15-06-2025: On the 1st of June, operation “Spider’s Web” was launched by Ukrainian armed forces heavily backed by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). Four Russian air bases were struck with drones which damaged Russian strategic bombers. The Olenya base was close to Finland in the north, while the bases hit at Dyagilevo and Ivanovo were closer to Ukraine. Yet the Belaya air base which was also hit is located over 2500 miles from Ukraine, in South Eastern Siberia.[1] The operation involved somehow smuggling 117 drones into Russia over 18 months, hiding them, and then triggering them at a precise and coordinated time. It is wholly implausible to suggest that Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence acted alone. The combined intelligence of several NATO states – most likely the United States of America (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Germany and France – must have contributed to an assault, the likes of which had never occurred during the first Cold War. This was an attack on Russian aircraft on Russian soil, and one which again pushed the planet ever closer to World War III.
START-3
Propaganda from Kiev boasted of destroying or damaging 40 Russian aircraft, including Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers. If this was true, it would mean a significant degradation of Russia’s long range strike capability. However, satellite imagery tells a vastly different story. The most substantial damage was conducted on the Belaya airfield, with reports of eight bombers being hit. However, the number of aircraft destroyed could be as low as four.[2] Despite Western media propaganda, the destruction of Russia’s nuclear capable air fleet did not happen. The losses that were sustained can easily be absorbed by the Russian Federation, given its overall position of being in a commanding position in the NATO led conflict. Questions as to why Russia had its bombers parked in open airfields can be explained by the fact that the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-3) has been extended until February 2026. Under START-3, strategic bombers must be parked in open areas so that their numbers can be verified through satellite pictures or inspection. In the face of unrelenting hostility from NATO, Russia ended its participation in inspection procedures. However, Moscow still publicly disclosed the number of bombers it possessed to confirm compliance with START-3.[3]
Hours before the June 1 drone attacks on Russian airfields, an attack on a civilian railroad in the Bryansk region took the lives of seven people and injured 119, including five children.[4] The detonation was timed so that a bridge would fall on the oncoming train full of passengers. Hours later, a train was derailed in the Kursk region after a bridge collapsed. To put it simply, in targeting civilians the NATO armed Ukrainian government has carried out terrorist outrages of the worst kind. Andrei Klishas, a senior member of the Federation Council (Russia’s upper chamber of parliament), stated on Telegram that “Ukraine has long lost the attributes of a state and has turned into a terrorist enclave.”[5] Since February 2022, NATO backed Ukraine has continually engaged in cross border shelling, drone strikes and covert raids into the bordering Russian regions of Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod.
Coalition War
Many have described the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war on Russia conducted by US imperialism. This is certainly the case, but some have argued that the proxy war should in fact be termed a “Coalition War”. There is no doubt Ukraine is being used as a platform for appalling attacks on Russia, but it has at long last been admitted that the US, the UK, France and Germany are conducting this devastating war in a coalition against Moscow. The New York Times, in its article “The Secret History of the War in Ukraine”, finally reported on the fact that not only has the US Administration supplied Nazi battalions in Ukraine with around $70 Billion worth of heavy weapons, it has planned and directed “Ukrainian” military operations against Russia from the headquarters of the US Army in Europe. This is its base in Weisbaden, Germany.[6] The Western corporate media narrative of defending Ukraine against Russian “aggression”, or a Russian “invasion”, or that Ukraine is a “democracy” holding out against “authoritarianism” should now once and for all be exposed as a mountain of lies.
Since the NATO backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, the Russian Federation has taken all possible measures to protect the lives and welfare of Russian speaking Ukrainians, and then some. Eight years of the Minsk Agreements with the West – even while the Kiev coup government was bombing the Donbass every day – eventually came to nought. In June 2024, Russian President Putin once again put forward an entirely reasonable offer to end the conflict. He made it clear that peace talks could begin if Ukraine withdrew its forces from the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and gave an undertaking that it would never join NATO.[7] The now unelected Zelenskyy rejected this offer at the behest of Washington and London, and so the war continues. US President Trump has maintained the flow of weapons and intelligence from the NATO coalition powers, despite all his rhetoric about attempting to bring about peace. In fact, it is very unlikely that Trump had zero knowledge of operation “Spider’s Web”, given its planning over the previous 18 months.
Whatever one thinks of the politics of the Russian government, the fact is that the remarkable restraint it has demonstrated in the face of outrageous provocations from NATO has meant that a nuclear war has not occurred. And yet, NATO continues to fuel and direct this war which has the potential to ignite World War III. In the West, the so-called left (with several honourable exceptions) is silent in the face of the potential end of human civilisation. The “global majority” – teeming masses in Africa, Asia and Latin America – do not buy the myth that Russia is the bad guy. On the contrary, millions in the global south see Russia as standing up to, and defeating, the former colonialist Western powers. Working people should not despair, but should be prepared to forge a genuine left, real workers’ parties which can help lead the masses towards the end of constant war. NATO’s coalition war is a war on Russia AND its non-imperialist allies such as China, Iran and its BRICS partners. To help bring down a capitalism which threatens even further destruction, working people need to strive towards the socialism that is on the horizon. NO TO WAR! NO WEAPONS FOR UKRAINE, ISRAEL OR TAIWAN!
Workers League
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
[1] www.rt.com/russia/618753-ukraines-most-reckless-attack/ (11-06-2025)
[2] www.southfront.press/spiderweb-unraveled-ukraines-ambitious-drone-operation-falls-short-of-propaganda-claims/ (11-06-2025)
[3] www.vietnam.vn/en/vi-sao-nga-de-may-bay-nem-bom-chien-luoc-lo-thien-bat-chap-rui-ro-lon (11-06-2025)
[4] www.uniindia.com/news/world/russia-bridge-deathtoll/3482523.html (11-06-2025)
[5] www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-kursk-bryansk-train-detrailments-1.7549280 (11-06-2025)
[6] www.globalresearch.ca/west-china-russia-iran-north-korea/5883674 (11-06-2025)
[7] www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/14/putin-says-ukraine-must-withdraw-troops-to-start-peace-talks-a85413 (11-06-2025)
Image: Train derailed in the Kursk region after a Western/Ukrainian terror attack. http://www.timesnewnews.com
Red Fire 