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Terminal Rearmament

The war in Ukraine is spurring a terrifying arms race that will undermine peace, stifle efforts to reverse climate change, and destroy Ukraine


09/03/2022

As the world gazes in horror at the mass tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, it is often framed by a certain kind of story, a story about the clash of two diametrically opposed forces: an autocratic, ruthless, aggressive Russia, oppressor of minorities, facing off against a democratic, progressive, inclusive West which respects human and civil rights, which fights only to protect them.

There is truth to this story – Vladimir Putin is no doubt a brutal chauvinistic tyrant, violently suppressing all dissent, trampling human and civil rights as well as international law. Yet although Russian citizens can rightly envy political conditions in the West, it should also go without saying that states in the Western camp do not necessarily meet the enlightened standards they pretend to stand for.

However, the problem with this story is more basic: the truth is that for all their differences, the states on both sides in this showdown are playing the very same game. We are told we have no option but to choose a side – but the left must oppose the whole game.

Symmetry and Asymmetry

In this game they play together, Russia and the Western powers all seek to mobilize their considerable political, economic, and military power to bring smaller countries into their sphere of influence and thereby improve their economic, military, and political position.

Despite contrasts in politics and rhetoric, for years both sides have been sparring with covert and overt threats and an escalating brinksmanship – leading the world into an era defined by a new arms race.

We must however acknowledge two significant aspects of asymmetry between them. First, even considering the preceding history, the Russian attack on Ukraine is a criminal initiative of Putin’s reactionary government. It is not a reasonable, inevitable response to any prior action. It is an unforgivable crime, and it cannot be justified.

Yet on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, Russia is a small, almost minor player compared to the Western powers; in terms of military spending, the NATO states command 18 times Russia’s power. Even if we add China to the Russian side, the Western alliance controls three times as much military power. Were we to subtract the United States’ monstrously oversized military, the rest of the NATO states’ military expenditure would still outstrip Russia’s and China’s by billions.

The past decades have seen a creeping arms race: the states which see themselves threatened by this balance of power have made great efforts to close the gap, while those seeking to maintain their advantage sacrifice more and more resources on the altar of “security”, even as their people’s food security goes downhill.

With the war in Ukraine, this arms race is now going into overdrive.

Just days after the Russian invasion, the German government broke a historical taboo and suddenly announced it will give its military a one-off special fund of 100 billion euro – twice its military budget for 2022. This massive budget will fund a permanent increase in German “security” spending, which the government plans to anchor in the constitution. Future German governments will be forced to allocate at least 2 per cent of GDP to military spending, as per NATO recommendations. This currently represents an increase in the annual military budget of about 42%, some 20 billion euro in current terms.

Considering how vastly NATO already outspends Russia and even China, it is an insult to our collective intelligence to suggest a military shopping spree is necessary to ensure European security. It is likely to achieve the very opposite: while armament is invariably presented as defensive, those it is supposed to defend against naturally perceive it as an open threat – and therefore a reason to close ranks and increase their own armament efforts. Nothing could bolster Russian anti-Western militarism better than this explicitly anti-Russian Western militarization.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said he believed foreign leaders are preparing for war with his country. It will be difficult for peace-seeking Russians to argue against that.

The silence of reason

No arms race has ever led to peace. This is not a new insight.

But when the cannons are heard, reason is silent; in our networked age, the cannon roar drowns out voices of peace even far away from the line of fire. Everywhere we are now submerged in the kind of discourse typical of wartime: dichotomous, simplistic, moralistic; anyone who mentions a fact which has had the misfortune of being weaved into the thicket of lies and delusions in Putin’s speeches or his regime’s propaganda is liable to be called a Russian agent.

The dominant discourse is also trapped deeply in the cycle of escalation: we must applaud even the most aggressive action presented as aid to Ukraine; those who do not are immediately anointed Putin supporters, appeasers, useful idiots. Even the basic left position of rejecting military “solutions”, opposing escalation and militarization, and demanding immediate diplomatic solutions – is denounced as aiding the aggressor.

Facing the horror of war, stunned by the invasion, we are all, I think, coping with a terrible sense of powerlessness. We are shocked and trying to process, to react, grasping for anything that might stop the terrible things happening, might give relief to the victims.

We dare not consider the terrifying possibility that at this point, nothing we can do could swiftly end this horror, the possibility that the “solutions” we are presented with might be anything but.

Desperately grasping, the Western public clamors to support Ukrainians by any means necessary – providing for continued escalation, strengthening the militaristic undertow, and spurring on the arms race in ways that we will hardly be able to roll back.

The prevailing moralism suggests our first duty is to voice a correct, principled position. But important as this is, our position alone helps nobody unless we account for how it relates to what is happening in practice. Instead of merely declaring our principles, we must take a stand from the particular place where we find ourselves, in relation to the real forces in action.

The New Forever War

Let us examine the actual actions taken by our Western governments to “support Ukraine” and “stop Russia.”

Within days of the invasion, unprecedented economic sanctions were placed upon Russia by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

The central lever of economic power in Russia is well-known: Russia’s oil and gas exports, the central source of the ruling elite’s wealth and power. Yet instead of using this lever, which means paying a real price for anti-Putin posturing, for two weeks after the start of the war sanctions carefully excluded the energy business. The West’s first moves against Russian oil were only announced on March 8.

So while Muscovites have been unable to get cash from their ATMs or use a Visa or Mastercard, while small businesses across Russia are cut off from the global payment systems and major multinationals shutter their Russian operations – oil and gas continue flowing west, and the West has been paying more than ever, fueling Russia’s war economy with as much as 720 million USD per day.

The sanctions thus far, then, fail to focus on decision-makers, largely designed instead, as Kissinger once said of similar measures, to “make the economy scream” – to devastate the general population in the hope that it will rebel and force a change in policy. Failing that, they amount to collective punishment.

In relation to these real existing sanctions, what is the meaning of proclaiming “support for sanctions”? What options are Western governments truly willing to entertain? Does “supporting sanctions” change how they are implemented?

As for military aid, far from being the next step after exhausting non-military options, the flow of arms began in parallel with sanctions. After years of steadily arming Ukraine in the shadow of the Russian threat, the US and Europe are now flooding the country with state-of-the-art military hardware to great fanfare. The longstanding German rule against shipping arms directly to war zones has been shattered to pieces.

Before even trying their sharpest non-military tools, Washington and Berlin, London and Paris appear to be charting a course by which Ukraine will become a new Afghanistan, ground to dust in a new forever war. This is the actual context of debates about military aid and sanctions. What does it mean to support military aid on principal, when this is how it is being implemented in practice?

The left especially must be conscious of how power shapes the options presented to the public. The contours of these policy options are predetermined by the interests of the powerful; they are realized only so far, and only in such form, as they fit ruling interests. If they are suitable, if they are just, this is usually by coincidence.

We ought not harbor illusions that by cheering them on, we are doing the right thing. It is no great moral act to egg on the powerful as they do what they wanted to do anyway. When you legitimize a destructive policy, it matters little if you fervently wish it were more constructive.

Resistance and hope

Latching on to the policies of the powerful can give a sense of power, relieve the sense of helplessness. But in practice, reactively supporting pre-selected measures means relinquishing our power and acting as a mere rubber stamp.

To proactively make the world a better place, the left must first see things for what they are. Since the “solutions” being put forward by the state are not what we might wish they were, we must push back against them. At the same time, we must take a broader view and mobilize people power against escalation and warmongering.

Many in the West lump all Russians together and treat them collectively as perpetrators and enemies. We must bear in mind, however, that the Russian public was not consulted about this war and is still being lied to about its very reality. And while our governments collectively punish them, we who fight for peace know we still have many allies in Russia. Under harshening suppression, their civil society has been mounting unexpected and inspiring opposition to the war.

Since the invasion, Putin’s government has made it a criminal offense to even call it “war”. Independent journalism has been almost completely stamped out. Demonstrating bears a real risk of arrest and imprisonment, but after thousands of arrests, many thousands more continue to protest. Twelve thousand Russian healthcare workers have courageously denounced the war, as have hundreds of municipal council members, scientists, and others.

If there is to be any hope of de-escalation, we need their resistance. And if there is to be any hope for their resistance, they need our support and solidarity. We must draw attention to them, echo their voices across the web and maximize their media visibility. We must continue sending them moral support and find any ways possible to materially aid their efforts.

The Russian opposition fights an uphill battle not only against state repression and misinformation but also against the sharpening of geopolitical battle lines. When we show up against the war and against the West’s belligerence, are also lending them a hand – an olive branch.

The potential of rebuffing violence with peace is not lost on Ukrainians, it seems. Immediately after the invasion, the Ukrainian government set up a compassionate hotline for the families of Russian soldiers; and though the focus has been on armed resistance, some of the Ukrainians’ successes in repelling Russian forces have reportedly been won by non-violence.

Such measures do not instantly dissolve the invading army – but nor do so-called military solutions. Because nothing can simply end the horror, we are left with the hard work of undermining the political forces which make it continue.

Doomsday and Collapse

In the present conflict, even more than before, we face multiple doomsday scenarios at once.

A great deal of attention is turned to the threat emanating directly from the Kremlin: that Russian forces might succeed in conquering Ukraine, imprison or murder Ukrainian opponents en masse, and perhaps not even stop there.

The ultimate doomsday scenario of full military conflict between nuclear-armed powers seems closer than ever, though the West appears to be willing to sacrifice Ukraine before risking it.

However, even if peace is quickly restored, as we must hope, the danger will not have passed. The rally to the flag, international militarization, an unbridled arms race – these currents are already shaping political and geopolitical conditions and will continue shaping them long after the Ukrainian catastrophe.

While we argue about how to help Ukraine, while our governments bluster and prevaricate, the arms corporations are celebrating a bullish market and planning ahead.

We must be deeply suspicious of any narrative which leaves no option but military force. Even when draped in the noble rhetoric of standing up to bullies and protecting the weak, militarism is poison. Proliferating across camps and borders via arms races, it rots societies from within. Instead of solving problems, bloated “security” budgets turn our hard work into means of destruction, wielded to threaten and murder our siblings abroad and standing ready to oppress us at home.

Disastrously, this militaristic turn comes just when precious few years remain for humanity to veer off course from terminal climate breakdown, precious few years to start repairing the damage and stabilizing the climate before it is too late. To now divert the best of our resources towards means of destruction – this could spell the end for humanity.

Instead, we must urgently create a massive wave of protest, across borders and sectors. Instead of escalation and destruction, demand a just, sustainable peace. Instead of rearmament, disarmament.

Organizing for peace may not have the allure of power carried by the state’s pre-selected “solutions”, but unlike them, it is entirely in our hands, entirely within our power. It means building power, rather than relinquishing it or submitting to it. It is something no government can do for us.

Organized, tenacious collective action, based on the power of everyday people to reshape their world; far-sighted, transnational, internationalist. This is what left power must be like, the only real power which can make the world a better place for everyone.

Against the new forever war, against nuclear apocalypse, against climate collapse – let us mobilize a global peace movement!

Film Review – Debout Les Femmes!

A new film highlights the terrible working conditions for care workers in France, and the start of a fight to change them


08/03/2022

Debout les Femmes! had its German premiere just in time for International Women’s Day (or International Working Women’s Day, as Clara Zetkin originally dubbed it). The film’s subject is the incredibly low wages and insanitary working conditions for (almost exclusively female) care workers. The workers affected range from those who visit pensioners to give them baths and haircuts to the cleaners in France’s National Assembly, who are paid below the minimum wage.

The first scenes were shot at the beginning of 2020, but then the film takes a dramatic turn as Covid hits and a desperate situation becomes even worse. Hospital workers are not provided any protective clothing so have to spend their already sparse spare time sewing plastic coats. Still it’s not as bad as the hospital down the road where they’re wearing bin liners. Workers are supposed to be keeping a safe social distance, but that’s not so easy when you’re giving an old man a bath.

Film of Emmanuel Macron explaining how everything is in hand appears alongside women explaining their day-to-day working lives. Most of them have lost their permanent contracts which means that they’re now only paid for the hours at work, not in travelling from one place to another. This results in people working 60 or more hours a week in a part time job. Many are also working 6 or 7 day weeks, and getting up at 4 o’clock every morning.

Enter the unlikely duo of Bruno Bonnell and François Ruffin – two MPs from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Bonnell is first introduced to us as “France’s Donald Trump” – he presents the French edition of The Apprentice and was elected as part of Macron’s cobbled together coalition La République En Marche! Ruffin is an MP for the far Left La France Insoumise (LFI), and is also one of the directors of the film.

Bonnell and Ruffin are co-sponsoring a parliamentary bill to improve working condition for low paid women workers. It’s easy to understand why Ruffin is on board – this is what the Left is supposed to do. Bonnell is a more contradictory character. A self-proclaimed capitalist, he appears to be one of the few businessmen with a social conscience. He even has a moving backstory of a disabled son who died as a child.

You could imagine having a drink with Bonnell and enjoying yourself, although maybe this is because the film concentrates on his bill with Ruffin and not his other politics. Bonnell and Ruffin listen attentively as women tell them about their desperate working conditions. They promise to get something done, and draw up a set of amendments to a parliamentary bill.

The problem lies in parliamentary majorities. Each bill is rejected by roughly the same number of votes. The only people voting for each amendment appear to be the 17 LFI deputies plus the occasional maverick like Bonnell. Not even the Greens or the Socialists are prepared to support better conditions for working class women. If the women are to win, it won’t be through the current parliament. We are unlikely to see much change after next month’s elections.

In the Q&A afterward Debout les Femmes!‘ German premiere, with producer Thibault Lhonneur and LFI MP Danièle Obono, there was some mild criticism that most of the film runs as a white male saviour story, where a couple of powerful men save some working class women, many of whom are migrants. In the film’s defence, it could be argued that precisely because of power imbalances, the women do not feel confident enough to fight for themselves. The criticism is justified nonetheless.

This is what makes the final scenes all the more important. Ruffin organises an alternative assembly of women inside the parliamentary building. The film stresses their gender, but it is just important that this is an assembly of working class women, who have been socialised into feeling that only other people are empowered to make decisions which affect their lives.

Debout les Femmes! ends in a sort of defeat. No-one gets a massive pay rise or improved conditions. But we do witness a development of consciousness that may lead to future victories. At the start of the film, the women are reading out a list of serious grievances which show how they are undervalued and ignored by society. By the end, they are standing up and demanding change.

A film which shows a change in consciousness is more effective – both politically and artistically – than one which shows endless victories and the inevitable drive towards world socialism. It has a dialectical quality which implies that greater victories are to come. I look forward to the sequel where working class women are leading the fight and gaining the significant gains that they so sorely deserve.

Don’t believe everything you read on facebook

How you can make sure that the information you are sharing is actually true.


07/03/2022

Glued to your phone checking on news from Ukraine? Hoards of websites and social accounts are publishing information and photos – even ones that normally have nothing to do with news or politics. Getting involved by reposting articles seems like it’s better than sitting around doing nothing, but it can also lead to circulating misinformation. Early on in the invasion of Ukraine, there was a widely shared photo that turned out to be of Israel bombing Gaza, not of Russia bombing Ukraine.

Really emotional content is more likely to be shared, so often false or misleading information comes along with emotionally triggering photos or text. Some can clearly be harmless, shared only for clicks or likes, but there are often more harmful fakes that crop up during crises. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, constantly deals with fake accounts that receive donations and then disappear with the money. This scam was especially rampant during the mass protests following the death of George Floyd.

Considering the fact that Russia has launched a propaganda campaign online alongside the one on the ground, it’s important to be wary of what we’re sharing and whose voices we’re amplifying. Photos, videos, and accounts from individuals on the ground can be vital to getting coverage that isn’t available from, or ignored by, mainstream media outlets. Students at the border fleeing Ukraine from India, Pakistan, and African countries shared videos of being blocked from crossing the Polish border while white Ukrainians were let through. The number of people sharing their photos, videos and experiences were enough that the issue is now being more widely covered.

Often the scope of misinformation campaigns isn’t clear until after the fact, as with Russian interference in the Trump-Clinton election in the United States, which prompted Germany to develop a sort of task force of fact-checkers for their elections. Twitter is especially rife with the spread of fake news, because it is easy to build a Twitter bot that can run 24/7 and post faster than any human. Recently, an army of Chinese bots, along with influencers, tried to paint the winter Olympics as a wonderland to bolster confidence in the controversial games (by the way, someone has figured out how to bypass the paywall in that article).

So, check and double check before you share! Here’s how:

  • Photos shared by news organizations are usually from agencies, who will have reporters on the ground.
  • If you can’t trace a photo back to the original source, there’s a good chance it’s fake. You can use TinEye to reverse search images and find out where they come from.
  • During conflict, old conflict footage will often make the rounds again, posted by sites or accounts trying to get clicks. Check the page for an earlier post with the same photo or video.
  • There are multiple tools to check if a Twitter user is a bot – here’s an add-on for your Twitter feed.
  • If you land on a webpage you don’t know, click around. If the links are broken, link back to the website itself, or if there is no about page, it could be fake.
  • Check if there is an organization behind a donation link or a petition. Or if it’s an individual, see if they are supported by an organization. Too many individual helpers on the scene can cause chaos – it’s better to go with experienced organizers.
  • Beware of information from news organizations where the source is other news organizations. If there is no source for the information, it probably isn’t confirmed.
  • “According to experts”, “getting reports of”, “seeking confirmation for” means that there is no source for the information.
  • Death tolls are very hard to calculate and confirm in the midst of conflict.
  • For big headlines, always compare multiple sources.
  • If something feels funny or doesn’t look right, it probably deserves investigation. You can keep an eye out for the type of clothing people are wearing and the buildings or nature that’s surrounding them – check to see if it matches the news that is going along with the photos or videos.

Radio Berlin International #6 – Ukrainian socialists, Danièle Obono and International Women’s Day

In this episode, Ukrainian socialists talk about the war and how we can help. A radical French MP will tell us about the coming elections. And we hear from the protests on International Womens’ Day (March 8th).


Originally broadcast on 6th March, 2022. In this episode, we hear from Ukrainian socialists about the war and what progressives can do to help the situation. A radical French MP will tell us about the elections coming up there and how her party is fighting racism and austerity. And the organisers of one of the protests coming up on International Womens’ Day will be here to say why we should all be taking to the streets on Tuesday.

This episode’s guests are:

  • Taras Salamaniuk & Bohdan Diedushkin – Initiative Host Ukrainians (host.ukrainians@gmail.com)
  • Silvia Habekost – An Care Denken

This episode’s playlist is:

  • Andrey Vinogradov – Psalm About Two Brothers
  • Yuriy Yosyfovych – A Bullet Flew
  • A Tribe Called Quest – We the People
  • HK et les Saltimbanks – On lâche rien
  • Tracy Chapman – Talkin’ Bout a Revolution
  • Vivir Quintana – Canción Sin Miedo (Versión El Palomar)

This episode is presented by Julie Niederhauser. The producer is Tom Wills.

Please tell us what you think of the show by emailing radio@theleftberlin.com. Don’t forget to include your name and where you’re listening from, and we’ll read out as many messages as possible on the air.

Don’t miss our next show live on reboot.fm 88.4 MHz in Berlin, 90.7 MHz in Potsdam and online at http://reboot.fm at 7pm on Sunday 20 March.

You can hear previous episodes of Radio Berlin International here.

A young man leaves Kramatorsk…

When our rulers declare war, it is working people of all sides who suffer. Memories of a Ukrainian conscript


06/03/2022

In November 2014 as war raged in eastern Ukraine, I met and interviewed a young refugee who had fled his home in eastern Ukraine. This became a blog piece. I copy it here – I hope it helps illustrate divisions and the carnival of reaction that erupted in Ukraine as a result of imperialist rivalry – and the impact it had on one ordinary young man.

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I met Volodya [not his real name] in early November. He is a young man of 23 who wants  a career in design. He is not exceptional in any way, and by that I don’t mean to be disparaging. I simply mean he could be a young man from anywhere, with the hopes, joys, sorrows and desire for fun that any young man might have. Except he is not from anywhere.

Volodya is from Kramatorsk, a mechanical engineering and industrial centre of over 160,000 in eastern Ukraine. Or to be more precise, it did have a population of 160,000. Since April, some 40 percent of its inhabitants have left. They now number amongst the million displaced from Donetsk and Luhansk, the two eastern regions of Ukraine known as the Donbass. They are ordinary people who a few months ago would have had no reason to flee their homes.

Volodya left Kramatorsk in 2011 for Kiev but in May of this year he decided to return. His home city and its neighbour, Sloviansk – 10 miles away, were seized by armed pro-Russian separatists on 12 April. Kiev’s response was to send army units and volunteer militias to the east. In very quick order, Ukraine was tearing apart. Volodya began to worry about his family and elderly grandparents, now at the eye of the storm.

On 1 May Kiev announced the re-introduction of conscription. Faced with the prospect of being forced to fight, and possibly to kill Ukrainians in his own town and region, Volodya decided to leave. He left Kiev, thinking it would all blow over in a few weeks. It did not blow over, and after a few weeks Volodya would be very far from home.

From April through July, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk became key flashpoints in the battle between pro-Russian separatists and forces from Kiev. Sloviansk suffered most casualties and damage. At first, the conflict existed in something of a virtual reality. Relatively small groups of separatists controlled administration buildings, mayors’ offices and police departments.

There was little active involvement by the population and for Volodya and his family, daily life often continued with a semblance of normality.

People ran errands and strolled through the town’s attractive woodland park, the Yubileynyy, just coming to leaf in the spring sunshine. But these proved to be interludes; war soon came knocking on the door. Businesses closed and workers were laid off; energy supplies became increasingly disrupted; workers still ‘employed’ went unpaid; Volodya’s grandparents’ pension payments ceased. Buildings were hit by shellfire, no-one was sure from whom. Night after night, Volodya and his family lay in their beds, as gunfire and shelling from Sloviansk shook the night air and lit the horizon.

Volodya and most townspeople kept away from the centre, nervous of their new ‘leaders’. They had good reason. The separatists were led by far-right, great Russian chauvinists, neo-Stalinists, outright fascists or sheer adventurers and crooks. Igor Girkin, or ‘Strelkov’, who led the takeover of Sloviansk, was a prime exemplar. He had served in two Chechen wars; in the Serb ethnic cleansing of Bosnia; he had helped organise proxy Russian forces in Transnistria (a pro-Russian breakaway in Moldova) and finally played his part in the annexation of Crimea. In May he was appointed ‘Defence Minister’ of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’. His fantasy was to restore a Russian empire of the Slavs. He thought his time had come.

A few locals did join the rebellion but the separatists in east Ukraine were not greeted with flowers and the cheering crowds as in Crimea the previous March. Yet neither did the population turn out to oppose them. As Kiev forces indiscriminately shelled towns, and civilians, hatred for the government in Kiev became the dominant sentiment.

The decision by Kiev to launch its ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ against the east, supported by far-right and fascist volunteers, sealed local antipathy. This was tit for bloody tat. ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ was the name the former President Yanukovich used for the deadly assault launched against protestors in the Maidan. The massacre of 43 pro-Russian protestors in Odessa by far-right nationalists led by the Nazi Right Sector, and the killing of civilians in Mariupol by Ukrainian army units, finally polarised the views of many of those hitherto reluctant to take sides.

When probed, Volodya was reluctant to comment on the politics and actions of Kiev. He shrugged his shoulders and with anger in his voice, said simply, “They should never have sent the army.”

Kramatorsk was the site of one of the most televised confrontations between civilians and Ukrainian soldiers during the entire conflict. Three days after Kiev launched its “Anti-Terrorist Operation”, a column of six armoured vehicles rolled up to the outskirts of Kramatorsk. Contrary to their expectations, they were surrounded by local people, enraged that the army was being sent against them. As soldiers were berated by unarmed men and women, one elderly local turned to shout at the camera: “Do I look like a terrorist? I’ve been planting onions!”

The soldiers, some merely conscripts, looked miserable and demoralised. One insisted they would not shoot. Eventually, they abandoned their vehicles, which were then seized by pro-Russian separatists and paraded through Sloviansk in triumph, spinning in their tracks. It was an episode that in a way captured precisely the dynamics of the conflict.

Volodya was by no means alone in his decision to avoid fighting. It was the young men who were often the first to leave. The separatists had great difficulty in galvanising more than passive support. Girkin complained bitterly of the ‘cowardice’ of eastern Ukrainians, for refusing to sign up, particularly the youth: “Where are the young people… Maybe in the gangs that are currently robbing, looting and wreaking havoc in the province?” I don’t know if Volodya watched Girkin’s performance.

If the separatists had difficulty in recruiting volunteers, this was no less true of the Ukrainian military. Even the most compliant of potential conscripts may have thought twice about the draft. The army was hopelessly under-equipped. Ukraine’s ruling class had been more afraid of their own population than external foes. The number of interior troops and police per head of population in Ukraine was twice the world average.

But the military did not just suffer from lack of expenditure. Military procurement was a prime target for corruption. Over-inflated sums were paid for sub-standard equipment, or for military ‘purchases’ that were simply never delivered. Senior officers sold off as much as they could get away with. As for the conscripts, the salary of a conscripted soldier is a mere $185; the median monthly salary in Ukraine, the lowest in the region, is about $260.

Soldiers had to rely on charity organisations for flak jackets and sleeping bags. Families that can afford it buy their sons winter gear, decent uniforms, body armour or even gun sights; alternatively, in time-honoured fashion they can pay a bribe for a medical exemption or removal from the draft list. (The going rate is about seven times the average monthly salary).

Faced with a decrepit military, and the reluctance of many conscripts to risk their lives, small groups of armed separatists achieved early victories. Kiev tried to tap ‘patriotic’ loyalties and asked ordinary Ukrainians to donate their savings to the defence budget. $2 million was raised from citizens texting 565 on their mobile phones but this was hardly going to turn the tide.

On 16 June, Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, announced the formation of 30 volunteer battalions. Some of these were ideological, far-right volunteer units such as the Azov battalion, led by the Nazi – Andriy Biletsky – and backed by far-right Radical Party leader, Oleh Lyashko. Others were private armies raised and funded by Ukraine’s oligarchs.

Ihor Kolomoisky, Ukraine’s third richest oligarch and governor of Dnipropetrovsk poured an estimated $50 million into ‘volunteer’ militia forces. These were often little more than mercenaries. Privates in Kolomoisky’s Dnipro battalion are paid 1,000 dollars a month; officers between 3,000 – 5,000 dollars.

However, many of the separatist volunteers are not particularly ideological either. A close relative of a friend in St Petersburg joined up via a volunteer call line. He was unemployed, his personal life was falling apart and he was promised up to $500 a month. He is now in hospital in Donetsk, as his leg was shot away after a battle for Donetsk airport.

The pro-Kiev private armies and volunteer militias helped turn the tide. Igor Girkin was forced out of Slovyansk, first to Volodya’s home town of Kramatorsk, then back to Donetsk. Kramatorsk returned to Ukrainian government control. The separatists had over-reached themselves. Putin’s aim was to destabilise Ukraine not occupy it and he limited the support flowing from Russia.

By late August, it seemed the separatists might be routed. Putin now released sufficient troop detachments and weaponry to halt the Ukrainian army and its volunteer battalions, which were thrown into partial retreat. President Poroshenko turned to Nato but like Putin the US and EU sought maximum advantage from Ukraine’s internal divisions; they did not intend to risk all-out conflict. Poroshenko was refused the arms he needed. At this point a tenuous ceasefire was reached.

Whatever the military outcome, lasting divisions and hatreds have been sown. Over 4,000, mainly civilians, have been killed. The politicians in Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Kiev will use these divisions to their own best advantage with scant regard for ordinary Ukrainians, east or west.

As for Volodya?

He refuses to comment on politics. When asked about the future, he stares at the table, “Ukraine has no future. It’s all gone to hell.” He just wants peace and to become a successful designer. His dream is to go to Canada.

Volodya now ushers guests to their entertainments at a Red Sea hotel resort, popular with Russian tourists. He had a contact in the tourist industry. The resort needed a Russian speaker who would accept the scrapings to be made from tips. Tippers are few however – the consequence of another ‘War on Terror’.

Volodya’s story and the circumstances that drove him to seek another life is in a sense unexceptional. This is no first-hand account of fighting, death, kidnapping or atrocity. He is just an ordinary young man forced to flee his home for fear he will be forced to fight in a civil war.

Volodya steadfastly refuses to take anyone’s side. However, in a very important sense, I am certainly on his.

Rob Ferguson visited Ukraine in 2015 during the height of the conflict in the east of Ukraine. He also spent a year in Russia during the first war on Chechnya in the mid 1990s