The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) denounces the US imperialists for provocations and relentless warmongering in Ukraine in the hope of sparking an armed conflict and proxy war with Russia. The US government, in collusion with American big media and the military industrial complex, has been whipping up the threat of an “imminent invasion” by Russia in Ukraine to justify heightened military spending to raise the sales of military weapons. It is also rapidly arming its puppet regime in Ukraine to carry out aggressive action against the independent people’s republics in the Donbass region.

Since last year, the US has been provoking Russia by pushing for the inclusion of Ukraine into the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and by taking measures to oppose the commercial operations of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The US puppet regime in Ukraine has been pushing for the country’s inclusion into the NATO, a move which Russia considers a “red line” as it would allow the US and its military allies to position troops, tanks, missiles and other military matériel right next to its border. The NATO currently has 30 member states which bind themselves to the principle than an attack against one is an attack against all and the commitment to defend one another. Russia fears that the inclusion of Ukraine into the NATO, which is being compared to Mexico joining a Chinese- or Russian-led alliance, will reinforce the US network of military bases in its state of Alaska, in Poland, Romania and other countries close to the Russian border.

To further provoke Russia, the US has been opposing the operations of the Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline that is capable of transporting twice the amount that is currently being supplied by Russia to Germany, France, Italy and the rest of western Europe. The construction of the pipeline that goes through the Baltic Sea was completed last year. It has yet to start operation because of US opposition and demand for Europe to buy US shale oil and thus favor American fracking interests. The US has been arm-twisting Germany to turn back on its contracts with Russia.

In the face of US provocations, Russia positioned tanks and an estimated 100,000 troops in its western borders with Ukraine, as well as in the southern borders of Belarus, a country north of Ukraine, where Russia maintains a military base. Russia described these as part of routine training and exercises and declared no intention of aggression against Ukraine. These, however, are clearly part of Russia’s political and diplomatic tactics to oppose moves for Ukraine’s inclusion into the NATO and seal its agreements for the operation of the Nord Stream 2. Russia is pushing for renewed negotiations to reaffirm previous agreements surrounding the Donbass region, explicit prohibition of the eastward expansion of NATO to Ukraine and other countries, and a ban on US and NATO intermediate-range missile in countries within striking distance of Russia.

The Biden government has responded to the Russian political and military moves with outright bellicosity. For weeks now, the US has been beating the drums of war to justify plans of increasing military aid and stepping up weapons sales to Ukraine under the guise of opposing the “imminent invasion” of Ukraine by Russia’s forces, a claim that US officials have failed to provide evidence for. Western media has helped whip up Washington propaganda by calling for “decisive action.”

The US congress aims to triple military aid to Ukraine this year to $1.2 billion including more than $500 million worth of foreign military financing to sell excess weapons, $200 million worth of drawdown authorization for the US president to transfer war matériel in US stockpiles to non-US militaries, and other measures. The US has already allowed its NATO allies Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to send US-made weapons to Ukraine. The US, furthermore, has offered a $1 billion sovereign loan guarantee and support from the International Monetary Fund to secure its puppet regime in Ukraine.

By flooding Ukraine with weapons, the US aims to stoke the war of its puppet Ukrainian government against the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic in the Donbass region (west of Ukraine), and press for the re-annexation of Crimea, in the hope that this will further provoke Russia. Such aggressive action violates the Minsk II Agreement which gives the Donbass region a special status in Ukraine.

Clearly, the biggest beneficiary of US provocations and warmongering in Ukraine is the military industrial complex and the Pentagon (Department of Defense) which was allotted a record $768 billion budget for 2022. After withdrawing from Afghanistan, the US imperialists are bent on inciting another long-drawn armed conflict onto which it can pour its surplus arms and induce production of more weapons. While the US is constantly pushing to raise the temperature of tensions against China, prospects of an open war in the Asia-Pacific is still not imminent.

The US is pushing its NATO allies to support its heightened military response and threats of economic sanctions against Russia. Some US allies, however, are not ready to ride along with US policy. Germany, which relies largely on Russian natural gas to fuel its economy and provide heating to homes, is not ready to bow to US demands for NATO countries to deploy troops and weapons to Ukraine. Even France has rejected the US line of an “imminent invasion” by Russia. Even the Ukrainian government is wary of US warmongering which has resulted in economic instability and capital flight.

Ukraine was a former socialist country under the Soviet Union. Although it suffered under the errors of overly rapid socialist collectivization of agriculture, its people enjoyed the fruits of industrialization and social progress that guaranteed high standards of living. Ukraine was reduced to an appendage of imperial Russia as a supplier of grains during the period of capitalist restoration under modern revisionism from the late 1950s onwards. All-out neoliberal reforms which dismantled the structures of public service (including free education and health service) pushing down the people’s standards of living have been carried out since the breakup of the USSR in 1991 and, especially since the installation of a US puppet regime after the 2014 “revolution.”

The people of Ukraine are being made to suffer from interimperialist conflict between the US and its NATO allies, and Russia. The progressive and revolutionary forces in Ukraine and across the world must arouse, organize and mobilize the people to demand an end to US warmongering and provocation in Ukraine and demand the imperialist powers to negotiate and reach a peaceful settlement of their conflicts.

US provocations and Russian bullying in Ukraine is a portent of even worse forms of armed conflict amid rising contradictions between imperialist powers.

The global capitalist crisis is pushing imperialist countries to redivide the world to expand their own spheres of investment and influence. While the imperialists are raising walls to protect their own national economies, they are more aggressively pushing for neoliberal reforms in the semicolonial and semifeudal countries and less developed capitalist countries to allow them to expand their plunder and intensify the exploitation and oppression of workers and other toiling people. This is creating ever more favorable conditions for the proletariat to carry out revolutionary struggles for national liberation and socialism.