German Chancellor Scholz announces new arms deliveries to kyiv for the war against Russia

Six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine provoked by the imperialist powers, they continue to escalate the NATO proxy war, even as it raises the danger of a Third World War.

On Tuesday, the White House revealed that it would provide Kyiv with an additional $3 billion to support and train the Ukrainian military. On Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz followed suit. In his video statement on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991, he expresses his solidarity with the war against Russia, underlines the central role of Germany and promises new arms supplies.

“We are thinking of the heroes of Ukraine, the men and women who have bravely defended their homeland against the brutal aggressor for six months now,” he said. “Your courage impresses us all. Ukrainian soldiers who are currently being trained here in Germany on anti-aircraft guns and on tanks that we supply to Ukraine. And we will continue to deliver weapons, from the self-propelled howitzer to the anti-aircraft system, month after month.

German self-propelled howitzer Panzerhaubitze 2000 (“tank howitzer 2000”) [AP Photo/Michael Sohn]

kyiv is to receive three more Iris-T anti-aircraft systems, 12 armored recovery vehicles and 20 pick-up-mounted rocket launchers, a government spokesman said. In total, the additional armament is worth well over half a billion euros. The weapons are to be delivered “mainly in 2023”, but “some” also “much earlier”. The German government’s official list of “military support for Ukraine” is thus getting longer and longer. In the past week alone, Germany has delivered the following weapons to Ukraine:

  • 54 M113 armored personnel carriers with armament (systems from Denmark, modernization financed by Germany)
  • 53,000 rounds of flak
  • 20 laser target illuminators

The following items have been added to the “Preparation/Implementation Support Services” section:

  • heavy machine gun spare parts M2
  • 167,000 handgun rounds
  • 12 M1070 Oshkosh heavy semi-trailers
  • 12 frequency scanner/frequency jammers
  • field hospital (Roll 2)

Military support also includes 255 rounds of 155 millimeter “Volcano” artillery rounds. According to a report by The Spiegelthe precision-guided projectiles are said to be “able to strike with an accuracy of 1 meter” and “with a range of around 70 kilometers, they are also said to have a significantly greater range than conventional artillery projectiles, which typically fire at a distance of about 40 kilometers In other words, the ammunition is designed for attacks against sensitive Russian targets and infrastructure in eastern Ukraine and possibly also in Russia itself.

Scholz boasted several times in his video message about the extent of German involvement in the war. “We will continue to train Ukrainian soldiers on the latest European military equipment. We will continue our sanctions. We will financially support Ukraine and help rebuild destroyed towns and villages. Our trains will continue to load Ukrainian grain and transport it to European ports. Our hospitals will continue to treat wounded Ukrainian soldiers,” he said.

Then, the Chancellor assured that Germany would continue to “help” as long as “Ukraine needs our support”. The declared objective of the imperialist powers is to defeat Russia in Ukraine and to conquer militarily the parts of the country occupied by Russia. This message emerged from the second meeting of the so-called Crimean Platform on Tuesday in Kyiv, which was attended by both NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and leading representatives of the imperialist powers.

In his opening speech, Zelensky declared that the “reconquest” of Crimea was Ukraine’s most important military objective. “I know that Crimea belongs to Ukraine and is waiting for our return,” he said. “I want you all to know that we will be back. We must win the battle against Russian aggression. That is why we must liberate Crimea from occupation.

Scholz, who participated virtually with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, agreed: “We condemn Russia’s attempts to forcibly integrate parts of Ukrainian territory. Our message is clear: any sham referendum or any other attempt to change the status of parts of Ukrainian territory will never be recognized and… such measures prevent any approach to negotiation.

No one has explained exactly what this means. The “reconquest” of Crimea would be a genocidal project in every respect. This would threaten the lives of the peninsula’s predominantly Russian-speaking population, which after the pro-Western Maidan coup in Kyiv in 2014 overwhelmingly supported Russian annexation and rejected the anti-Russian right-wing regime in Kyiv.

A full attack on Crimea would lead to World War III. “For us, Crimea is part of Russia. And that means forever, ”warned former Russian president and prime minister and current deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, in the Russian weekly. Argument and Fakty end of June. “Any attempt to invade Crimea is a declaration of war against our country,” he added. “And if this is done by a NATO member state, it means conflict with the entire North Atlantic Alliance. Third World War. A complete disaster.

NATO leaders know what they are risking with their policies. Already in April, Scholz declared in a The Spiegel interview that everything should be done “to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower like Russia, a nuclear power”. The objective was “to prevent an escalation that would lead to a third world war. There must be no nuclear war.

These warnings are now a thing of the past. The leaders of the NATO powers are ready to risk the destruction of the entire planet to assert their geostrategic and economic interests. British Conservative leader Liz Truss told an election appearance in Birmingham yesterday that she was ‘ready’ to start nuclear war even if it meant ‘global annihilation’. In late June, Air Force Inspector (Commander-in-Chief) Ingo Gerhartz threatened Russia to “implement nuclear deterrence if necessary”.

Such threats and fantasies of extermination expose the NATO powers as the real aggressors and warmongers. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is reactionary, but ultimately a desperate response by Putin’s capitalist regime to the outbreak of imperialist war over the past 30 years. The imperialist powers have left a trail of devastation across the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, NATO has also systematically surrounded Russia with the aim of subjugating and exploiting this resource-rich country. In 2014, Washington and Berlin orchestrated a right-wing coup in Ukraine to establish an anti-Russian right-wing regime in the former Soviet republic. Subsequently, the Ukrainian army and the country’s far-right militias were completely modernized and the current proxy war systematically prepared.

The relentless propaganda of the media and the political establishment about the “aggressor”, the “terror of war” and “retrograde imperialism” (Scholz) cannot hide the fact that the ruling class is reconnecting with its old great power imperialist policy. war. In the 20th century, during two world wars, German imperialism attempted to annex Ukraine and subjugate Russia militarily. Berlin is trying to do it again.

Resistance is growing among the people, who have not forgotten the terrible crimes of German imperialism and who are now forced to bear the costs of the senseless war policy again. According to a recent survey by the market research institute INSA, 62% of those questioned are “dissatisfied” with the chancellor’s work and only 25% are “satisfied”. An even higher 65% is unhappy with the traffic light coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats.

“The working class will inevitably come into conflict with the traffic light coalition and all parliamentary parties,” the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) said following last fall’s federal election. This situation has now been reached and requires a clear anti-capitalist strategy and perspective. The policy of war and the associated attacks on social and democratic rights can only be stopped by the independent intervention of the working class on the basis of an international socialist program.

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