LA Progressive

In recent weeks both US and NATO have been stumbling toward confrontation with Russia over whether the Ukraine will be allowed membership in NATO. While there are various secondary issues on the negotiating table—deployment of US troops into Poland, Baltics and Romania and Russian natural gas delivery to Germany, among other issues—make no mistake: NATO membership is what the developing conflict is fundamentally about. As one of the main media vehicles of US imperialism, the New York Times, recently blared in its front page headline: “U.S. Won’t Bow to Russia Over Who Can Join NATO”. (February 3, 2022).

Background to Today’s Conflict

The pending conflict over Ukraine NATO membership has intensified recently, events have been leading to this at least since the January 2005 so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine when emergent right wing forces rode a wave of popular protest over the previous November 2004 national elections. The origins of the current crisis go back even further, to the breakup of the former USSR in the early 1990s during which the US promised Russia that NATO would not be expanded to Eastern Europe, the Baltics, or the Caucasus.

In the November 2004 Ukraine election the pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovich won 39% of the vote; but the anti-Russia candidate, supported by growing fascist forces, also won 39%. Yanukovich’s support was heavily concentrated in east and south Ukraine, while Yushchenko’s in western Ukraine. As the vote was underway that November, and not yet concluded, Yushchenko called for mass street demonstrations. He then immediately declared himself president as mass protestors threatened to assault the Ukraine Parliament. In front of his massed supporters in Kyiv, the day after the election, Yushchenko unilaterally took the ‘oath of president’ in the Parliament in which only his supporters were present and which therefore lacked a quorum to legitimize the November vote results.  After he had himself sworn in, he then immediately called for continued mass strikes, protests and sit-ins to force the acceptance of his declared victory and questionable ‘oath’.

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