By Raúl Zibechi

When the war began, a timely communique from the EZLN analyzing the first days of the conflict concluded this way: “The war must stop now.  If it is maintained and, predictably, scaled, then there may be no one to account for the landscape after the battle.”

A year and a half later, the journalist Rafael Poch de Feliu, who was a correspondent for more than 20 years in Moscow, Beijing, Berlin and Paris, and is a deep acquaintance of those worlds, fully agrees with the Zapatista assessment. He quotes extensively from American journalist Matthew Hoh who published an article in counterpunch.org on June 30, titled “Destroy Eastern Ukraine to Save It:”

“Whoever ‘wins’ in eastern Ukraine will gain a land depopulated and full of destroyed infrastructure. This land will be contaminated for generations by the military toxins of war and riddled with landmines and unexploded ordnance. Ukrainian mothers are likely to suffer the same as Iraqi, Afghan and Southeast Asian mothers, giving birth for generations to dead, deformed and sick children due to the imperishable toxic legacies of modern warfare. Children and their families, decades from now, will be punished for this madness in Ukraine, just as children and their families continue to be punished in all post-conflict countries.”

Poch’s article is titled “Ukraine is losing the war, but Russia is not winning it,” and does not take sides with either side, although he says that 70% of the responsibility for the war lies with the United States and its allies.

He begins by talking about the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, largely due to “desertions, forced conscription and surrenders to the enemy of Ukrainian troops,” news that the European press rigorously hides. Young people simply refuse to join the armed forces, with only one in five recruited.

He goes on to explain that on the front lines there is real carnage. “There is a horrible picture of young men killed and maimed.” Some analysts consider that the life expectancy of a young man who is sent to the front is only four hours!!

On Russia’s side, things are no better. The country justified the invasion of Ukraine to defend the Russian population of Donbas, but things are turning against it: “The population of Donbas – and part of that of the Russian bordering regions of Belgorod and others – is now suffering much worse bombings and calamities than before the invasion.” Worse, Ukraine’s majority regions will be long-term unstable and increasingly anti-Russian, a sentiment Poch expects to endure for generations.

The truth is that peace is increasingly distant, the two sides cling to their positions without the slightest ability to foresee where the war is going, which, as the EZLN estimated, tends to escalate into a conflict between nuclear powers.

Many of the people on the left that we have heard during these months agree with the analysis of geopoliticians that we are facing a war aimed at changing the relationship of forces between North and South, between the G-7 and the BRICS, and in particular between China and Russia and the United States. Some are already speculating about how long the dollar will last as a reserve currency and the foreseeable erosion of the superpower’s power. They believe that being anti-imperialist boils down to being anti-Yankee. As if it were the only imperialism on the planet.

The great problem with this political position is that it leaves human beings, the peoples who are victims of a war they did not choose, in the ditch. And this point links the war in Ukraine (and in Yemen, in Syria and throughout the planet) with the wars of dispossession that the peoples of Latin America suffer. That is why we must be clear that there is only one war: that of capital against the peoples. It is not relevant that this capital is now based in Europe, the United States, China or Russia. It’s capital, period.

Will we be able to feel the war in Ukraine as an aggression against us? The question also applies to those who still do not feel the aggressions in Chiapas or Oaxaca, in Jujuy or in Peru, as part of a generalized attack from above against those below. As Brecht said, if we do not react now, it will be too late when our turn comes.

Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformemonos, Monday, July 24, 2023, https://desinformemonos.org/el-fin-del-paisaje-durante-la-batalla/ and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee