U.S. AND EU SEIZURE OF UKRAINE
When Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych was negotiating about Ukraine’s entrance into the EU, the EU refused to allow Ukraine to continue trading with Russia. It also demanded that Ukraine join NATO. This meant that the Crimea, the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and only warm water port, would be handed over to NATO.
To carry out a coup against the elected Ukrainian government, the Euromaidan movement, led by neoliberals and fascists, received enormous Western support and funding. The reactionary movement seized the center of the capital, Kiev, and held it for three months. U.S. and West European media and politicians poured into the encampment with unanimous support.
Despite Russian and Ukrainian government efforts to negotiate, and a Russian pledge of debt cancellation and new funds, the elected Ukraine government was labeled “corrupt” and overthrown by a fascist gang, which seized government buildings on Feb. 22, 2014.
Faced with the loss of its only warm water port, Russia took control of the small peninsula and the Russian port in Crimea.
Fearing a wave of privatizations and quick industrial shutdowns that have come with every step of capitalist restructuring, the workers’ movement in Eastern Ukraine, the industrial heartland, seized factories and communication centers in self-defense against the fascist coup in Kiev.
The result was that Russia lost a major trading partner. Its sphere of economic relations became much smaller, and it faced an all-out effort at economic *strangulation.
BANKS AND SANCTIONS
Economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU at this time were specifically designed to hit Russia in its energy sector, where the country is most vulnerable.
Suddenly no U.S. oil company could do business with Russia, nor could any companies sell drilling technology to access oil and gas reserves. The sanctions restrict access to Western financial markets. U.S. banks cannot issue long-term loans to Russian businesses for energy- focused projects.
Russian state banks are now excluded from raising long-term loans in the EU. The U.S. also put sanctions on Russian banks, banning U.S. companies from receiving or loaning money to them.
All this was intended to force the new capitalists around Putin to break with his policies and to submit to a total takeover to protect their own profits.
Russia is now on the defensive, and since 2014 it’s been clear that the imperialists’ plan is total dismemberment. Strengthening the state sector under Putin and tightening controls on foreign-funded NGOs and on capital flight out of the country were a matter of economic survival.
Russia a target, not a superpower
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