Despondent tone from Alan Woods on Russia-Ukraine conflict

In Alan Woods’ recent article from last month on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he has adopted a markedly more pessimistic tone about the Russian invasion:

It is difficult to say how the war is progressing. The information of the military situation in the media is so sparse as to be almost non-existent. And the constant predictions of Russian defeats must be regarded with caution.

The latest shipment of arms, including modern weaponry from the US may provide some relief to the Ukrainian side, but it will scarcely make up for the crushing superiority of the Russian forces that are now concentrated in Donbass. The outlook for the Ukrainian forces there is not very bright.

But war is a struggle of living forces, and in a broader sense, the Russian side may be facing more serious difficulties. In the final analysis, the weight of Russia, its great industrial strength and bigger population must eventually prevail. But war is never a simple question, and there can be yet many complicating elements.

The question of morale can play a crucial role. According to all the available evidence, the war has the support of the big majority of people in Russia. For the present, at least, Putin’s position seems secure.

However, according to my sources in Russia, the highest levels of support are to be found among the older layers of the population, whereas support among young people is only about 30 to 40 percent. But it is among that layer that the future conscripts will have to be found to fight in Ukraine.

For all these reasons, Putin may have to settle for the conquest of a large slice of territory in the Donbass and along the coastal region. That may be considered a success of sorts, but it will fall short of a complete victory and it will have negative consequences for the working class of both countries.

Isn’t this a change from the bombast we were seeing in previous articles about how Russian victory was imminent? It looks like the truth is finally sinking in for Woods, although he is loath to admit it.

Woods tells us that we don’t have enough information from the media about the way the war is progressing. In fact, if you use Twitter, as I do, you will see that there is plenty of info from various sources about how things are going. Woods just doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that the Russians are clearly losing, something he continues to dismiss as ‘Western propaganda’. He acknowledges that NATO weapons are reaching Ukraine but insists that Ukrainian forces are likely to be defeated in Donbas. In fact, Russia’s biggest concentration of troops as of now is not in Donbas but in and around Izyum, which the Ukrainians are edging closer towards. If Ukraine scores a decisive victory there, it’s curtains.

Woods insists that as Russia is the bigger country, it must prevail. But there are no laws of history that say this must be so. In the Middle Ages, backward Scotland defeated mighty England, with its large population and economy, during the Scottish War of Independence. In modern history, Vietnam defeated America. The smaller country has and can prevail, as Ukraine is so far proving. We have already seen in any case that the Russian economy is a paper tiger, as is its military, hollowed out by corruption and stultified Soviet military doctrine. Woods points to popular support for the war at home in Russia, yet this is largely passive support. People are not storming recruitment offices asking to be sent to the front. Leaked communications from Russian soldiers at the front testify to a mode of despondency and demoralisation at the fierce Ukrainian resistance. Some soldiers are even deserting the front and going back home. Any sort of mass mobilisation would destroy the economy and put into question Putin’s claims that the war is merely a ‘special military operation’ rather than something much bigger and more ambitious. Support for the war is likely to decrease dramatically when ordinary Russians find their lives disrupted in such an extreme way. The last thing Putin wants to do now is send thousands of demoralised, poorly-trained conscripts to the front, especially when he barely has the weapons and the ammunition to equip all of them. They will be sent needlessly to their deaths, and make no difference to the military situation. But of course, Woods and his fellow Russophiles must hope against hope that this will not be the case, and that Russian victory is near at hand. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s army gets stronger with every passing day, as fresh weapons arrive and more men are mobilised from the population. Putin’s army, by contrast, gets weaker and weaker, losing more manpower and material, with no prospect of replacing them.

Ukraine is winning the war by a long shot. They may find themselves at the Russian border over the next couple of weeks. As things stand, Russia doesn’t even have full control over Donbas. The Kremlin is about to be dealt a humiliating blow from which Russia will never recover. Looks to me like Woods and his cult backed the wrong horse.