russia’s regime change operation is best understood through the long arc of Russian history, ranging from czarist imperialism to the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin’s obsession with Russian greatness and post-Soviet humiliation, in the context of a political system where few dare question the leader’s beliefs, has led him to launch a poorly planned and disastrous war. If we don’t understand how these factors led to one of the most brazen acts of military aggression in recent history, then we won’t be able to accurately assess what Putin might do next.

If Russia’s invasion plan was about the Donbas, it made no sense

The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has been contested since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists began a rebellion against Kyiv. Just before the war, Russia officially recognized two separatist Donbas governments — the so-called “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces) — as sovereign nations.

So it’s understandable that some observers might see securing their independence as primary Russian objectives. Yet the Donbas-first interpretation of the war simply doesn’t match what Russia has done on the ground.

In the opening hours of the war, Russia sent mechanized forces and elite paratroopers rushing toward Ukrainian cities. The main target of these advances was Kyiv, the capital — with high-profile moves, like an airborne assault on the nearby Hostomel airport, obviously designed to facilitate an attack on the city.

The strategy was clear to virtually all credible military observers: Push down from the north to decapitate the Ukrainian government and end the war swiftly.

“[Russia] made large assumptions about their ability to reach Kyiv in 48 hours, and most of their decisions were shaped around this,” Henrik Paulsson, a professor in the department of war studies at the Swedish Defense University, told me at the time. “[It was] a strategic choice, shaped by bias and assumption, that tried for a mad dash that failed. I don’t think that’s really debatable.”

Destroyed Russian armored vehicles line a street in Bucha, west of Kyiv, on March 4. 

Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

Russian movement in the Donbas, by contrast, looked like a relatively marginal part of the plan — one of several other moves, including invasions up from Crimea in the southeast and in the northeast near Kharkiv, that seemed designed to support the main push near Kyiv.

“To believe the ‘it’s all about the [Donbas]’ take, you have to believe that Russia attacked basically every part of Eastern Ukraine *except* their primary political objective,” military historian Bret Devereaux writes.

The rebuttal to that, according to Dougherty, is that Russia was executing on a complex feint: that the move on Kyiv “has done quite a bit to tie down forces and allow Russia to slowly advance in the east.”

But this interpretation is simply impossible to square with the reality of the campaign, which bore none of the hallmarks of a feint. Russia didn’t give up on taking Kyiv after the initial push’s failure; instead, it sent more forces — including the infamous 40-mile long mechanized column — in an apparent attempt to begin a siege like the one ongoing in Mariupol.

“The air assault operation on Hostomel was very risky and makes little sense to just tie down Ukrainian forces. Russia also conducted relatively few missile strikes in Kyiv in the beginning, which you would expect in a feint, and the forces used were too large for this purpose,” explains Rob Lee, an expert on Russian military policy at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Regime change is the best explanation for this operation. Once the initial dash failed, Russian forces tried to encircle Kyiv, likely as part of a compellence strategy, but they weren’t able to.“ (A “compellence” strategy is one that aims to coerce an opponent to concede rather than outright destroying them.)

The Russian government’s political behavior has generally supported this interpretation. RIA Novosti, a government news agency, accidentally published a prewritten opinion piece celebrating the collapse of Ukraine’s government February 26. The article, which was swiftly pulled, forthrightly celebrates Putin’s decision to bring the country under Russian control.

“Ukraine has returned to Russia. This doesn’t mean that its statehood will be liquidated but it will be re-structured, re-established and returned to its natural condition as part of the Russian world,” the article stated.

Nothing the Russians did early in the war indicated that they’d settle for a partial victory in one part of the country. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to negotiate peace terms with Putin a day into the war, the Russian leader rejected Ukraine’s offer. Russian leaders have suggested that Ukraine give up the Donbas as part of a surrender package, but that’s not the same as labeling its conquest as a primary war aim or military objective. In fact, Russian generals announced a military refocus on the Donbas on March 25 — around the time they started consistently losing territory across the country. Even in the Donbas, Ukrainian defenders in the area are still mostly repulsing their advances.

Moreover, the benefits of taking the region simply don’t outweigh the costs.

Stephens notes that the Donbas contains oil and gas reserves, but it’s far from clear Russia can exploit them. Robinson Meyer, a writer who covers energy for the Atlantic, points out that international sanctions and war are making it hard for Russia to exploit the energy resources it already controls — “much less open new offshore & shale fields.”

Meanwhile, the costs of the invasion have been incredibly steep.

A NATO estimate concludes that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russians have been killed in action; total losses (including injuries, captures, and desertions) reach as high as 40,000. Seven Russian generals have been reported killed in the fighting. The military analysis site Oryx has documented massive materiel losses ranging from 362 destroyed tanks to 73 destroyed aircraft (including fixed-wing, unmanned, and helicopters).

A handcuffed Russian soldier stands near a Ukrainian serviceman in Kharkiv on March 31, the 36th day of the war, as shelling continues in Kharkiv and in Mariupol to the south. 

Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

The international punishments have been extremely broad, ranging from removing key Russian banks from the SWIFT global transaction system to a US ban on Russian oil imports to restrictions on doing business with particular members of the Russian elite. Freezing the assets of Russia’s central bank has proven to be a particularly damaging tool, wrecking Russia’s ability to deal with the collapse in the value of the ruble, its currency. As a result, the Russian economy is projected to contract by 15 percent this year; mass unemployment looms.

Politically, Russia has alienated the Ukrainian population for at least a generation, turning even relatively pro-Russian areas against Moscow. The war has revitalized NATO, and convinced Germany to reverse decades of foreign policy and massively ramp up its defense budget — potentially restoring one of Russia’s great historical enemies to its position as a military rival. It has raised the odds of a coup or rebellion against Putin by a small amount — still unlikely, but higher now than before the invasion.

Much of this, it should be noted, is the direct result of the widely held international perception that Russia was attempting regime change in Kyiv. Russian troops had been aiding pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas since 2014 with nothing like this level of backlash; if that were the entirety of its territorial aims in 2022, it could have accomplished those with a much lower degree of international outcry.

Instead, Russia chose to launch an attack that looked exactly like a war of regime change — leading it to take immense casualties, suffer a complete economic collapse, and polarize all of Europe against it overnight. Casting this as the work of a “canny fox” — as Stephens would have us think of Putin — is something of a stretch.

An ahistorical Putin is a false Putin

The notion that Russia had a smarter set of objectives beyond the ones it obviously seemed to be pursuing taps into a perception of Putin as a master strategist. But that angle obscures a fuller view of the Russian president that should inform how we view his war.

In reality, a more accurate portrait of Putin that emerges from close studies of his career is that of a paranoid, ruthless ex-spy with a particular obsession with Russia’s history and its place in the world.

On this week’s episode of The War in Ukraine, Explained — a new limited podcast series I’m hosting — I interviewed Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert on Russian nationalism. Herrera told me that “Putin has been almost obsessed with the past” — that his misadventure in Ukraine reflects, in part, a nostalgia for Russia’s imperial history.

“The relevant piece for this conflict, this war in Ukraine, is this imperial sense of recreating the Russian empire … a sense of strength and importance in the world for Russia’s place in the world,” she explained.

Russian President Vladimir Putin greets people after his speech at a concert in Moscow on March 18, marking the eighth anniversary of the referendum on the state status of Crimea and Sevastopol and its reunification with Russia. 

Ramil Sitdikov/Sputnik Pool Photo via AP

In this worldview, the 1990s loom large. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to Russia losing control over the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine. (Putin once declared that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster.”) Russia suffered a full-scale economic disaster that can be attributed to rapid, Western-supported restructuring of its economy (“shock therapy” as it came to be known). And NATO began expanding eastward, admitting more and more members of the former Eastern Bloc.

Herrera argues that this contrast — between Russia’s great distant history and dismal recent past — lies at the heart of much of Putin’s thinking, a doctrine she defines as “avenging the 1990s.” In Ukraine, it has been a significant part of the Russian approach since at least the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the conflict in the Donbas.

“The Russian side has said this over and over since 2014: that the new world order that was supposed to be established after the end of the Soviet Union … is over,” she says.

Herrera’s interpretation is consistent with the reporting we get from inside the Kremlin.

“According to people with knowledge of Mr. Putin’s conversations with his aides over the past two years, the president has completely lost interest in the present: The economy, social issues, the coronavirus pandemic, these all annoy him. Instead, he [obsesses] over the past,” Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar writes in the New York Times. “The only Western leader that Mr. Putin took seriously was Germany’s previous chancellor, Angela Merkel. Now she is gone and it’s time for Russia to avenge the humiliations of the 1990s.”

As Zygar’s account suggests, Putin’s invasion is equal parts ideology and misjudgment: His vision of Ukraine as a rightful Russian position led him to underestimate the strength of Ukrainian nationalism and dismiss information to the contrary. In a political system where one man rules and accurate information doesn’t reach the top, this kind of blinkered worldview can lead to terrible missteps.

Russia may yet turn things around. Its losses notwithstanding, the Russian military’s advantages over Ukraine’s are still significant. But to claim that the war is going as Putin planned is to ignore the clear, verifiable realities of the war itself — and to forget what we know about Russian politics and Putin’s worldview.

Bodies of innocent families littered the highway to hell: A vividly haunting account of what true barbarity looks like from war-torn Kyiv

• A reminder of the visceral horror of war can be found along the E-40 motorway 
• The highway is covered with metal shrapnel and cratered by mortar blasts 
• At least a dozen corpses are littered along a few hundred yards of the road 

By RICHARD PENDLEBURY AND JAMIE WISEMAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL-1 April 2022

All Fools’ Day in the countryside west of Kyiv. No one is laughing here. If one needs a reminder of the visceral horror of war – atrocities inflicted on civilians and soldiers’ gruesome death in battle – it can be found along the E-40 motorway.

Ksjena Iowenko is still lying beside her car. Or what we believe to be her. A crooked arm, raised to the sky, is charred black.

Her husband Maksim found unwelcome fame early in the war when a Ukrainian drone recorded his execution on this stretch of the E-40 on March 7.

The couple had been trying to flee into the relative safety of Kyiv city when they came under fire from Russian troops along the road.

The car stopped and Mr Iowenko got out with his hands held high in surrender. He was then gunned down. His body is still there on the road.

Nightmare: The Mail’s Richard Pendlebury walks through the burnt wreckage on the road to Dmytrivka

Utter horror: A body (the Mail has concealed the awful detail) lies next to a destroyed car

And they are not alone. At least a dozen corpses are littered along a few hundred yards of the road as mist closes in around us.

The Russians are withdrawing in this sector and we follow on their heels. What we find is an open-air charnel house.

We cannot go directly west because the Ukrainians have blown the bridge at Stoyanka.

Our detour takes us south through suburban Kyiv; new high-rises, karate clubs and car-washes, until we reach the open countryside, empty fields, vague treelines and potholed side roads with freezing checkpoints staffed by local volunteers.

‘You go further at your own risk,’ they say.

The first obvious war damage is at Petrushky, where a concrete telegraph pole has been bent over and a house with no roof is charred. Further beyond that, there is a destroyed factory, its roof rippled and collapsed.

We reach the E-40 at the Myla – ‘Sweetheart’ – crossroads. This is not a place where you want a puncture. But that is what happens to us.

A piece of shrapnel is embedded in the nearside rear tyre. We are stuck for half an hour in the oppressive gloom of the hard shoulder before we can advance again.

We do so only so far, because the highway is soon covered with metal shrapnel and cratered by mortar blasts. We take to foot.

A Toyota is abandoned, its windscreen shattered by small-arms fire. A six-storey roadside apartment block is ruined and a local branch of the Fora supermarket destroyed.

Car wrecks begin to loom in the mist ahead. We pass the first corpse – a man – lying face down in the centre of the carriageway. Someone has had the decency to cover him with tarpaulin.

Then scenes of absolute horror: the cooked figure of a driver sprawled out of his door, on his back on to the road beside his burnt-out car. The vegetation beside the road is also burned.

Two, maybe three, bodies, black and orange, are piled on top of each other, along with tyres. Were they there to mark the scene or an attempt to destroy war-crime evidence with fire? No matter, it is horrible to witness.

We reach two petrol stations, facing each other, both ruined. Beside one is the total wreck of ‘Grandma’s Garden Motel’.

The flapping roof of the petrol station on the opposite carriageway groans in the wind.

There are more charred corpses. And two wrecked cars. One of them is that of Ksjena Iowenko.

Here comes a limping dog. It begins to roll in ecstasy on the grassy verge. It is joined by another stray.

What attracts them to this place? Is it the living people who have come to see the horror? Or the horror itself? I don’t want to think about it.

Aftermath: A wandering dog, strangely drawn to the now-lifeless scene

We crunch back along the E-40 to our car, perched on its skinny, vulnerable spare wheel. We promise ourselves we cannot ever become blase about what we have just seen.

Back at Myla’s crossroads, we have to pause for fifteen minutes as a Ukrainian armoured column thunders across our path.

The soldiers wave from their tanks. They have been busy these past 24 hours. And successful. Yes, they tell us, you’ll find the Russians behind us. What’s left of them.

We push on, the way they have come. Between an avenue of leafless birches, between empty fields wreathed in mist, we reach a village called Dmytrivka.

The pretty yellow and stucco church is untouched. That detail is deceptive. At least a platoon of Russians occupied Dmytrivka for two weeks.

A number of civilians, mainly the old, remained. Again we hear more tales of logistical problems for Vladimir Putin’s men. ‘They were asking us for petrol,’ says a local. ‘And they took our flour.

‘They would not let us leave the village when they arrived,’ says another man. ‘Now we have had two days of fighting and we had to hide in our cellars. They started to shell our village as they retreated.

‘We lived through Stalingrad here. Stalingrad!’

Mounted on bicycles, two elderly gentleman lead us to where the fighting was fiercest.

Paling fences lean drunkenly; walls have been reduced to their constituent bricks; roofs have been blown to the heavens and back. The epicentre is getting closer. And there, at last, we find it, in all its ghastly detail.

Unspeakable: Another charred body on the road, part-hidden under a tarpaulin

The hulks of three Russian armoured personnel carriers are sprawled around a road junction.

All have had their gun turrets blown off and on to the ground beside them. One of them still contains the charred corpses of at least two soldiers. It’s hard to tell how many. Chunks of burned humanity are scattered around it. Explosions have lifted nearby kerb stones like they are feather pillows.

Here is also evidence that Dmytrivka is – was once – a middle class Kyivan’s commuter belt dream. The House of Design and Decor – a shop for all your interior needs – has been cruelly shattered.

Next door, the boundary wall of the ‘Belgravia cottage estate’ – elegant living in a rural setting – is peppered with shrapnel. Further up the lane, we find another eight Russian armoured vehicles that were destroyed on Thursday.

At least one Ukrainian T-72 tank had been concealed in a copse that stands beside the road, I am told. The tank allowed the convoy to pass before opening fire into its rear at point-blank range. A turkey shoot ensued.

We find rubber boots, mess tins, ‘Army Chocolate’ bars in green wrappers, Timotei ‘shampoo for men’, bars of soap, shaving-foam canisters, an electric razor and Covid masks – no protection against a tank shell – among the pathetic, personal detritus that lies in the mire.

A sleeve badge depicting a lion under a parachute suggests that at least one of the Russian soldiers caught in the slaughter was from an elite airborne unit.

Chunks of yellow foam are scattered among the tank hulks on the battlefield. They are a puzzle until I come across the source; a collapsed house. The yellow foam is loft insulation.

We return to Kyiv feeling more than a little sick but, selfishly, relieved. And as I write this, the sirens sound again. It is All Fools’ Day in Ukraine.

Sri Lanka imposes curfew after president declares state of emergency

Sri Lankan crime scene officers inspect damaged vehicles after they were set on fire by demonstrators at the top of the road to Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence during a protest against him, as many parts of the crisis-hit country face up to 13 hours without electricity due to a shortage of foreign currency to import fuel, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

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By Uditha Jayasinghe-April 2, 2022

COLOMBO, April 2 (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s government imposed a weekend curfew on Saturday, even as hundreds of lawyers urged President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to revoke a state of emergency introduced following unrest over fuel and other shortages in a deep economic crisis.

The government’s information department said a countrywide curfew would run from 6 p.m. (1230 GMT) on Saturday to 6 a.m. (0030 GMT) on Monday.

Rajapaksa introduced a state of emergency on Friday, raising fears of a crackdown on protests. Emergency powers in the past have allowed the military to arrest and detain suspects without warrants, but the terms of the current powers are not yet clear.

The Indian Ocean island nation of 22 million people is grappling with rolling blackouts for up to 13 hours a day as the government scrambles to secure foreign exchange to pay for fuel and other essential imports. read more .

“People take to the streets when things are impossible,” 68-year-old Colombo shop owner Nishan Ariyapala told Reuters TV. “When people take to the streets the political leaders of the country must act thoughtfully.”

Rajapaksa said the state of emergency was needed to protect public order and maintain essential supplies and services.

Angered by the shortages of fuel and other essential items, hundreds of protesters clashed on Thursday with police and the military outside Rajapaksa’s residence as they called for his ouster and torched several police and army vehicles.

Police arrested 53 people and imposed a curfew in and around Colombo on Friday to contain other sporadic protests.

Shops opened and traffic was normal on Saturday, while police remained stationed at some petrol stations.

‘FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND’

“There has been a failure to understand the aspirations of the people and to empathize with the suffering of the people of the country,” the lawyers, members of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, said in their appeal, adding that freedom of speech and peaceful assembly should be respected.

Reacting to the state of emergency, U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung said: “Sri Lankans have a right to protest peacefully – essential for democratic expression.

“I am watching the situation closely, and hope the coming days bring restraint from all sides, as well as much needed economic stability and relief for those suffering,” she tweeted.

Highlighting the severe shortage of foreign currency, a vessel carrying 5,500 metric tonnes of cooking gas had to leave Sri Lankan waters after Laugfs Gas (LGGL.CM), the company that ordered it, could not procure $4.9 million from local banks to pay for it.

“People are struggling with an acute shortage of cooking gas, but how can we help them when there are no dollars? We are stuck,” Laugfs Gas Chairman W.H.K. Wegapitiya told Reuters.

The ongoing crisis – the result of economic mismanagement by successive governments – has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit tourism and remittances.

It has also marked a sharp turnaround in political support for Rajapaksa, who swept to power in 2019 promising stability.

The government has said it is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and loans from India and China.

In the first major food aid to the country since Colombo secured a credit line from New Delhi, Indian traders have started loading 40,000 tonnes of rice. read more

Global food crisis fuels international class struggle

People queuing for kerosene in Kandy, Sri Lanka on 22 March, 2022 [Credit: WSWS Media]

Eric London-1 Apr 2022

The war between the US-NATO and Russia in Ukraine has lit a fuse to the powder keg of the global class struggle. In the span of just a few weeks, the war and unprecedented US and EU sanctions against Russia have profoundly destabilized the world’s productive forces, throwing already-frail global supply chains into disarray, strengthening inflationary tendencies, and crippling global food and gas production.

A social and economic crisis that was worsening before the war began has now metastasized, bringing billions of people to the precipice of destitution and hunger.

Shock is beginning to give way to action. Significant strikes and demonstrations are breaking out across the world in the largest wave of social protest since before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The imperialist politicians and geo-strategists who spent years drawing up the blueprints for war are discovering that despite all their careful planning, they set their bloody plans into motion on top of a massive social fault line.

The protests are heterogenous in terms of race and religious background, international in scope, and are based in a working class that is larger, more urban and more interconnected than ever before. In more advanced and less developed countries alike, the protests revolve around the same demand: the rising cost of living is intolerable, conditions must change, and they must change now.

This is the social force that has the power to stop the drive to world war and prevent nuclear disaster. This global movement is unfolding by the hour.

On Thursday night, a large demonstration blocked the road to President Gotabaya Rajapakse’s private residence in Colombo’s outer suburbs, demanding his resignation. The right-wing government is implementing a ruthless IMF austerity regime as masses of people struggle to find medicine, food, milk and gas.

Diesel fuel has run out, currency is scarce, and long power outages blacken the country. A 31-year-old school teacher in Batticaloa told the Indian Express, “On Sunday I stood in a gas queue starting at 4 am. There is a shortage of milk powder. One has to struggle for rice and daal. There are no candles and many medicines have disappeared. I have a salary, but can we eat money?”

Similar movements are developing across the Middle East and North Africa, where Ukraine and Russia provide the bulk of wheat and cooking oil and where Ramadan, the Islamic holiday of fasting and feasting, is set to begin.

The United Nations declared Thursday that social conditions are “at a breaking point” across the region due to food shortages. The New York Times wrote Thursday that scarcity and price increases “crush household and government budgets alike in countries that had nothing to spare, raising the possibility of the kind of mass popular unrest not seen since the Arab Spring protests a decade ago, which stemmed in part from soaring food prices.”

In Egypt, the Times noted nervously, “videos of ordinary people venting about food prices have gone viral on social media under the hashtag ‘revolution of the hungry.’”

The US-backed al-Sisi dictatorship has deployed the military to distribute food and set price controls for bread. Al-Sisi addressed the nation and urged the population to “rationalize” food consumption during Ramadan.

In Tunisia, where workers first sparked the Arab Spring, the Middle East Eye wrote Thursday that “strikes intensified last week,” and as a result, “Ezra Zia, US undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, visited the country.”

Food riots involving thousands of people took place across Iraq last week as the country, still reeling from a US invasion and occupation that killed a million people, was gripped by a serious shortage of food and flour.

Protests are also developing south of the Maghreb, in African countries where the working class has exploded in size and social weight and whose backbone includes many young people with the Internet in the palms of their hands. The average sub-Saharan African spends 65 percent of his household earnings on food. On Wednesday, the head of the Africa Development Bank said of the surge in food prices caused by the war in Ukraine: “If we don’t manage this very quickly, it will destabilize the continent.”

Protests in Sudan over shortages worsened by the war have coincided with powerful strikes of teachers and youth. Yesterday, a mass protest took place in Khartoum over the military government’s inability to stop the spiraling cost of living and where one 23-year-old protestor was killed.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to a report published Thursday by Al Jazeera, “rising fuel prices, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have sparked fears of increased social unrest,” forcing the government to reshuffle the cabinet to preempt social anger.

In South Africa, where large riots took place last summer, the head of a major youth non-profit described the social situation as “a time bomb that is ticking and could explode in our faces at any given moment.”

This movement is also developing in the world’s imperialist centers. In Spain, a weeks-long strike by truckers has brought international shipping to a standstill and galvanized broader support in the working class over the rising cost of living. The PSOE-Podemos government has ordered grocery stores and retailers to limit what customers can purchase, as the major business confederations demand action to prevent an imminent social explosion.

In Germany and Austria, diesel will now be rationed. Large demonstrations over the cost of living took place last month in Albania.

In the United States, the cockpit of world imperialism, the emerging strike movement is driven above all by inflation and the spiraling cost of living. Five thousand teachers are on strike in Sacramento, California, following a two-week strike by teachers in Minneapolis, Minnesota in March.

In an ongoing strike by 600 oil refinery workers in Richmond, California, workers explain they cannot afford to fill their own cars with the gas they refine.

Fifty thousand grocery store workers in California are slated to strike in the coming days, while a contract for tens of thousands of dock workers on the west coast expires in a matter of weeks.

In the US and Canada, the government has banned or blocked major strikes by rail workers at BNSF and Canadian Pacific.

Rising prices in the main imperialist countries will intensify the class struggle as the war continues. According to Thursday’s US Commerce Department data, inflation will cost households an average of an extra $433 each month, or $5,200 in the next year. Given that half the country has less than $500 in emergency savings, workers will be driven into struggle by urgent necessity.

The impact of the war on living conditions is going to intensify dramatically in all countries in the coming weeks. Strategic food reserves are woefully inadequate in all countries excepting China.

Making matters worse, Ukraine and Russia are not only leading producers of staple food and oil, but Russia and Belorussia also lead the world in the production of most fertilizers, which Putin has announced will be subject to strict export restrictions in response to US and EU sanctions. This could cut global crop yields in half.

With the pandemic and the threat of world war as the immediate backdrop, a social reckoning of historic proportions is past due. Since the Arab Spring and the global protests of 2018–19, the ruling class’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has prioritized profits over life and led to the deaths of 20 million people.

Stopping war means ending capitalism, and this requires political leadership. Unlike in an earlier period, the international working class owes no political loyalty to the parties of Stalinism, Social Democracy and bourgeois nationalism, which are seen as directly responsible for existing conditions of poverty and inequality.

In each country, the trade unions are a block on this developing movement, serving the capitalist governments and corporations by isolating workers, preventing them from striking, and demanding that they support the US-NATO war drive, no matter the dangers and no matter the cost to working people.

Representatives of the middle-class pseudo-left who once professed verbal support for socialism are now cheerleaders for NATO’s wars and zealous defenders of the trade unions.

The dangers of world war are great, but the road is open to the Trotskyist movement to transform this objective movement into a self-conscious movement for socialist revolution.

Spontaneous protests, no matter how militant, are insufficient to change social conditions. The Socialist Equality Party must be built in every country, and the historical experiences of the international working class must be brought into the developing struggles so that they acquire a self-consciously socialist and anti-war character. On this basis, a working class strategy of socialist revolution can develop even more rapidly than the ruling class’s strategy of imperialist destruction.

Mali says over 200 fighters killed in military operation

The army calls for ‘restraint against defamatory speculations’ after some social media posts said civilians were killed in the operation.

The army said the ‘terrorist fiefdom’ operation took place from March 23 to 31 in Sahel’s Moura area [File: Luc Gnago/Reuters]

2 Apr 2022

Mali’s army says it has killed 203 combatants in an operation in the centre of the Sahel state, with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country saying it has heard reports of civilian deaths, raising human rights concerns.

The army said on Friday that the military operation took place in the Mora region in central Mali from March 23 to 31. It arrested 51 people and seized large quantities of weapons, according to the army’s statement.

The announcement comes as numerous social media reports in Mali this week alleged that dozens of people, including civilians, had been killed in Mora.

The AFP news agency was unable to verify the army’s claimed death toll or the social media reports.

Poor access to Mali’s conflict areas and a relative lack of independent information sources means that figures provided by either the government or armed groups are difficult to confirm.

“The Mali military issued a statement after rumours on social media that 300 civilians were killed in the village of Mora which they said was a ‘terrorist fiefdom’. They said they neutralised over 300 ‘terrorists’,” said Al Jazeera’s Nicholas Haque, reporting from Dakar in neighbouring Senegal.

Haque said the Malian state believes the area is controlled by groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS). So there has been a push to regain control of the area.

“But the challenge is that no one really knows what’s happening, there’s little access to the area where these operations are taking place. A number of foreign journalists have been thrown out of the country for reporting what’s going on in Mali.”

‘Allegations of torture and extrajudicial killings’

An impoverished nation of about 21 million people, Mali has struggled to contain an armed uprising that emerged in 2012, before spreading to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Vast swaths of the country are controlled by myriad rebel groups and militias, and thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the conflict.

Mali’s ill-equipped army has also often been accused of committing abuses during the conflict.

According to a report seen by AFP, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently warned the Security Council that Mali’s counterterrorism efforts had “disastrous consequences for the civilian population”.

In its statement on Friday, Mali’s army said it was guided by human rights and international law, and called for “restraint against defamatory speculations”.

“This comes on the heels of a Human Rights Watch report over allegations of torture and extrajudicial killings of civilians by the Malian army and “white soldiers” that do not speak French, alluding perhaps that Russian fighters were involved in the torture and killings,” Al Jazeera’s Haque said.

“This leaves the UN operation, which is the most expensive and biggest one in its history, in a bit of a tricky situation. There is a feeling of unease among many in the UN.”

The country has seen an apparent uptick in violence in recent weeks. The UN said on Friday that thousands of people fleeing fighting in Mali have arrived in Niger.

A day earlier, the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MINUSMA, said security had “deteriorated considerably” in the border area with Burkina Faso and Niger.

Argentina criticises UK refusal to talk about future of Falklands

Argentine foreign minister calls for improvement in bilateral relations with Britain 40 years after conflict

• Santiago Cafiero: Britain still acts as if Malvinas dispute has been settled

Santiago Cafiero: ‘The 1982 conflict did not alter the nature of the dispute between both countries, which is still pending negotiation and resolution.’ Photograph: Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor-Sat 2 Apr 2022

British-Argentine relations will be stifled so long as the UK refuses to engage in discussions about the future sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, or if both sides continue to act as if the war happened only yesterday, the Argentine foreign minister has said.

Writing in the Guardian on the 40th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the islands in April 1982, Santiago Cafiero called for an improvement in bilateral relations.

In an important statement of the Argentine coalition government’s thinking on the islands, he said the UK’s treatment of Argentina at times resembled that handed out to a country in breach of basic human rights norms rather than a nation that has been a democracy for 40 years.

He writes: “We believe that no outcome of any war can resolve a dispute recognised by the international community. This would set a dangerous precedent. The 1982 conflict did not alter the nature of the dispute between both countries, which is still pending negotiation and resolution.”

The foreign secretary also points out that before the Argentine dictatorship’s surprise invasion, there had for 16 years been negotiations over the substance of the sovereignty of the islands that took into account the interests of the islands’ inhabitants.

Pretending that the dispute does not exist or that it does not create obstacles in our bilateral relationship is “naive”, he says.

He insists “the two governments share fundamental values and a vision of a rules-based world order. And yet, in the South Atlantic agenda, we behave as if the conflict had taken place just yesterday.”

The Argentine invasion caught Whitehall and British intelligence wholly by surprise, leading to a panicked and finely balanced debate within the cabinet about the feasibility of sending a taskforce to free the islands, which the Argentine junta thought Margaret Thatcher did not have the resources, resolve and diplomatic support to do.

Contemporary Argentina is a threat to no one, the foreign minister writes, and points out that the pursuit of the historical sovereignty claim in the national constitution is conditional on it being pursued peacefully.

“Despite this, the UK maintains a major military base in the South Atlantic, carries out periodic military exercises in the disputed area and maintains restrictions on the sale of dual-use military materials to Argentina,” he writes. He says that these kind of restrictions are reserved usually for countries responsible for serious human rights violations, and finds it “incomprehensible” that such treatment is given to Argentina.

He says his government has presented proposals that would be beneficial, such as the re-establishment of regular flights between the Falklands and Argentina. “More flights mean more trade, more tourism and more dialogue, as we have had in the past,” he says, but so far there has been no clear response from the UK to a request to reopen flights.

He also points to the great progress by veterans, islanders and the International Committee of the Red Cross to help painstakingly identify the bodies of most of the unknown Argentine soldiers who fell during the UK forces’ retaking of the islands.

“We have also made great progress over the last 40 years in humanitarian matters. We were able to identify the remains of more than 120 Argentine ex-combatants and provide an answer to their families, after so many years of uncertainty.”

A third excavation is planned with the help of the Commission of Relatives of the Fallen in the Malvinas and South Atlantic Islands.

The Argentine invasion, greeted initially with patriotic fervour and politically beneficial to the dictatorship, led ultimately to the collapse of Gen Galtieri’s regime as the death toll mounted and the lack of training of a working-class conscript army became apparent.

In total, 649 Argentinian soldiers, 255 British servicemen and three Falkland Islanders died in the conflict. The Malvinas veterans, initially ignored, now have more status, with 2 April a day of memorial.

Ever since the defeat, Argentina has pursued various diplomatic initiatives, including the combative one led by the then president, Néstor Kirchner, from 2003 and then from 2007 by his wife, Cristina. Those 13 years included non co-operation over hydrocarbons and a ban on ships entering Argentine ports flying the Falklands Islands flag.

A plebiscite on the islands conducted in 2013 revealed a 99.8% desire to remain British, and has been the cornerstone of the UK’s diplomatic stance ever since.

In 2016, Argentina reverted to a more conciliatory approach led by the government of Mauricio Macri, but the centre-right former mayor of Buenos Aires fell from power in 2019 after he failed to deliver economic prosperity.

Afghanistan: Media crackdown intensifies as international broadcasters taken off air

31 March 2022

At least four news broadcasters have been taken off air, eight media workers arrested, and two media houses shuttered by the Taliban since March 26, amid a wide-reaching ban on foreign media. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Afghanistan affiliate, the Afghanistan National Journalists’ Union (ANJU), call for the immediate release of the detained journalists and the retraction of all arbitrary restrictions on both national and international media with the intention of stifling press freedom.

BBC News, VoA, DW, and CGTN were taken off air in Afghanistan following a new crackdown by the Taliban on foreign media.

On March 27, the BBC revealed that its news bulletins in Persian, Pashto and Uzbek languages were taken off air after their local partners were ordered to remove all international broadcasters from Afghanistan’s airwaves by the Taliban. According to the BBC, its Persian television channel can still be accessed via satellite.

“This is a worrying development at a time of uncertainty and turbulence for the people of Afghanistan. More than six million Afghans consume the BBC’s independent and impartial journalism on TV every week, and it is crucial that they are not denied access to it,” Tarik Kafala, head of languages at the BBC World Services said in a statement.

The same day, Voice of America (VoA), an American broadcaster that airs a half-hour news bulletin in Pashto and Dari languages, was barred from broadcasting its program produced for Afghan partners TOLOnews and Shamshad TV.

The Taliban’s ban also extended to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), which announced that its political talk show “Aashti” in Dari and Pashto would no longer run from March 28, and the Chinese state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN). The crackdown on foreign broadcasters follows the Taliban’s ban on foreign television programs earlier this month.

The Taliban have also targeted journalists, with more than eight arrested in two days. On March 26, Mirwais Atal, director of Zema Radio in Kandahar was detained for unknown reasons. According to the Afghan Journalists Centre (AJC), he has now been released. Sarwar Hashemi, a Salam Watandar journalist, was also detained by the Taliban for six hours while he was covering a protest program by women’s group on March 26.

On March 28, Radio Millat Zhagh’s news manager, Farid Alizai, the producer Rahimullah Noori, technical chief Mahmood Mehraban, and another  staff member from Radio Saangi, were detained by Taliban militants. on March 28. Officials confirmed that a further two staff members from Radio Zema and Radio Tabasum were also arrested for unknown reasons.

Following the journalists’ arrests on March 28, the Taliban ordered two radio broadcasters, Radio Millat Zhagh and Radio Saangi, to suspend operations and shutdown.

According to a survey conducted by ANJU across 33 of Afghanistan’s provinces, a total of 318 media have closed since the Taliban came to power in August 2021. Only 305 of the 623 media organisations active before the beginning of the Taliban regime are still operating.

ANJU said: “After the de facto authorities took power, the Taliban regime not only created media restrictions and violence against journalists but also closed the international broadcasting media outlets in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the de facto authorities imposed censorship and threats on national media outlets. Thus, ANJU condemn the de facto authority’s decision on closing the international media outlets operation in Afghanistan.”  

The IFJ said: “The Taliban’s intensifying vilification of Afghanistan’s journalists, media workers, and media organisations is deeply concerning, with press freedom in the country reaching another alarming low. The IFJ calls for the immediate release of all detained media personnel and the reinstatement of all broadcasters and media organisations affected by the Taliban’s new media restrictions. The Taliban must immediately cease its intimidation of Afghanistan’s media.” 

COVID: why the current surge in cases is a problem for some countries but not others

Paul Hunter-Published: March 31, 2022

Just when it looked like COVID cases were starting to fall after the high peaks of January, infections are rising once again around the world. The main driver of this latest surge is the more infectious BA.2 sub-lineage of the omicron variant, which has been becoming more common ever since Christmas.

In the UK, increased social mixing and waning vaccine effectiveness – even in those who have had a booster dose – are contributing to this rise. But we’re also seeing huge spikes in areas that had previously kept themselves fairly COVID-free – New Zealand, Hong Kong and South Korea, for example.

Case rates in these places are currently outstripping those seen in many European countries when they were at their worst, despite these newly struggling countries tending to follow rigorous zero COVID policies, with tight border controls and strict internal measures to limit infections. The highly infectious new variant having a bigger effect in places where restrictions are tighter. But why?

Zero cases equals delayed cases

Long before COVID, it was known that non-pharmaceutical control measures – whether within a country or at its border – rarely stop a pandemic spreading. Usually, these things – lockdowns, quarantines and so on – only delay a disease’s spread. However, this may be sufficient to flatten the curve of infections and ease pressure on health services, or to reduce illness and death by delaying most infections until treatments have improved or vaccines become available.

Achieving zero COVID protects people in the present, but builds in less protection should the disease return. Ross Gordon Henry/Shutterstock

In reality, the most influential disease-control factor is immunity, which can be generated by infection or vaccination. Both are important. As I pointed out last summer, the end of the pandemic in any country will likely depend on the proportion of people who have already had a COVID infection, and not just the proportion vaccinated.

Breakthrough infections in those who are vaccinated will drive their immunity to a higher level, while in the unvaccinated an infection provides a level of protection that would otherwise have been absent. In fact, immunity following an infection now gives rather better protection against being infected in the future than immunity from a booster vaccine, especially once 90 days have passed since being vaccinated.

This helps to explain why some countries are now handling outbreaks better than others. In the UK, despite excellent vaccination coverage, the majority of people have also now caught COVID, and many people have caught COVID more than once. Cases are high for sure, but not as high as in some of these Pacific countries, and rates of death and severe disease are remaining at a relatively low level.

In comparison, countries that followed a zero COVID strategy are now seeing a larger surge in infections and deaths as they open up, even if they have high vaccine coverage. Their lack of prior infections means immunity across the population is lower.

Vaccines still making a difference

But despite the fact that both Hong Kong and New Zealand have both suffered huge rises in viral transmission recently, the impact on public health in the two places has been dramatically different.

New Zealand, with high vaccine coverage and a recent booster programme, is weathering this surge with far fewer deaths so far. Hong Kong has seen many more deaths, with a death rate per million people in the four weeks up to March 18 2022 that’s 38 times as great as in New Zealand.

The Hong Kong administration has admitted that it didn’t do enough initially to push COVID vaccines among the elderly. Jérôme Favre/EPA-EFE

The difference is down to the vaccination campaigns in these two places. In Hong Kong, at least up to the end of February, the uptake of the booster vaccine was much lower than in New Zealand, and was particularly low in older, more vulnerable age groups. Even second-dose coverage was low in these groups, meaning plenty were at a high risk of severe disease and death.

Did the UK get it right?

My own country, the UK, decided to lift its remaining restrictions earlier this year, even though cases were still high when controls were eased and remain high now. Was this the right thing to do?

There’s no right answer, but given that non-pharmaceutical control measures only delay infections rather than prevent them, such measures should only continue if the benefits of delaying infections outweigh the more general harms to society and human health that come with restricting people’s freedoms. Given the high levels of immunity across the British population that have resulted from high case levels and good vaccine coverage, lifting controls made sense.

There’s also another important point to consider here. It’s been well publicised that the vaccines’ protective effect against catching the virus and developing symptoms wanes more quickly than protection against severe disease and death. However, there’s emerging evidence (still in preprint, so awaiting review by other scientists) that protection against severe disease also wanes with time.

What this means is that delaying infections could result in people getting COVID at a later date when they are more susceptible to getting badly ill. This was predicted in some of the disease modelling of omicron published at the end of last year (also still in preprint). Imposing additional restrictions in December 2021 would have reduced COVID deaths in January 2022, but at the cost of increased deaths in March.

Personally, I would have preferred to wait till the end of March to lift restrictions, so that we were into spring, when respiratory viruses spread less rapidly. That could have reduced the current NHS pressures stemming from staff absences.

And finally, even though lifting controls made sense, today the UK still has a population of older or clinically vulnerable people who have not yet had the virus and whose vaccine immunity is waning. We must focus now on preventing these people from developing severe disease – perhaps through further vaccine boosters or use of antiviral drugs – rather than on attempting to reduce transmission in the general population.

Minister met lobbyists ahead of conversion therapy U-turn, documents reveal

Revealed: Groups linked to anti-trans lobbying met Kemi Badenoch after privately urging equalities minister to drop conversion therapy ban

Activists hand in a letter to the Cabinet Office calling for a ban on conversion therapy, 2021

| ZUMA Press Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

Adam RamsayAdam Bychawski-1 April 2022, 2.34pm

Agroup that campaigns against trans rights has claimed credit for a government U-turn on ‘conversion therapy’ – as documents released to openDemocracy reveal its behind-the-scenes lobbying.

The LGB Alliance says it met with government ministers Mike Freer and Baroness Stedman-Scott in January this year to express “concerns” about the outlawing of the practice. Ministers had been pledging to ban it since 2018 – but, last night, ITV News revealed that the government now intends to exempt transgender people from protections.

Papers released to openDemocracy under the Freedom of Information Act show the LGB Alliance had earlier met with the equalities minister Kemi Badenoch in July 2020 after writing to her to argue against a ban on conversion therapy. But the government refused to disclose who was there, say what was discussed, or provide papers from the meeting.

Addressing Badenoch ahead of the meeting, the charity claimed that educational material relating to gender identity was “confusing” and said allowing trans people to self-identify was “harmful”.

In a separate briefing two months later, the organisation suggested to Badenoch that it should not be considered “conversion therapy” for psychotherapists to “examine” the “reasons” for young people being trans – an apparent precursor to the government’s decision to exempt anti-trans conversion therapy from its ban.

The LGB Alliance was founded in 2019 to oppose what it calls “gender ideology”, and has been called a ‘hate group’ by figures including Pride in London, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer and the gay commentator Owen Jones. The organisation denies being transphobic but it has referred to trans women as “males identifying as females”. It was condemned by other LGBTIQ+ charities as “divisive and polarising”, and came under fire last year for apparently comparing LGBTIQ+ inclusion to bestiality.

Its founder Bev Jackson said in 2020 that she was “building an organisation to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity”, while the organisation has similarly claimed that lesbian, gay and bisexual people’s “interests” are “under threat” from “attempts to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender”.

openDemocracy analysis of data released by the government additionally shows that the equalities minister had at least three further meetings with people or groups linked to anti-trans campaigning in the two years preceding the U-turn.

NHS England, in line with other expert bodies, has described all forms of conversion ‘therapy’ as ‘harmful’

Badenoch also met with Keira Bell and Paul Conrathe in May 2021 “to discuss how the proposed conversion therapy bill will effect [sic] under 18s questioning their gender,” according to government documents. Bell has made headlines as a rare example of someone who has ‘detransitioned’, and has campaigned to restrict the ability of other young people to access puberty blocking drugs. Conrathe is a lawyer and as well as working on Bell’s case against the clinic that treated her has also previously worked for anti-abortion groups. Twenty years ago, he opposed the equalisation of the age of consent for homosexual activity.

Finally, data released by the government also shows that ministers met with academic Anastassis Spiliadis last summer to discuss the impact of a ban on conversion therapy. Spiliadis’ research has been endorsed by the group Transgender Trend, which today hailed the conversion therapy U-turn and has previously been criticised by LGBTIQ+ charity Stonewall for “trying to spread damaging myths, panic and confusion” among young people.

Ministers also met with groups supportive of trans rights and the banning of conversion therapy, including Stonewall, the Conversion Therapy Surivors Group and the UK Council for Psychotherapy.

NHS England, in line with other expert bodies, has described all forms of conversion ‘therapy’ as ‘harmful’. The practice (also called ‘reparative therapy’ or ‘gay cure therapy’) refers to any therapeutic approach or view that assumes one sexual orientation or gender identity is innately preferable to another, and attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity on that basis. In practice, this means changing people’s orientation or identity to cisgender heterosexuality.

Trans people twice as likely to be targeted

Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley said: “After years of delay, in which LGBTQIA+ people across the UK have continued to suffer as a consequence of conversion practices, it is devastating that the UK government is breaking its promise to implement an inclusive ban that protects all our communities from abuse. Trans people are nearly twice as likely to be targeted by conversion practices and any ban that is not trans-inclusive abandons those that are most at risk.

“Countries around the world are acting to ban this homophobic, biphobic and transphobic abuse, and it is shameful that the UK government is choosing which LGBTQIA+ people deserve protection. We call on the governments of Wales and Scotland to protect all our communities and make good on their promise to end conversion practices in their own jurisdictions, and on the government of the UK to change its stance on protecting trans people.”

LGBTQ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told openDemocracy: “It seems very likely that the government was influenced by these trans-hostile lobbyists to abandon its original intention for a comprehensive trans-inclusive prohibition on conversion practices.”

He added: “10 Downing Street has been captured by the anti-trans lobby. This calls into question the prime minister’s commitment to the equality laws that explicitly protect trans people.”

BREAKTHROUGH: Amazon workers vote in historic first union shop in New York

 

THOMAS KENNEDY-APRIL 1, 2022

Amajority of employees at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, just voted to unionize, proving that sometimes, David does indeed beat Goliath.

This incredible and historic accomplishment marks the first time Amazon workers achieved a majority vote to establish a worker-led union against the unfettered corporate power of one of America’s largest companies.

The union at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse voted 2,653 against 2,131 to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union or ALU. There were 67 contested ballots, but the margin of victory supersedes that number, making the results final. Amazon has five days to file any possible objections.

BREAKING: David beats Goliath! In a historic victory, Amazon workers in Staten Island win the first U.S. Amazon union.@AmazonLabor and workers at the JFK8 warehouse overcame extreme union-busting to make history.

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) April 1, 2022

Union organizers faced considerable challenges and union-busting tactics by Amazon while undergoing their union drive. The union that won was created by Chris Smalls, an Amazon worker who was fired by Amazon after leading a protest outside the same warehouse due to Amazon’s decision to keep the facility open despite workers being infected with Covid-19.

Emails by Amazon executives to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were leaked shortly after the company fired Smalls, who was offensively described as “not smart or articulate” and was made a deliberate target by the company. Smalls celebrated the union victory by tweeting, “@amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them…. welp there you go!”

@amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them…. welp there you go! @JeffBezos @DavidZapolsky CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 @amazonlabor We worked had fun and made History ‼️✊🏾 #ALU # ALUfortheWin welcome the 1st union in America for Amazon 🔥🔥🔥🔥

— Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) April 1, 2022

Amazon is also facing unionizing efforts at another facility in Bessemer, Alabama. The National Labor Relations Board ruled that the company interfered with the first union election held there in 2021, and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union is trailing by little more than 100 votes there, and over 400 additional ballots are being contested.

ALU union leaders will now move on to negotiate a contract with Amazon, which includes a living wage of $30 an hour, longer breaks for workers, eliminating mandatory overtime outside of a few peak weeks for online shopping, and having union representation present during disciplinary meetings to protect workers against unjust firings.

Amazon has come under fire as its exploitative practices have come to light in recent years, but it was its downright dangerous and life-threatening treatment of workers under COVID-19 that catalyzed momentum for unionization. Essential PPE supplies like hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes were rationed or not available at some facilities and refused to close a warehouse even after workers tested positive.

The company has also come under fire for its general mistreatment of workers, apologizing after wrongfully refuting a claim by Rep. Pocan that Amazon drivers have to pee in bottles due to severe time constraints imposed on them. Amazon also has infamously high turnover rates attributed to workers not being able to keep up with the increasingly unreasonable pace of work. Washington State cited the company for a “willful” violation of its labor laws after it was determined that the harsh standards imposed on workers could “create a serious hazard for work-related back, shoulder, wrist, and knee injuries.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ net worth is $189.2 billion. That didn’t stop the company from going all out to stop the union drive. Amazon has spent over $4 million on anti-union consultants, paying them $375 an hour, and forced workers to attend mandatory meetings in which they are bombarded with anti-union propaganda and exposed to a climate of intimidation. Workers even received texts encouraging them to vote no.

Fortunately for Staten Island Amazon workers, their union efforts prevailed and added to the momentum around worker-led efforts against exploitative corporate giants. Like the increasingly successful Starbucks union drives, the Amazon union victory gives hope to workers across this country who are increasingly squeezed by corporate actors who give no regard to their wellbeing and treat them as disposable.

Billionaires like Jeff Bezos don’t create their immense wealth by themselves. They do it by exploiting the labor of countless workers and what they ask in return is living wages, good working conditions, and to be treated with dignity. If Bezos has enough wealth to buy himself a $500 yacht and a mansion with 25 bathrooms, Amazon can pay workers $30 an hour.

Unfortunately for workers, corporate actors almost never agree to these demands when simply being asked. Fortunately for us, workers are on the move, organized, and not backing down without a fight.

Amazon workers just proved that anything is possible.

Thomas Kennedy is an elected Democratic National Committee member representing Florida. He tweets from @tomaskenn.