INTERNATIONAL UKRAINE ANTI-FASCIST SOLIDARITY

  by James Tweedie Boris Johnson led the charge on arming Ukraine – both before and during Moscow's military operation – and imposing sanctions and embargoes on Russian exports that prompted a Europe-wide inflationary crisis.      Now the former Prime Minister says that European leaders had hoped for a quick Russian victory in Ukraine.      In a TV interview last week with a US channel, Johnson also conceded that there were "sound economic reasons" for Germany wanting Kiev to agree swiftly to a peace deal with Moscow but that he "couldn't support" it.      It was Johnson – backed by Washington – who persuaded Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to break off peace talks with Russia just a month into the conflict, when they were on the verge of a breakthrough, during a visit to Kiev in late March.      But a US military analyst says Johnson "miscalculated" by encouraging the clash with Russia.      "The Germ...

by James Tweedie In a scene from the 1974 film The Four Musketeers the vain Porthos (Frank Finlay) shows the pious Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) his new trick: He draws his rapier and throws it into the bullseye of a target.      Aramis tells Porthos to try that again, but with himself as a live target. The musketeer easily parries Porthos’ hurled sword to one side. “Only Porthos could invent a new way of disarming himself!” Aramis scoffs, before chasing his friend around the gymnasium.      NATO leaders obviously don’t watch enough classic swashbucklers. In their rush to arm the Ukraine since before the start of Russia’s ‘demilitarisation’ operation there, several eastern member-states have managed to demilitarise themselves without Moscow having to lift a finger.      Poland has sent 232 T-72 main battle tanks, almost half its entire tank fleet, over the border into the Ukraine. The Donbas militias have already captured some examples with a...

  by James Tweedie The Ukraine is like a bull elephant that’s been shot right in the heart in mid-charge. The beast keeps on bellowing and rampaging around, not yet realising that it’s already dead.      It becomes clearer by the day that the Ukrainian army attempting to occupy the remains of the Donbas republics, newly recognised by Russia just as the West ‘recognised’ its creations of Kosovo and South Sudan, is dead on its feet.      Its navy, air force, artillery, tanks and transportation are destroyed . Its casualties are replaced with boys and old men press-ganged off the streets of Kiev and Lvov, some without proper boots. Its senior officers are fled or dead.      Meanwhile the collective West, dominated as always by the Washington, pours in its hodgepodge of arms that belong in a museum, not on the battlefield. The latest arrivals are the 90 much-vaunted 155mm howitzers donated by the Pentagon — and made in UK, because the US mil...