Proud Boys in MAGA hats at a neo-Confederate rally in 2019 / credit: Anthony Crider/Flickr
Editor’s Note: This opinion was published as “Left-Right White Solidarity?” in Common Dreams in 2014, shortly after the U.S.-backed neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine, in response to solidarity emerging between left-wing and right-wing people of European descent in the United States and in Europe. However, this does not refer to the “horseshoe theory,” a concept that suggests the left and the right have much in common and pose a threat to a so-called “center.” The horseshoe theory leaves out the colonial question: What happens to people who have been colonized by Europeans in the United States and around the world? And what impact does white supremacy have not just on those who have been colonized, but on people of European descent? This version has been edited with the author’s permission.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana
Some years ago, Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri suggested that while not always visible in the social practices of everyday European life, the racist foundation for European fascism was still present, safely confined to a space in the European psyche, but always ready to explode in what he called a “racist delirium.”
Today, white workers and the middle classes in Europe and in the United States, traumatized by the new realities imposed on them by the decline of the Western imperialist project and the turn to neoliberalism, are increasingly embracing a retrograde form of white supremacist politics.
This dangerous political phenomenon is developing in countries throughout the European Union and in the United States. Just recently, the National Front, a racist, authoritarian party that labored on the fringes of French politics for years, has emerged as one of the dominant forces. The Tea Party in the United States, Golden Dawn in Greece, the People’s Party in Spain, the Partij Voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands—in these and other countries, a transatlantic, radical racist movement is emerging and gaining respectability.
The hard turn to the right is not a surprise for those of us who have a clear-eyed view of Euro-American history and politics. In all of the 20th century fascist movements in Europe, two elements combined to express the fascist project: 1) The rise of far-right parties and movements as the political expression of an alliance of authoritarian, pro-capitalist class forces bankrolled by sections of the capitalist class and constructed in the midst of capitalist crisis; and 2) racism grounded in white supremacist ideology.
The neo-fascism that is now emerging within the context of the current capitalist crisis on both sides of the Atlantic has similar characteristics to the movements of the 1930s, but with one distinguishing feature. The targets for racist scapegoating are different. The targets today are immigrants: Arab, Muslim and African in Europe; and Latinos as well as the never-ending target of poor and working-class African Americans in the United States.
What makes the rise of the racist radical right even more dangerous today is that it is taking place in a political environment in which traditional anti-racist oppositional forces have not recognized the danger of this phenomenon or—for strategic reasons—have decided to downplay the issue. That strategy has been tragically played out in the “immigrant rights” movement in the United States.
The brutal repression and dehumanization witnessed across Europe in the 1930s has not found generalized expression in the United States and Europe, at least not yet. Nevertheless, large sectors of the U.S. and European left appear to be unable to recognize that the U.S./NATO/EU axis that is committed to maintaining the hegemony of Western capital is resulting in dangerous collaborations with rightist forces both inside and outside of governments.
The manufactured crisis with Russia over the issue of Ukraine is a case in point. The incredible recklessness and outrageous opportunism of the U.S./NATO/EU axis in destabilizing Ukraine—knowing that the driving forces on the ground were racist, neo-Nazi elements from the Right Sector and the Svoboda party—demonstrated once again the lengths this axis is prepare to go to achieve its geo-strategic objective of full-spectrum economic and political global domination.
Yet, strangely, not only did many radicals in the United States and Europe not see the potential threat this situation represented—they seemed unable to penetrate the simplistic cold-war propaganda that suddenly re-emerged to frame events in Ukraine.
Instead of being concerned that—as a direct consequence of U.S. actions—a government came to power in Europe that, for the first time since the 1930s, included ultra-nationalist, racist neo-Nazis in key positions, the left along with the general population allowed the corporate media and U.S. propagandists to turn the narrative away from U.S./EU destabilization of Ukraine to Putin’s supposed expansionist aspirations.
The ease in which the corporate media was able to flip that script and make Putin the new face of evil has been truly astonishing. And the fact that that narrative was embraced by most liberals and large sectors of the white left in the United States only affirmed that—having abandoned class analysis and anti-imperialism, and never really having understood the insidious nature of white supremacist ideology—the U.S. left has no theoretical framework for apprehending the complexities of the current period.
The inability to extricate itself from the influences of white supremacist ideology has to be considered one explanation for the strange positions taken by large sectors of the white liberal/left over the last few years. How else can one explain the bizarre incorporation of the discourse of “humanitarian intervention” and the obscenely obvious racism of the “responsibility to protect”?
Could it be that many white radicals have fallen prey to the subtle and not-so-subtle racial appeal to a form of cross-class white solidarity in defense of “Western values,” civilization and the prerogative to determine who has the right to national sovereignty, all of which are at the base of the rationalization of the “responsibility to protect” asserted by the white West?
The apparent incapacity of white leftists to penetrate and understand the cultural and ideological impact of white supremacy and its powerful effect on their own consciousness has weakened and deformed left analysis of U.S. and European foreign policy initiatives. It has also resulted in the U.S. and European left taking political positions that either objectively championed U.S./NATO imperialist aggression or provided tacit support for that aggression though silence.
As a consequence of the abandonment of anti-imperialism and an active class-racial collaboration with the Western bourgeoisie, an almost insurmountable chasm has been created separating the Western left from its counterparts in much of the global South.
Instead of more resolute anti-imperialist solidarity, broad elements of the white left in the United States and Europe have consistently aligned themselves with the policies of the U.S/NATO/EU axis that supports right-wing forces from Ukraine to Venezuela.
Exaggeration, racial paranoia, and an overly simplistic and divisive—even “racist”—assessment of the liberal/left will be the charge. We accept those charges. We accept them because we know they will come. For those of us living outside the walls of privilege who must nevertheless accept the realities of the colonialist/imperialist-created global South, we don’t have the luxury of comforting illusions. Our lived experiences negate the false history of Europe’s benevolent civilization. We see developing in Europe and in the United States the very real possibility of a left-right racial convergence fueled by crisis, leftist ideological confusion and what appears to be a mutual commitment to maintaining the global structures of white supremacy.
Understanding the violent history of the Western project and the pathological nature of white supremacy, we are forced to see with crystal clarity that within the context of the volatile economic and social conditions in Europe, giving legitimacy to neo-fascist forces like the ones in Ukraine might just be the fuel needed to ignite that racist, fascist delirium Berneri referred to.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president of the United States on the Green Party ticket. Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.
Ukrainian soldiers / credit: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
Editor’s Note: The article was originally published by Multipolarista.
I am a Ukrainian-American. I grew up and spent over half of my life in Ukraine, although now I live in the United States. I wanted to explain my thoughts on the ongoing crisis with Russia, because mainstream corporate media outlets don’t ever share perspectives like mine.
It is definitely a stressful time, for obvious reasons. Fortunately, my family and friends in the country are alive and are doing well enough under the circumstances. Unfortunately, in the past decade this isn’t the first time I have had to check in on my loved ones there, and for basically the same reasons. This is what I wanted to talk about.
You see, the U.S. government has meddled in Ukraine for decades. And the Ukrainian people have suffered because of this.
The overwhelming support that Western governments and media outlets have poured out for Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24 is not actually motivated by concern for the Ukrainian people. They are using us to advance their political and economic interests.
We know this because Washington overthrew our government twice in a decade, imposed neoliberal economic policies that made our country the poorest in Europe, and has fueled a devastating civil war that in the past eight years took the lives of 14,000 Ukrainians and wounded and displaced many more.
The following facts don’t get mentioned by the media, as they contradict the foreign-policy goals of the U.S. government. So unless you are actively engaged in the anti-war movement, the info below is probably new to you. That is why I wanted to write this article.
The first U.S.-backed soft coup in Ukraine occurred in 2004, when Western-backed presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko lost the election.
The winner of the November 2004 vote, Viktor Yanukovych, was portrayed as being pro-Russian, so Western governments refused to recognize his victory and declared electoral fraud.
Western-backed forces in Ukraine then mobilized and carried out a textbook color revolution, called the “Orange Revolution.” They forced another run-off vote that December, in which their candidate Yushchenko was declared president.
In a shockingly honest 2004 report titled “U.S. campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” Britain’s establishment newspaper The Guardian admitted that the “Orange Revolution” was “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing,” bankrolled with at least $14 million.
“Funded and organised by the U.S. government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and U.S. non-government organisations, the campaign” attempted to topple governments “in four countries in four years,” The Guardian boasted, targeting Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
Much like in the United States, Ukrainian presidents are appointed and govern in the interest of wealthy oligarchs, so no Ukrainian president ends his tenure with a particularly high rating. The U.S.-backed Yushchenko, however, set a new record for the lowest popular support in history.
In the next presidential election, in 2010, Yushchenko got just 5% of the vote, which should give you an insight into how popular he actually was.
During his first term Yushchenko implemented a program of austerity, reduced social spending, bailed out large banks, deregulated agriculture, advocated for NATO membership, and repressed the rights of language minorities like Russian speakers.
The second U.S.-backed coup d’etat in Ukraine was launched in late 2013 and consolidated power in 2014, just a decade after the first one.
Viktor Yanukovych, who was frequently called pro-Russian by Western media but in reality was just neutral, won the 2010 presidential election fair and square.
But in 2013, Yanukovych refused to sign a European Union Association Agreement that would have been a step toward integrating Ukraine with the EU. In order to be part of this program, Brussels had demanded that Kiev impose neoliberal structural adjustment, selling off government assets and giving the Washington-led International Monetary Fund (IMF) even more control over Ukrainian state spending.
Yanukovych rejected this for a more favorable offer from Russia. So, once again, Western-backed organizations brought out their supporters into the Maidan Square in Kiev to overthrow the government.
As was the case during the “Orange Revolution” in 2004, the United States sent politicians to meet with the leaders of the demonstrations, and later coup leaders, in late 2013 and early 2014. U.S. Senators John McCain, Chris Murphy, and others spoke in front of large crowds in Maidan.
At some point the control of the stage and leadership of the protests was overtaken by far-right forces. Leaders of such organizations as Svoboda (a neo-Nazi party) and Right Sector (a coalition of fascist organizations) spoke to the protesters, sometimes standing side-by-side with their American backers like McCain.
Later their organizations acted as the spear of attack against the Ukrainian police in the violent February 2014 coup d’etat, and they were the first to storm government buildings.
With the success of the U.S.-backed forces and fascists, President Yanukovich fled the country to Russia.
U.S. government officials met with coup leaders and appointed a right-wing neoliberal, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to lead the new regime, because they recognized they couldn’t appoint the fascists and maintain legitimacy.
A leaked recording of a phone call between Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, showed that Washington chose who the leaders of the new coup regime would be.
Nuland referred to Yatsenyuk affectionately as “Yats,” saying, “Yats is the guy.”
The first actions of the post-2014 coup government were to ban left-wing parties in the country and reduce language-minority rights even further. Then Ukrainian fascists attacked anti-coup demonstrations in the streets all over the country.
As the anti-coup protests were being violently broken up by the far-right, two areas in the east of the country, Donetsk and Luhansk, rose up and declared independence from Ukraine.
The people of Crimea also voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Crimea has a Russian military base, and under their protection they were able to vote safely.
The people in Donetsk and Luhansk were less lucky. The coup government dispatched the military to suppress their insurrections.
At first many Ukrainian soldiers refused to shoot at their own countrymen, in this civil war that their U.S.-backed government started.
Seeing the hesitation of the Ukrainian military, far-right groups (and the oligarchs that were backing them) formed so-called “territorial defense battalions,” with names like Azov, Aidar, Dnipro, Tornado, etc.
Much like in Latin America, where U.S.-backed death-squads kill left-wing politicians, socialists, and labor organizers, these Ukrainian fascist battalions were deployed to lead the offensive against the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk, killing Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
In May 2014, neo-Nazis and other far-right forces assaulted an anti-coup demonstration in the major city of Odessa. 48 people were burned alive in a labor union building.
This massacre added more fuel to the civil war. The Ukrainian government promised to investigate what happened, but never really did.
My point: Without understanding the Maidan massacre and bringing to justice its perpetrators, it is impossible to understand and resolve peacefully the internal and international conflicts involving Ukraine and the dangerously escalating war in the Donbas. https://t.co/Hxyq0L4sA8
After the 2014 coup, Ukraine held an election without any serious opposition candidates, and Western-backed billionaire Petro Poroshenko won.
Poroshenko was seen as the most “moderate” of the right-wing coup coalition. But that didn’t mean much, considering many opposition parties were banned or assaulted by the far-right when they tried to organize.
Additionally, the areas that would have heavier support for the voices who wanted peace with Russia, such as Crimea and the Donbas, had seceded from Ukraine.
The new president had the impossible task of trying to appear sufficiently patriotic for the far-right while at the same time sufficiently “respectable” for the West to continue backing him publicly.
To appease the far-right, Poroshenko gave out awards to World War Two veterans “on both sides,” including the ones that fought in Nazi Germany-aligned militias like the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
The Ukrainian government officially honored the leaders of these organizations, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukevych, who organized massacres of many thousands of Poles, Jews, Russians, and other minorities during World War Two, and who willingly participated in the Holocaust.
The holiday Defenders of Ukraine Day, or Day of Ukrainian Armed Forces, was changed to October 14, to match the date of founding of the Nazi-backed Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
This is why you sometimes see red-and-black badges on Ukrainian soldiers. This symbol shows support for the fascist Ukrainian forces during World War Two.
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, shared of photo of herself holding a fascist symbol at a rally where the same fascist flag was everywhere. And yet, Canadian media has ignored it completely.
(Also I have to make a separate but important point here: Ukraine was previously part of the Soviet Union, and the majority of the Ukrainian population during World War Two supported the Red Army and actively resisted Nazi occupation of their country. The Ukrainian fascist collaborationists and parties did not have as broad support as the anti-fascist resistance did, and were mostly active during the period of Nazi occupation.)
A large portion of the civil war that broke out in Ukraine after the 2014 coup was waged under Poroshenko.
From 2014 to 2019, in five years of civil war in Donbas, the geographic region that encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, more than 13,000 people were killed, and at least 28,000 were wounded, according to official Ukrainian government statistics. This was years before Russia invaded.
The Ukrainian army and its far-right paramilitary allies were responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties, with the United Nations reporting in January 2022 that, between 2018 and 2021, 81.4% of all civilian casualties caused by active hostilities were in Donetsk and Luhansk.
These are Russian-speaking Ukrainians being killed their own government. They are not secret Russian forces.
Researchers at the U.S. government-sponsored RAND Corporation acknowledged in a January 2022 report in Foreign Policy magazine that, “even by Kyiv’s own estimates, the vast majority of rebel forces consist of locals—not soldiers of the regular Russian military.”
Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians fled the country due to the conflict, especially from the eastern regions that saw most of the fighting.
The United States strongly supported Poroshenko and the Ukrainian government as it was waging this brutal war that killed thousands, injured tens of thousands, and displaced millions.
This is why I say the U.S. government doesn’t actually care about Ukraine.
In 2019, the Ukrainian people clearly showed that they opposed this war by overwhelmingly voting against Poroshenko at the ballot box. Current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky got 73% of the vote, compared to just 24% for Poroshenko.
Zelensky ran on a platform of peace. He even addressed the Russian-speaking eastern parts of the country in Russian.
Very quickly after entering office, however, Zelensky changed his tone. Much like the supposedly “moderate” Poroshenko, Zelensky was told that he was risking losing Western backing, and the loyalty of the far-right, which could threaten to kill him.
So Zelensky did a 180 on his peaceful rhetoric, and he continued to support the civil war.
Here it is important to address another important point: The Ukrainian government is not directly run by fascists, but in Ukraine fascist forces do have significant influence in the state.
After the 2014 U.S.-backed coup, neo-Nazis were absorbed by Ukraine’s military, police, and security apparatus.
So while the parliamentary representation of fascist parties is not large (they often get just a few percentage points of the vote in elections), these extremists continue to be supported by taxpayers’ money through unelected state institutions.
Additionally, these neo-Nazis have the street muscle to terrorize political opponents. They can quickly mobilize dozens or hundreds of people on a moment’s notice to attack opponents.
Moreover, these fascists are highly motivated combatants that ensure the loyalty of the Ukrainian military. They represent a powerful faction of the Ukrainian political spectrum, and one of the forces in Ukrainian society that pushes for escalating war with the separatist regions and Russia.
I sometimes see people try to reject this fact by saying, “How can Ukraine have all these Nazis if their president is Jewish?” Here is the answer: the Nazis are not appointed by Zelensky.
These fascists have a major influence in the unelected state security apparatus. The have systematically infiltrated the military and police. And they even enjoy support and training from Western governments and NATO.
NATO is sending weapons and trainers to help neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov movement fight Russia, as the US floods the country with weapons.
This follows numerous reports of Western government support for Ukrainian far-right extremists.https://t.co/5gYgmU8PFo
The position of fascists grew substantially stronger in Ukraine in the eight years of the civil war, from 2014 to 2022.
For those reasons Ukrainian presidents (Jewish or not) have to take the position of the far-right into consideration. (Not to mention the possibility that far-right gangs could threaten to kill the president or other politicians if they defy them.)
Furthermore, all forces that normally oppose fascism or would oppose the civil war have not existed en masse for eight years in Ukraine: following the 2014 coup, many left-wing parties and socialists got banned by the Ukrainian government, and were assaulted in the streets by the fascists.
Any Ukrainian president, especially since the coup, is highly dependent on the support of the U.S. government as well. So Zelensky is very much a hostage of the situation.
When Washington tells Zelensky he must continue the civil war in Ukraine against his own electoral promises, support NATO membership, ignore the Minsk II agreement of 2015, or even ask for nuclear weapons, he does everything he is told.
Like any other U.S. puppet regime, Ukraine doesn’t have any real independence. Kiev has been actively pushed to confront Russia by every U.S. administration, against the will of the majority of Ukrainian people.
The fact that most Ukrainians wanted peace with Russia was reflected by the fact that they voted for the peace candidate Zelensky in such overwhelming numbers, 73%. And the fact that Zelensky did a total 180 on that promise shows how little political power he actually has.
Now to circle back to the present moment and what to do now. I don’t support the invasion Russia is carrying out. But the only government I can influence by the virtue of living in the United States is the U.S. government.
Luckily, that is extremely relevant, because Washington is one of the root causes of what is happening in Ukraine now.
For the past eight years, I spoke out against the coup and the civil war in Ukraine that the United States supported, promoted, and funded.
While I never thought a war with Russia was possible, I and many other Ukrainians are against Ukraine joining NATO and escalating tensions with the separatist republics and Moscow.
Any further escalation by the U.S. right now can only lead to a larger war.
I even hear some U.S. politicians playing around with the idea of a “no-fly zone,” which means they are calling for NATO to shoot down Russian planes. This is the quickest way to World War Three.
The support for Ukraine that fills the Western media now is not out of real solidarity with the people of Ukraine. If that were the case, the U.S. wouldn’t have overthrown our government twice in a decade; it wouldn’t have supported the policies that made us the poorest country in Europe; it wouldn’t have fueled a brutal civil war for the past eight years.
The reason U.S. media outlets and politicians are all backing Ukraine now is because they want to use the Ukrainian military and civilian population as cannon fodder in a proxy war with a political adversary.
Washington is willing to fight until the last Ukrainian to weaken Russia.
For that reason, I am absolutely against U.S. sanctions in general, and this round of U.S. sanctions against Russia in particular.
The harsh Western sanctions imposed on Russia target the civilian population.
Sanctions don’t affect ruling elites, and all U.S. sanctions ever do is collectively punish working-class people of a country where Washington doesn’t like their government.
Devaluing the Russian currency, the ruble, is effectively a form of shrinking workers’ wages, cutting the pensions of retirees, and preventing regular people from being able to access food or medicine.
This isn’t to mention the cost that these sanctions are now also having on the people in the United States itself, with gas prices as high as $6 a gallon and even $7 in parts of California.
The skyrocketing oil prices caused by this crisis will lead to more inflation. And while the official U.S. inflation figure is 7.5%, the real number is probably in the double digits.
All of this makes life harder for average working people, in Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., and around the world.
Another factor in the Ukraine crisis is the rampant surge of russophobia.
Since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, Democrats have blamed Donald Trump’s victory on Russian hacking without any solid proof. All of the supposed evidence they presented fell apart when investigated.
Many U.S. politicians demonized Russia as much as they could, just to push the blame for their candidate losing on someone else.
Now Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine has made it okay to be openly xenophobic. I have even seen some people call for killing all Russians, boycotting all Russian businesses, revoking student visas for Russians, etc.
Even in the more “respectable” media, you see talking heads speaking about Russian people as if they’re not human.
Under Donald Trump, many of these same people demonized China, and then acted surprised when there was a wave of hate crimes in the U.S. against East Asians.
During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the press demonized Arabs and Muslims, leading to hate crimes against their communities.
My point is that demonizing nationalities is never acceptable, and people can see through the flimsy excuses of hiding one’s own xenophobia behind the declarations of “solidarity” with my country.
In conclusion, I wanted to say that, if you live in the United States, the only government you can actually influence through demonstrations and other forms of protest is our own.
I absolutely think it is a crime right now to support the U.S. government’s drive for war, sanctions, or further escalation of tensions in Ukraine.
The U.S. government has been stoking this conflict for decades. Washington has funded coups and fueled a civil war in Ukraine.
Now, U.S. corporations stand to greatly benefit from what is happening.
The government doesn’t care about the people here in the U.S., and the only reason it says it cares about people abroad is so it can justify further military spending and advance its foreign-policy goals – which aren’t good for anyone except for a handful of rich American oligarchs.
On left, speakers at the Ukraine Recovery Conference held July 4-5 in Lugano, Switzerland. On right, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky / credit: Multipolarista
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Multipolarista.
While the United States and Europe flood Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons, using it as an anti-Russian proxy and pouring fuel on the fire of a brutal war that is devastating the country, they are also making plans to essentially plunder its post-war economy.
Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”
Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a U.S.-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.
The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded.
Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine.
In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.
On July 4 and July 5, top officials from the United States, European Union, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments—while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts.
New NATO candidates Finland and Sweden committed to assure reconstruction in Lugansk, roughly 48 hours after Russia and separatist forces announced the region had fallen fully under their control.
But the Ukraine Recovery Conference was not new. It had been renamed to save the expense of a new acronym. In the previous five years, the group and its annual meetings were instead referred to as the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC).
The URC’s agenda was explicitly focused on imposing political changes on the country—namely, “strengthening the market economy“, “decentralization, privatization, reform of state-owned enterprises, land reform, state administration reform,” and “Euro-Atlantic integration.”
Before 2022, this gathering had nothing to do with aid – and a lot to do with economics.
Documents from the 2018 Ukraine Reform Conference emphasized the importance of privatizing most of Ukraine’s remaining public sector, stating that the “ultimate goal of the reform is to sell state-owned enterprises to private investors”, along with calls for more “privatization, deregulation, energy reform, tax and customs reform.”
Lamenting that the “government is Ukraine’s largest asset holder,” the report stated, “Reform in privatization and SOEs has been long awaited, as this sector of the Ukrainian economy has remained largely unchanged since 1991.”
The Ukraine Reform Conference listed as one of its “achievements” the adoption of a law in January 2018 titled “On Privatization of State and Municipal Property,” which it noted “simplifies the procedure of privatization.”
While the URC enthusiastically pushed for these neoliberal reforms, it acknowledged that they were very unpopular among actual Ukrainians. A poll found that just 12.4 percent supported privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOE), whereas 49.9 percent opposed it. (An additional 12 percent were indifferent, whereas 25.7 percent had no answer.)
Economic liberalization in Ukraine since Russia’s February invasion has been even more grim.
In March 2022, the Ukrainian parliament adopted emergency legislation allowing employers to suspend collective agreements. Then in May, it passed a permanent reform package effectively exempting the vast majority of Ukrainian workers (those at businesses with fewer than 200 employees) from Ukrainian labor law.
While the most immediate beneficiaries of these changes will be Ukrainian employers, Western governments have been lobbying to liberalize Ukraine’s labor laws for years.
Documents leaked in 2021 showed that the British government coached Ukrainian officials on how to convince a recalcitrant public to give up workers’ rights and implement anti-union policies. Training materials lamented that popular opinion towards the proposed reforms was overwhelmingly negative, but provided messaging strategies to mislead Ukrainians into supporting them.
West Calls for Aggressive Neoliberal Reforms at ‘Ukraine Recovery Conference’
The July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference, which was held by Lugano, Switzerland and jointly hosted by the Swiss and Ukrainian governments, featured representatives from the following states and institutions:
Albania
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Iceland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
North Macedonia
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Republic of Korea (popularly known as South Korea)
Romania
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Türkiye (formerly known as Turkey)
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States of America
Council of Europe
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
European Commission
European Investment Bank
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Among the prominent officials who attended were European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis, and UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss.
Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky also addressed the conference via video.
Physically present at the Switzerland meeting were Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Zelensky’s top political ally Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
Stefanchuk is the second-in-line for the presidency after Zelensky. He is also a member of Ukraine’s all-powerful National Security and Defense Council, which truly governs the country.
From left to right: Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, and Verkhovna Rada chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Switzerland on July 4, 2022
Even the United Nations gave its imprimatur to the conference: UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a video statement as well.
At the two-day meeting, the attendees agreed that Ukraine should eventually be given membership in the European Union. The country had already been granted EU candidate status just two weeks before, at a June summit in Brussels.
At the conclusion of the meeting, all governments and institutions present endorsed a joint statement called the Lugano Declaration. This declaration was supplemented by a “National Recovery Plan,” which was in turn prepared by a “National Recovery Council” established by the Ukrainian government.
This plan advocated for an array of neoliberal reforms, including “privatization of non critical enterprises” and “finalization of corporatization of SOEs” (state-owned enterprises) – identifying as an example the selling off of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company EnergoAtom.
In order to “attract private capital into banking system,” the proposal likewise called for the “privatization of SOBs” (state-owned banks).
Seeking to increase “private investment and boost nationwide entrepreneurship,” the National Recovery Plan urged significant “deregulation” and proposed the creation of “‘catalyst projects’ to unlock private investment into priority sectors.”
In an explicit call for slashing labor protections, the document attacked the remaining pro-worker laws in Ukraine, some of which are a holdover of the Soviet era.
The National Recovery Plan complained of “outdated labor legislation leading to complicated hiring and firing process, regulation of overtime, etc.” As an example of this supposed “outdated labor legislation,” the Western-backed plan lamented that workers in Ukraine with one year of experience are granted a nine-week “notice period for redundancy dismissal,” compared to just four weeks in Poland and South Korea.
Neoliberal economic reforms proposed in Ukraine’s National Recovery Plan
In the same vein, the National Recovery Plan urged Ukraine to cut taxes on corporations and wealthy capitalists.
The blueprint complained that 40 percent of Ukraine’s GDP comes from tax revenue, calling this a “rather high tax burden” compared to its model example of South Korea. It thus called to “transform tax service,” and “review potential for decreasing the share of tax revenue in GDP.”
In short, the Ukraine Recovery Conference’s economic proposal was little more than a repackaged Washington Consensus: a typical right-wing program that involves implementing mass privatizations, deregulating industries, gutting labor protections, cutting taxes on the rich, and putting the burden on Ukrainian workers.
In the 1990s, following the overthrow of the Soviet Union, the United States imposed what it called capitalist “shock therapy” on Russia and other former constituent republics.
A 2001 UNICEF study found that these harsh neoliberal reforms in Russia caused 3.2 million excess deaths, and pushed 18 million children into poverty, bringing about rampant malnutrition and public health crises.
Washington and Brussels appear committed to return to this very same neoliberal shock therapy in their plans for post-war Ukraine.
More Calls for Neoliberal Shock Therapy in Post-war Ukraine
To accompany its July 2022 meeting in Switzerland, the Ukraine Recovery Conference published a “strategic briefing” compiled by a right-wing Ukrainian organization called the Center of Economic Recovery.
The Center of Economic Recovery describes itself as a “platform that unites experts, think tanks, business, the public and government officials for the development of the country’s economy.” On its website, it lists many Ukrainian corporations as its partners and funders, making it clear that it acts as lobby on their behalf, like a chamber of commerce.
The report that this corporate lobby wrote for the Ukraine Recovery Conference was even more explicit than the National Recovery Plan in its advocacy of aggressive neoliberal economic reforms.
Using right-wing libertarian language of “economic freedom,” the document urged to “reduce government size” and “open markets.”
Its proposal read as neoliberal boilerplate: “decrease the regulatory burden on businesses” by “reducing the size of the government (tax administration, privatization; digitalization of public services), improving regulatory efficiency (deregulation), and opening markets (liberalization of capital markets; investment freedom).”
In the name of “EU integration and access to markets,” it likewise proposed “removal of tariffs and non-tariff non-technical barriers for all Ukrainian goods,” while simultaneously calling to “facilitate FDI [foreign direct investment] attraction to bring the largest international companies to Ukraine,” with “special investment incentives” for foreign corporations.
It was essentially a call for Ukraine to surrender its economic sovereignty to Western capital.
Both the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing also heavily emphasized the need for robust anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.
Neither document acknowledged that fact that Kiev’s Western-backed leader Volodmyr Zelensky, who spoke at the Ukraine Recovery Conference, is known to have large amounts of wealth hidden in a network of offshare accounts.
Even More Calls for Liberalization, Privatizations, Deregulation, Tax Cuts
In addition to the National Recovery Plan and the strategic briefing, the July 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference presented a report prepared by the company Economist Impact, a corporate consulting firm that is part of The Economist Group.
This third document, titled “Ukraine Reform Tracker,” was funded by the Swiss government with the stated “aim of stimulating and supporting discussion on this matter at the 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference.”
The Ukraine Reform Tracker analyzed the neoliberal policies already imposed in Ukraine since the U.S.-backed 2014 coup, and urged for even more aggressive neoliberal reforms to be implemented when the war ends.
Of the three reports presented at the conference, this was perhaps the most full-throated call for Ukraine to adopt neoliberal shock therapy after the war – a tactic often referred to as disaster capitalism.
Quoting the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the document insisted that Ukraine has “issues in deregulation and competition that still need to be addressed, such as ongoing state intervention” – depicting state intervention in the economy as something inherently bad.
In this vein, the Ukraine Reform Tracker pushed to “increase foreign direct investments” by international corporations, not invest resources in social programs for the Ukrainian people.
The report emphasized the importance of developing the financial sector and called for “removing excessive regulations” and tariffs.
“Deregulation and tax simplification has been further deepened,” it wrote approvingly, adding, “Steps towards deregulation and the simplification of the tax system are examples of measures which not only withstood the blow of the war but have been accelerated by it.”
The Ukraine Reform Tracker praised the central bank for “successfully liberalising the currency, floating the exchange rate.” While it noted some of these policies were reversed due to the Russian invasion, the report urged “the swiftest possible elimination of currency controls,” in order to “reinstate competitiveness within the financial sector.”
The report however complained that these neoliberal reforms are not being implemented quickly enough, writing, “Privatisation— which already progressed slowly before the war—stalled, with a draft law aiming to simplify the process rejected” by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
It called for further “liberalising agriculture” to “attract foreign investment and encourage domestic entrepreneurship,” as well as “procedural simplifications,” to “make it easier for small and medium enterprises” to “expand by purchasing and investing in state-owned assets,” thereby “making it easier for foreign investors to enter the market post-conflict.”
“Further pursuing the privatisation of large and loss-making state-owned enterprises” will “allow more Ukrainian entrepreneurs to enter the market and thrive there in the post-war context,” the report urged.
The Economist Impact study stressed the importance of Ukraine cutting its trade with Russia and instead integrating its economy with Europe.
“Ukraine’s trade reforms centre on efforts to diversify its trade operations and enhance its integration into the EU market,” it wrote.
The Western government-sponsored report boasted of significantly reducing Kiev’s economic ties to its eastern neighbor, noting: “Russia was Ukraine’s main trading partner in 2014, capturing 18.2 percent of its exports and providing 22 percent of its imports. Since then, however, Russia’s share of Ukraine’s exports and imports has decreased consistently, reaching 4.9 percent and 8.4 percent in 2021, respectively.”
“Ukraine made particular progress in diversifying its trade portfolio within the EU, raising its trade volumes with member states by 46.2 percent from 2015 to 2019,” it added.
The report added that it is “essential” that Ukraine carry out other reforms, such as modifying its railways by “aligning the rail gauges with EU standards.”
The Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland on July 5, 2022
The Ukraine Reform Tracker presented the war as an opportunity to impose even more disaster capitalist policies.
“The post-war moment may present an opportunity to complete the difficult land reform by extending the right to purchase agricultural land to legal entities, including foreign ones,” the report stated.
“Opening the path for international capital to flow into Ukrainian agriculture will likely boost productivity across the sector, increasing its competitiveness in the EU market,” it added.
The document proposed new ways for exploiting Ukrainian labor in specific industries, “especially pharmaceutical and electrical production, plastic and rubber manufacturing, furniture, textiles, and food and agricultural products.”
“Once the war is over, the government will also need to consider substantially lowering the share of stateowned banks, with the privatisation of Privatbank, the country’s largest lender, and Oshchadbank, a large processor of pensions and social payments,” it insisted.
The Ukraine Reform Tracker concluded optimistically, stating that that “post-war moment will be an opportunity for Ukraine,” and “there is likely to be significant pressure to continue and speed up the implementation of the reform agenda. Continued business reforms could allow Ukraine to further deregulate [and] privatise lossmaking SOEs.”
While Pushing Disaster Capitalism, the Ukraine Recovery Conference Exploits ‘Social Justice’ Rhetoric
While these three documents published by the 2022 Ukraine Reform Conference (URC) were vociferous calls for the imposition of right-wing economic policies, they were accompanied by superficial appeals to social justice rhetoric.
The URC released a set of seven “Lugano Principles” that it identified as the keys to a just, equitable post-war reconstruction:
partnership
reform focus
transparency, accountability, and rule of law
democratic participation
multi-stakeholder engagement
gender equality and inclusion
(environmental) sustainability
These principles demonstrate the ways that hawks in Washington and Brussels have increasingly weaponized ideas about “intersectionality” to advance their belligerent foreign policy.
In his report “Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism,” former U.S. State Department officer Christopher Mott discussed the growing use of left-liberal social-justice talking points to legitimize and enforce Western imperialism.
Mott observed that the “liberal Atlanticist tendency to push moralism and social engineering globally has immense potential to create backlash.”
Western-backed liberals in post-socialist Europe have spent three decades creating a false dichotomy between either a liberalizing cultural project that can only be realized under U.S.-led trans-Atlantic hegemony and neoliberal economic reforms, or a purely fictional socialist past whose political legacy is somehow reflected in right-wing anti-communist nationalist parties attempting to roll back advances that women had achieved under socialism.
Despite its patent absurdity, this narrative has won adherents among younger liberal intellectuals, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, who have little or no memory of the socialist period, and who face increasingly desperate career prospects outside of the Western-backed ideological apparatus.
On the other hand, right-wing nationalists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban posture as the only defenders of their countries’ cultural sovereignty against hostile outsiders, while also refusing to break from neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.
In turn, organic local activists struggling for legitimate social justice causes find themselves portrayed as agents furthering the agendas of foreign powers.
At best, during peacetime, this undermines their work and hinders progress for their causes. In a country like Ukraine, where Western governments have supportedfar-right, neo-fascist groups and eight years dragging out a civil war, this is life-threatening.
In Ukraine, What’s Even Left to Loot?
On May 9, 2022, the U.S. Congress passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, greatly expanding Washington’s authority to provide military aid to Ukraine.
Lend-lease provisions originated during World War II and were used by the U.S. government to provide military aid to countries fighting Nazi Germany, including Britain and the Soviet Union, without formally entering the war.
Under this framework, the United States provides military equipment as a loan; if the equipment is not or cannot be returned, recipient governments are on the hook to pay back the full cost.
The Joe Biden administration explained its use of lend-lease by the need to quickly move the bill through Congress before other funding ran out.
While many North Americans protested what they saw as a pointless giveaway of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to a foreign country, lend-lease provisions are loans, not grants.
Britain, one of the United States’ closest allies, only finished paying back its 60-year-old lend-lease debt in 2006. Russia settled its former Soviet obligations the same year.
Given this historical precedent, Ukraine will likely be saddled with debts it can’t readily pay back—debts extended to corrupt Western-backed elites under wartime duress. This means U.S. financial institutions will have further collateral to impose neoliberal structural adjustment policies on Ukraine, subordinating its economy for years to come.
Washington and its allies have a long history of instrumentalizing debt to force countries to accept unpopular pro-Western policy changes, and difficulties of repayment often compel countries to accept even more debt, leading to debt trap cycles that are extremely difficult to escape.
It was in fact the International Monetary Fund, and specifically the refusal of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych to accept IMF demands that he cut wages, slash social spending, and end gas subsidies in order to integrate with the EU, which led him to turn instead to Russia for an alternative economic agreement, thus setting the stage for the Western-backed “Euromaidan protests” and eventually the 2014 coup.
Meanwhile, in the current war, Moscow and Russian-backed separatist fighters are occupying and may annex what were historically the most industrialized regions of Ukraine, located in the east.
At the same time, much of what remained of the country’s pre-war industrial base has been physically destroyed by the war. And these same regions hold much of Ukraine’s energy resources, notably coal.
Millions of Ukrainians have already emigrated and are unlikely to return, especially if they are able to access work visas in the EU. Young and educated people with technical skills are the least likely to stay.
The situation is even bleaker when one considers that, well before Russia’s February invasion, Ukraine was already the poorest country in Europe.
While Soviet Ukraine had thrived as a center of the USSR’s heavy industry, and a source for much of Soviet political leadership, post-Soviet Ukraine has been a playground for rival elites supported by the West or by Russia.
Post-Soviet Ukraine has been devastated by persistent economic crises and rampant and systematic corruption. It has consistently had smaller incomes and a lower standard of living even compared to neighboring post-socialist countries, including Russia.
Ukraine has not been able to restore the size of the economy it had in 1990, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. And looking beyond raw GDP data, the quality of life for many Ukrainian workers and their access to social services has significantly declined.
With limited financial means to provide for basic state functions, much less to repay foreign debts, a post-war Ukraine could be forced to accept humiliating and dangerous concessions in other spheres—serving, say, as an Israel-style trying ground for weapons testing, or hosting Kosovo-style black sites for U.S. covert operations, or providing Western businesses a Chile-style no-regulation environment for tax evasion and criminal activities—all while gutting what little remains of its domestic welfare state and labor protections.
Yet instead of advocating for a diplomatic solution to the war, which could help the Ukrainian government and people concentrate their resources on economic recovery, Western governments have adamantly opposed proposed peace talks, insisting, in the words of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, “This war will be won on the battlefield.”
Washington and Brussels are sacrificing Ukraine for their geopolitical interests. And their Ukraine Recovery Conference shows they expect to keep benefiting economically even after the war ends.
1. This war will be won on the battlefield. Additional €500 million from the #EPF are underway. Weapon deliveries will be tailored to Ukrainian needs. pic.twitter.com/Jgr61t9FfW
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) April 9, 2022
Flowers reach their final destination on an Ecuadorian farm and are packaged at high speeds in the post-harvesting room. The women strip off leaves with gloves and cut the flowers to the proper size before depositing them in bunches on the conveyor belt (running through the middle of the photo). The flowers are then placed in large refrigerators before being shipped to international destinations / credit: Laura Kraft / Flickr
Editor’s Note: Kawsachun News spoke to Ecuadorian economist Juan Fernando Terán on April 2 about Western sanctions, the Ukraine war and how Latin America can protect its economy. The original interview can be found here.
Who is paying the price of western sanctions on Russia? Ecuador’s banana industry has collapsed without the Russian consumer market.
Juan F. Terán: Countries that export food and agricultural goods are in an incredibly difficult position now. Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina are among the worst affected. These countries import almost all the supplies they need for agricultural production; fertilizer, agrochemicals and even seeds in some cases. Sanctions have cut off these supplies. We could have prevented this situation.
Latin America lived through a golden era of development and integration during the period of leaders such as [former Ecuadorian President Rafael] Correa, [former Bolivian President] Evo Morales, [former Brazilian President] Lula [da Silva] and others. During these years, a lot of work went into the issue of how the region can start producing its own agricultural supplies. This was a flagship project of [Union of South American Nations] UNASUR. The aim was to guarantee food security in the face of fluctuations in international markets. There was also the proposal for a Latin American-wide bank and a common currency. This could’ve helped the region’s economy survive this current monetary crisis, too.
What’s happening now, though? Let’s look at the case of Ecuador: We have two main sources of income in exports. The first is oil. Logically, the war in Ukraine should have been beneficial because the price of oil has risen, which should mean more income from sales for Ecuador. However, the conservative President Guillermo Lasso had already promised the IMF the payment from future oil sales. Even if the price of oil goes to $300 (per barrel) it won’t benefit ordinary citizens.
What about agriculture?
JFT: The country also earns a lot by exporting goods such as bananas, coffee, shrimp and flowers. The primary market for Ecuadorian flower production is Russia. Now those producers are facing a dramatic crisis because sanctions have cut them off from their clients. This is a huge industry for Ecuador. In the provinces of Pichincha and Cotopaxi, there are entire regions dedicated almost entirely to flower production. They even have airports there because these flowers are exported to the world by plane. A small part of their production goes to the United States and Europe, but the large majority goes to Russia. Russia is one of the few countries where people buy flowers all year round rather than just for certain dates like Valentine’s Day.
What about our shrimp, coffee, or cacao exports? All that requires fertilizer and other imported agricultural supplies. Now there’s a global shortage, Russia was the world’s leading producer and now they’re sanctioned.
What has been the government’s response?
JFT: Countries can survive this storm if they have an umbrella, but Ecuador doesn’t have a progressive government. It has a neoliberal government. Our economy has no umbrella now.
What has been the neoliberal response to this current crisis? The flower producers were the first to ask for assistance. They asked for loans, so they can sustain themselves temporarily during this drop. President Lasso replied by saying that going into business means assuming risk and that the state has no obligation to bail anyone out. This idea of not bailing anyone out is a great idea in my opinion, but only if it’s applied evenly. We shouldn’t have to bail out the bankers when they have a crisis. But, of course, Guillermo Lasso will never abandon his people. He only abandons small farmers, who are now in crisis.
Electing progressive governments in Latin America is not a question of ideology; it’s also about citizens defending their economy and living standards. If a banker manages to win an election, then these are the results.
Many countries now see Washington as an unreliable ally and are looking to trade in different currencies. Do you think the U.S. dollar will lose its international hegemony? What would that mean for Latin America?
JFT: When the [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] BRICS countries start trading entirely in Yuan, or any currency that isn’t the dollar, then the world is going to really change. I think we can expect to see this transformation within the next five years. It’ll represent the definitive defeat of the U.S. empire. History shows us that a country’s military power is linked to the power of its currency.
When Britain ruled the world, the British pound dominated international trade. Even Ecuador’s external debt was in pound sterling during those years. The reserves of our central bank were in pound sterling. This came to an end after the end of World War 2 because the U.S. became the new dominant power and built the world’s financial and monetary institutions for its own ends. The current war in Ukraine is also about currency. The U.S. is participating in this conflict against Russia because they need to defend the power of the dollar.
What can the region do?
JFT: Latin America needs to slowly de-link our region from the U.S. dollar. We need to diversify our international currency reserves. Correa began to do this in Ecuador by investing in gold reserves. This was criticized by the opposition at the time. However, this diversification can only happen if we make the necessary changes to our commercial relations. If we’re to start building reserves in the Chinese yuan, then we need to deepen commercial relations with China to achieve this.
I think we should return to the proposal of UNASUR of creating a common Latin American currency with its own central bank. We also need a Latin American payment system. Look at how the U.S. is using SWIFT to cut off any country they don’t like from the global economy. We can’t allow that. It makes us vulnerable. Russia and China are creating their own payment systems. We should have our own as well.
There’s no use in just complaining about U.S. aggression. That’s what they do. They invade and attack countries all over the world. The real problem is that Latin America is exposed and unable to deal with this kind of economic war. In response, we need to turn towards Asia in a serious way. Why isn’t the Ecuadorian government securing new markets for our shrimp and banana in China? There’s huge demand there. Bolivia and Ecuador both have vast mineral wealth, we need to bypass the West and focus on Asia when it comes to trade and investment in these commodities.
U.S. media has attacked countries like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, for not imposing their own economic sanctions on Russia. Do you think this capricious request from the United States will further break down the U.S. sphere of influence here and across the rest of the global South?
These sanctions are causing an inflation crisis for people everywhere. Europeans are paying 8-9 euros for a gallon of gasoline. In the U.S., it’s $4.75. Up to $6 in places like California and Miami. This is shocking. The sanctions are having a boomerang effect on the U.S. and its citizens. Though not everyone is suffering: Arms manufacturers are not suffering. People like [U.S. President Joe] Biden’s son [Hunter], with shady dealings in the gas business, are not going to suffer.
Financial analysis reports came out this week indicating that if the price of gasoline remains at $4.75 as a national average in the U.S., then the U.S. economy will enter into a recession at the end of this year. None of what they’re doing is reasonable from the perspective of ordinary citizens.
