1). “Ukraine's Counteroffensive DOOMED to Failure as EU Stockpiles Run Dry”, March 28, 2023, Monologue by Danny Haiphong, duration of video 25:57, The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOs6mnYMX70 >
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text.
2). “THE DURAN: Ukraine Has ISOLATED the Collective West, not Russia”, March 26, 2023, Danny Haiphong is joined by Alexander Mercouris, and Alex Christoforou, of The Duran, to discuss the situation in Ukraine and what they see as the devastating consequences for U.S. Hegemonic Power and International Credibility, duration of video 27:11, The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NCOB2e_gHk >
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text.
3). “Douglas Macgregor: ‘Russia IS WIPING THEM OUT, THIS IS IT’ in Exclusive Interview”, March 28, 2023, Macgregor is interviewed by a Red-Pilled TV Host whose name I cannot ascertain, duration of video 33:45, the pertinent part of the discussion begins at 10 minutes into the video, Red-Pilled TV, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSAvIquQ-lA >
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text.
4). “On the Ground In Donbas: Ukraine, Russia & ‘Unworthy Victims,’ w/ Fergie Chambers”, March 28, 2023, Fergie Chambers is interviewed by Rhania Khalek, duration of video 1:05:17, BreakThrough News – Dispatches, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItmNV1W6aFI >
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text. However the article mentioned as Chambers main source, among his various articles, is posted in Item 2). below.
5). “A Donbas Diary: Looking Back at Early Stages of Conflict in Ukraine”, March 18, 2023, Fergie Chambers, NewsClick, at < https://www.newsclick.in/donbas-diary-looking-back-early-stages-conflict-ukraine?amp >
Introduction by dmorista: The U.S. is showing the strains of being the center of a declining and massively overextended Empire. Paul Kennedy, no leftist, discussed these issues in his seminal book, The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic transformation and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. He coined a useful phrase, “Imperial Overstretch”, that describes what the U.S. is undergoing in this period. The fate and conditions of late empires are also discussed at some length in the many works that contributed to World Systems Theory. As one review of Kennedy’s book summarized these issues:
“ …. in 1989, Keynnedy (Sic) shocked the world with his claim that ‘the only answer to the increasingly contentious question of the ability of the United States to preserve its present position is "no" ‘.
“According to Kennedy, the United States had become an international debtor for the
first time and was increasingly dependent on European and Japanese capital inflows.
Japan was on the rise. The sense of decadence came close to hysteria in the United
States when Japanese companies bought symbolic assets from the former boom of
American capitalism. Today, in addition to being dependent on European and Japanese
capital inflows, the United States is heavily dependent on capital from China. The thesis
of the English professor of Yale University is being confirmed even in the contemporary era.
“Paul Kennedy's thesis briefly stated that the relative strength of the major nations on the world never remains constant, primarily because of the uneven growth rate between different societies and, secondly, of the technological and organizational innovations that provide the society has greater advantage than the other. When their productive capacity increased, countries usually had a greater ability to shoulder the burdens of large-scale armaments in peacetime and to maintain and supply large armies and naval forces during the war. Wealth is usually necessary for military power. This, in turn, is generally necessary for the acquisition and protection of wealth. If, however, too large a proportion of the country's resources are diverted from wealth creation and assigned to military purposes, then it is likely that this will lead to the weakening of national power in the long run.” (See, The rise and fall of the great powers … , book review, Fernando A. G. Alcoforado, at <https://www.academia.edu/37176844/THE_RISE_AND_FALL_OF_THE_GREAT_POWERS>). The U.S. has clearly reached the point where its Imperial Responsibilities surpass its capacity to provide the military, political, economic, and even cultural resources to remain in its Global Hegemonic position. The increasing plans and preparations for a war beyond the current Proxy War, a War with China that could take place while the Proxy War with Russia is still raging, show just how deluded the War Party of the U.S. Ruling Class really is. And these crazed war plans and operations are carried out at a time when both the physical and social infrastructure of the U.S. is badly frayed and nearly non-functional. Train derailments, caused in some cases by lack of state-of-the-art safety equipment and always by up to 3-mile long extremely heavy freight trains, collapsing bridges and failing sewer and water treatment systems are some manifestations of the state of the physical infrastructure of the U.S. High death rates from opioid, crimes and diseases of despair, mass shootings (nearly 140 so far this year, most tragically the 33 that have taken place at elementary, middle, and high schools and universities), homeless people sleeping under bridges and in abandoned buildings,
The 5 Items posted here are divided into two major components. Numbers 1 - 3 all are relatively recent material, that features analysis by commentators who do not subscribe to the “Official Story’s” triumphalism and boundless optimism; those positions are trumpeted by a wide variety of Corporate Controlled Media platforms as well as by a large number of “controlled opposition” Alternative Media outlets. Items 1). & 2). Feature Danny Haiphong. He delivers a well reasoned monologue in 1)., “Ukraine's Counteroffensive DOOMED to Failure as EU Stockpiles Run Dry”, he quotes from several articles, scrolling throught them on the screen, to support his position. In Item 2)., “THE DURAN: Ukraine Has ISOLATED the Collective West, not Russia”, Haiphong interviews Alexander Mercouris, and Alex Christoforou (who I have noted previously both intensely dislike the U.S., though that proclivity is not particularly on display in this interview). They discuss the developing schism in the world between the U.S. / NATO / E.U. / G-7 Nations on one side and China / Russia / BRICS / The Global South on the other. This has been most obvious in the way various societies have supported or ignored the sanctions against Russia declared by the U.S. Item 3)., “Douglas Macgregor: ‘Russia IS WIPING THEM OUT, THIS IS IT’ in Exclusive Interview”, features the right-wing retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor and the first 10 minutes of the interview are some standard boilerplate reactionary rhetoric. The last 23 ½ minutes contain quite a bit of competent military analysis, and Macgregor is very pessimistic about the military prospects for Ukraine in the coming months, and supports his position with persuasive arguments. Macgregor is a retired military officer with on-the-ground combat experience. His observations on the actual military situation in Ukraine, and the prospects for the next few months there, carry significant weight, regardless of his political beliefs.
In an interesting aside, I had Morning Joe on in the background yesterday morning (March 30, 2023), and Richard Haas (the president of the Council on Foreign Relations {CFR} ) told Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that he thought Ukraine and Russia would negotiate a truce in which Ukraine ceded control of Crimea and the Eastern and Southern areas to Russia. Seeing as the CFR is one of the most influential actors, in setting U.S. Foreign Policy and War / Covert Operations Policies, this exchange was a significant discussion. Perhaps Haas’ dialogue with the show hosts marks the beginning of an effort to “prepare the U.S. population” for such an end to the Proxy War between the U.S. / NATO and Russia, that is raging in Ukraine.
Items 4). and 5). feature an interview, and a copy of an article that was the main basis for the interview and discussion. Fergie Chambers, the person interviewed and the author of the article posted below, is a very active leftist and also one of the very small number of people who is an heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune. Most of the interview, and the entire article, address a trip that he took to Russia and Ukraine in March of 2022. That was about 1 month after the escalation, of the already 8 year old civil war waged by Fascist Paramilitaries and the Ukrainian military (and let’s not forget that the Coup Regime incorporated several fascist paramilitary forces into the actual military, the first government to do that since Franco’s Fascist Spain in the 1930s) against the ethnic-Russian and Russian speaking areas, with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in February 22, of 2022. Most of the interview in Item 4)., “On the Ground In Donbas: Ukraine, Russia & ‘Unworthy Victims,’ w/ Fergie Chambers”, is a discussion of Chambers’ experiences in the Donbas region and what people there told him about what had happened to them at the hands of the fascist forces of the Coup Regime. However, for the last 10 minutes of the interview Khalek asks Chambers about what he knows about the Cop City struggle in Atlanta. Chambers lived in Atlanta for several years, and knows several people involved in the Cop CIty struggle and has some interesting insights. Chambers has written a series of articles about Ukraine that I have not yet had time to track down and read, Item 5)., “A Donbas Diary: Looking Back at Early Stages of Conflict in Ukraine”, is linked to in the show notes for the interview. Chambers mentions the way to find his other articles near the end of the interview with Khalek.
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1). “Ukraine's Counteroffensive DOOMED to Failure as EU Stockpiles Run Dry”, March 27, 2023, Monologue by Danny Haiphong, duration of video 25:57, The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOs6mnYMX70 >
(The collective West is preparing Ukraine for a "Spring Counteroffensive" despite all indications that Europe has exhausted its weapons stockpiles.)
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text.
2). “THE DURAN: Ukraine Has ISOLATED the Collective West, not Russia”, March 26, 2023, Danny Haiphong is joined by Alexander Mercouris, and Alex Christoforou, of The Duran, to discuss the situation in Ukraine and what they see as the devastating consequences for U.S. Hegemonic Power and International Credibility, duration of video 27:11, The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NCOB2e_gHk >
(Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris joined the program to discuss how the conflict in Ukraine has irreparably damaged US credibility around the world.)
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text.
3). “Douglas Macgregor: ‘Russia IS WIPING THEM OUT, THIS IS IT’ in Exclusive Interview”, March 28, 2023, Macgregor is interviewed by a Red-Pilled TV Host whose name I cannot ascertain, duration of video 33:45, the pertinent part of the discussion begins at 10 minutes into the video, Red-Pilled TV, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSAvIquQ-lA >
(Douglas Macgregor: "Russia IS WIPING THEM OUT, THIS IS IT" in Exclusive Interview Douglas Macgregor is back on the show to talk about the war in Ukraine. Macgregor gives his assessment of where things stand on the ground. They talk about the astounding casualty numbers and the horrifying nature of the battle over Bakhmut. Macgregor then gives some predictions for the next stages of the war. They talk about the rising tension with China. They agree there is no need to go to war with China but discuss what may explain the sudden attention shift towards Beijing. Lastly, they talk about the effects of cronyism in the weapons industry and the probability of a nuclear war. Discussed on the show: “This Time It’s Different” (The American Conservative) “Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’” (Kyiv Independent) Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.)
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text.
4). “On the Ground In Donbas: Ukraine, Russia & ‘Unworthy Victims,’ w/ Fergie Chambers”, March 28, 2023, Fergie Chambers is interviewed by Rhania Khalek, duration of video 1:05:17, BreakThrough News – Dispatches, at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItmNV1W6aFI >
(When most people in the West think of the war in Ukraine, they think of February 24, 2022 when Russia bombed Kiev. But for 8 years prior, there had been a war raging in the eastern part of the country that received little attention because its reality was inconvenient for mainstream Western narratives. In the Donbas region, an estimated 15,000 people had died following what many there described as a US-backed coup in 2014 that gave rise to an anti-Russia government and helped empower far-right sentiments across Ukraine. To discuss the war in the Donbas, Rania Khalek was joined by Fergie Chambers of Berkshire Communists and a journalist who recently published a piece in Globetrotter about his time in the Donbas, titled “A Donbas Diary: Looking Back at Early Stages of Conflict in Ukraine.”)
Note: This is a video of an interview. There is no transcript, no direct text. However the article mentioned as Chambers main source, among his various articles, is posted in Item 2). below.
5). “A Donbas Diary: Looking Back at Early Stages of Conflict in Ukraine”, March 18, 2023, Fergie Chambers, NewsClick, at < https://www.newsclick.in/donbas-diary-looking-back-early-stages-conflict-ukraine?amp >
“I want to repeat to America and to Europe….You should sit at the negotiation table, and not try to solve this by sending more arms.”
It is evening in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, one of NATO’s easternmost members. I am waiting at the edge of Izvor Park in the city centre to meet with a young friend who has fled Ukraine. In the backdrop of the park is the Palace of Parliament, the brutalist architectural crown jewel of the Ceaușescu era, and the heaviest building on earth.
When my friend Pyotr arrives, we sit for beers and share our recent stories; it is late March 2022, just one month since Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine began. I have been manoeuvring a bureaucratic maze as I try to gain entry into the Russian Federation and the separatist republics of the Donbas; I am awaiting a call back from consulates in Romania and Moldova. Pyotr has just arrived from Kiev by train. A number of his comrades in communist, socialist, and union organisations around Ukraine have been detained.
Recently, the Kononovich brothers, notable Ukrainian communists, had been arrested and disappeared (following their imprisonment, they are now under house arrest). Over a few days of conversation, I learn more from Pyotr than I could ever put into writing; he says to me at one point: “if there is one thing to understand, it is that sovereignty in Ukraine and Eastern Europe has been stolen by the West not through any military invasion or political party, but through the infiltration of Ukrainian civil society by Western interests, NGOs, and right-wing nationalists. Everyone in Ukraine knows that Washington directs this process, whether they support it or not.”
After a week in Bucharest, I head for the consulate in neighbouring Moldova, where I have just spent nearly a month reporting on the refugee influx from Ukraine. I have been advised that it is my only option for obtaining a visa to Russia. The divide between pro-Western and pro-Russian civilians is palpable where the Moldovan government is led by Maia Sandu, a graduate of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and former staffer for the World Bank.
Just as in Ukraine, there is a push in Moldova by pro-West factions to limit public use of the Russian language, despite Russian being the native tongue of hundreds of thousands of Moldovans. One man I speak to there, who is the head of a Ukrainian diaspora NGO, and a former candidate for vice mayor of Chișinău, the capital city, happily informs me that Ukrainians are European, while Russians have “Mongol blood.”
At last, the visa materialises. I leave Moldova and travel to Russia, and then I make my way through Russia to Rostov-on-Don, the last stop on Russian Federation turf before the border with the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics (DPR/LPR). There, in the Donbas, a region that became a mining powerhouse in the USSR, war has been raging for eight years. I am questioned for hours at every border crossing, even in Saint Petersburg, because of my US passport and my tattoos (of which I have many). I am never violated or intimidated, just thoroughly questioned and checked. Mostly, it seems to me, the border officials are looking for swastikas, or evidence of Ukrainian nationalist affiliations, the markers of an individual likely to be hostile to Russia’s advances.
My final crossing into DPR happens in the evening. I emerge from a forest into the capital city of Donetsk. I arrived ready to accept any reality that I witnessed. What I saw was a people who had been through hell, and had adjusted to it, all the while unwavering in their commitment to what they see as a fight for self-determination against the reach of the United States and its vassals, especially NATO.
I see Russian, Soviet, and DPR flags everywhere, along with large signs and billboards: “To Victory,” “We Take Care of Our Own,” “We are Russia.” Victory Day, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany by Soviet forces on May 9, 1945, perhaps still the most significant day on the Russian calendar, is fast approaching.
I am brought by an official escort to the Central Hotel, about 300 meters from an enormous statue of Lenin that overlooks the main square of Donetsk. There is no active plumbing in the city for about 20-22 hours each day, and no hot water at all; Ukrainian armed forces had blown out the water supply. For the first time in my life, I can hear live artillery going off in relative proximity.
The next morning, I walk to the “fancy” hotel in town, where journalists congregate to have coffee and use fast Wi-Fi (that hotel has since been leveled by Ukrainian munitions; a friend of mine was injured in the attack). I strike up a conversation with a Moscow-based Canadian journalist, who sees on a Donetsk Telegram feed that the Sokol market in the Kirovsky District of Donetsk has just been hit by shelling and that there are fatalities. We rush to a cab and head there.
When we pull up to the marketplace, smoke is everywhere, and many stalls have been burned to a crisp. Shelling continues nearby, close enough to shake the earth beneath our feet. We are brought to a member of the neighbourhood safety commission, Gennady Andreevich, who walks us through the wreckage, down side alleys into the food market. An old woman’s body is lying on the ground in a pool of blood. “She came to buy vegetables,” he tells us. “There was also a local teacher who came to buy supplies for his mechanics class; his body was not left in recognizable condition. They never target military positions, you know? Always the markets, where the people go to socialise, to work, to get the things they need to live… or the residential buildings. See? Over there? That is where our neighbourhood office is. They hit that last month. My colleague was killed.” He points to a large concrete building.
He is steely, but not without emotion. “There is absolutely no military reason to strike places like this,” he tells us. “They do it to strike fear in our hearts, but it does not work.” This is just my first day, and I am already seeing that the things we’ve been hearing about Donbas are anything but the common NATO refrain of “Kremlin fabrications.”
The following night, a residential building behind a school is hit, and we discover an elderly couple arranging some of the wreckage at the entrance to their building. The woman, who will only give her first name, Elena, is eager to speak with a Western reporter. She tells us that their block has been hit almost weekly for eight years, as they live on the outskirts, near the front. Most of the younger people have abandoned the area, she says, but she has had to stay to care for her bedridden father. “He served as a miner in the Ukrainian army in the USSR. He received many distinguished medals,” she tells us. “They attack us, simply because we did not want to follow a government that betrayed our heritage. We in the Donbas did not support Euromaidan. We are Ukrainian, but we are Russian.”
I ask if the Minsk accords, which previously negotiated ceasefires between the separatists and Ukraine, had helped at all. “When Minsk was signed, the shelling here on the edge of the city only got worse.” We pass through their apartment, where their grandchildren left just that morning. She credits an Eastern Orthodox icon painting of Mary for protecting them.
“What would you have to say to anyone reading or watching this in the West?” I ask her.
“I want to repeat to America and to Europe: You send weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine kills… I’m not sure who they consider us to be now, but we are Ukrainian. We all have Ukrainian passports. You aggravate and escalate the situation even more. You should sit at the negotiation table, and not try to solve this by sending more arms.”
I spend some of April, all of May, and some of June in the Donbas. I tour front-line cities, alone and with military transports; I meet with people everywhere: there is Alexei Aybu in Lugansk, a member of “Borotba,” (Struggle), a Ukrainian communist party, who fled Odessa after he barely survived the May 2014 Ukrainian nationalist massacre of more than 40 of his comrades in the trade union building. There is “Aurora,” a Donetsk-based Marxist women’s collective comprising a mix of locals from the Donbas and refugees from western Ukraine, who have especially harsh words for Western “socialists” who are largely backing their attackers in Kiev.
In Mariupol, we see destruction on an inhuman level. Over and over, the locals there tell us that the Ukrainian Azov battalion, who at the time of my visit are still in the Azovstal bunker, has occupied the city for years with an iron fist; they tell us that when the Russians came nearer, Azov laid waste to the city, not allowing civilians any safe escape corridors, and threatening them with death should they attempt to flee.
Everywhere this narrative is repeated, as is the theme of Kiev as an occupier, and Moscow as the liberator. We see the huge influx of reconstruction and humanitarian aid brought in from Russia, while all Western organisations seem to have abandoned Donbas.
I tour the peripheral districts at length; everywhere is another memorial for the dead, a list of names, and stuffed animals to remember the children. It is estimated that between 2014-2022, 15,000 people lost their lives in the Donbas, the vast majority in these extremely poor residential areas, forgotten casualties in a war hidden from the view of the West, who seem to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin awoke one morning in February and decided he wanted some of Ukraine.
On May 9 (the aforementioned Victory Day of the Soviets over Germany in World War II), I join a caravan of reporters (I’m the only US journalist in sight) to Mellitopol, a city in the Zaporozhye region, next to Mariupol. Mellitopol had also been occupied by Kiev-friendly forces until February 2022, but the city was abandoned by Ukraine without a fight. We have come to witness the festivities for Victory Day; for seven years of what the locals we spoke with there, called “occupation” by the Kiev regime, any celebrations of the Soviet victory in World War II have been made illegal, so this will be the first one. Most of us assume that given the instability of the political climate, the curfews, and the closeness of the ongoing battles, it will be a fairly subdued affair.
Instead, at least 10,000 people take the streets, in a procession led by a column of Red Army veterans, many of whom fought in the World War II Battle of Stalingrad. The jubilation is contagious; tears stream down the eyes of people of all ages, including both those who lived through World War II, and those who have only lived through this one. It is an experience unlike any other.
A woman sees me capturing footage of the procession, and beckons me over. She says, “You tell them over there, we are Russian, and we have always been Russian. We defeated fascism then, and we will do it again.”
I asked many people there if they had criticisms of the Russian government, or of Putin’s decisions. There is one refrain that I heard, over and over, maybe best articulated by Svetlana Valkovich, of the aforementioned “Aurora” group: “Putin, yes, made many mistakes. Most of all, he waited far too long to come to help us here in Donbas. We begged Russia to come for years, but at least they have come now.”
Fergie Chambers is a freelance writer and Marxist organiser. He can be found on Twitter/Instagram at @jccfergie and at combatliberalism.substack.com.
Source: This article was produced by Globetrotter.
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