Malaysian airline crash: U.S./EU to blame

The world is shocked and dismayed that in the midst of a civil war in Ukraine, provoked by United States and European Union imperialism, 298 people have died in the crash of a Malaysian airliner on July 18 in the war area.

We at WW have no special information at this time — July 19 — about why the plane crashed. We know that Russia has no motive, and it has control of its military. We know that the Ukrainian military is poorly organized and subject to pressure from the murderous fascist forces that have been integrated into the state directed from Kiev; we know that neoconservative elements from the U.S. have strong influence in Washington’s policy in Ukraine and its aggressive hostility toward Russia.

We also believe that the popular resistance forces in southeast Ukraine do not control weapons capable of shooting down a plane flying at that altitude, nor do they have any interest in shooting down a civilian airliner from Malaysia. Only U.S. and EU imperialism can gain and are trying to gain by exploiting the incident and using it against Russia.

President Barack Obama has already blamed Russia, saying that the cause of the shootdown was the war situation in Ukraine and claiming Russia caused that war.

We disagree completely with Obama’s statement that Russian foreign policy is responsible for the war in Ukraine.

On the contrary, it is the aggressive policy of U.S. and EU imperialism that has created a war situation in Ukraine. The U.S. and the EU supported a coup in February that brought to power in Kiev a regime dedicated to bringing Ukraine under the influence of the International Monetary Fund and subjecting the Ukrainian workers to austerity — as has already been done in Greece, Spain and Portugal — and attaching Ukraine to NATO.

To carry out this coup the pro-West Ukrainian oligarchy has leaned on the support of openly pro-fascist forces, such as the Right Sector, who don’t even shy away from identifying with the Nazi occupiers of Ukraine during World War II.

For the people of Ukraine, and especially the workers of the southeast, such a coup in Kiev could only raise resistance — a righteous and heroic, anti-fascist resistance based on the history of resistance to the Nazi occupation. The aggression from Kiev — which now includes the bombing of cities in the southeast, killing civilians and forcing tens of thousands to flee to Russia — makes such a civil war inevitable.

If the plane crash was actually a byproduct of the civil war, it was not Russian foreign policy, but U.S./NATO imperialism — that set up a regime in Kiev filled with fascist sympathizers and forced the people of the southeast Ukraine to resist — that is responsible.

Stop the U.S./EU intervention in Ukraine! Long live the resistance!