Escalation...

Over the last year or so, I’ve written a fair number of posts about the way we’re being nudged and pushed into accepting the idea that a war with Russia is inevitable and that society will have to be re-calibrated in order to prepare us for that conflict. This is where these posts can be found: Anti-war posts. It has been a steady drip feed but, with the way events are panning out, there’s a discernible increase in the amount of pro-war propaganda that’s being inflicted upon us.

One major development has been the lifting of range limits on missiles supplied to Ukraine by nations such as Germany and the UK: Merz lifts range limits on Ukraine weapons to hit targets inside Russia - Chris Lunday | Politico | 2.5.25

Germany and its key allies have lifted range restrictions on weapons sent to Ukraine allowing Kyiv to hit targets inside Russia with no external limits, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday.

That announcement by the German leader could clear the path for Berlin to finally deliver its powerful Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, something that the previous government refused to do so as not to provoke nuclear-armed Russia.

“There are no more range limitations for weapons delivered to Ukraine. Neither from the Brits, nor the French, nor from us. Not from the Americans either,” Merz said at the WDR Europaforum in Berlin on Monday. He added that Ukraine must be allowed to strike back “by attacking military infrastructure on Russian territory.”

There’s this as well: Kremlin foreign minister accuses West of secrecy over Ukrainian strikes inside Russia - Sky News | 27.5.25.

Russia's foreign minister has accused European leaders of secretly giving Ukraine the green light to launch long-range strikes inside Russian territory.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that there were "no longer any restrictions" on the range of weapons delivered to Ukraine by Germany, France, the UK and the US.

"Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia," Mr Merz said on X.

"Until recently, it couldn't do that, and apart from very few exceptions, it hadn't done so either."

It’s generally acknowledged that Ukraine does not have the capacity to launch and direct these missiles without the help of the nations supplying them. That means that Germany and the UK – and possibly other nations – have or will be actively aiding Ukraine in launching attacks well into Russia. Not surprisingly, the Russians see this as direct involvement by the likes of Germany in the conflict – technically an act of war if these strikes go ahead. This is one of the responses from the Russians: Answers of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov to the questions of the program - Moscow. The Kremlin. Putin, Moscow, May 28, 2025 - Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation | 28.05.25.

Question: German Chancellor F. Merz not only confirms that all restrictions on long-range missiles have indeed been lifted for Ukraine. Today, at a press conference with V.A. Zelensky, he said that they would finance the production of long-range missiles in Ukraine, so that later Ukraine could shoot them where it considers it necessary.

Sergey Lavrov: If I understood correctly what I read, F. Mertz said at a press conference that he had in mind from the very beginning to finance the production of missiles of any range in Ukraine. Allegedly, there is no talk of deliveries of German missiles. We have to check.

Both are the incitement of tension, support for war. Germany is directly drawn into this war.

Question: We have that German tanks drive through the territory ...

Sergey Lavrov: They burn mostly, and do not drive.

Direct involvement in the war is already obvious. Germany slides along the same inclined plane, along which it has already moved down to its collapse a couple of times in the last century. I hope that responsible politicians in this country will still draw the right conclusion and stop the madness.

An executive summary of this interview would read as ‘f**k around and find out’. In addition to this, with NATO military drills in Finland and some seriously ill considered, aggressive posturing from leaders of the Baltic states, tensions are rising on Russia’s north-western flank as well. As the saying goes – ‘shit is getting serious’. Too serious for my taste, way too serious...

Reading through the above, any right thinking person will conclude that a broad based anti-war movement is needed as a matter of urgency. Sure, there’s rightly a massive movement against what Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. While this movement has been growing and getting a considerable amount of attention, the situation with the increasingly hostile posturing of the West towards Russia has slipped in under the radar.

There are people speaking out about this aggression towards Russia. They range from across and beyond the political spectrum as it’s currently understood. It takes in the remnants of the old school, anti-imperialist hard Left and goes all the way across to working class people stating they they – or their sons and daughters – have no intention of being conscripted to be cannon fodder in an all out war with Russia. It takes in progressive anti-imperialist assumptions and goes across to what some would consider reactionary assumptions about not wanting to fight another ‘white nation’. The question is – how the heck can an effective anti-war movement be brought together from such a disparate range of people and opinion? To put it bluntly, I haven’t a sodding clue! All I know is that it’s an urgent priority…

Currently, there are two strands to our anti-war work:

As already mentioned, the first is writing blog posts on various aspects of the drive towards WW3, the links to which are collated on this recently created page on the Stirrings from below blog – Anti-war posts. This is ongoing and given the way the situation is developing, the frequency of anti-war posts is likely to increase. At this stage, it’s about alerting people to what is going on while playing our very small part in countering the blatant pro-war and Russophobic propaganda in most of the mainstream media.

Then there’s the stickering. It’s a nice, practical activity – the results of which will be seen by more eyeballs than anything I post up on social media. That’s the case even if the stickers are only up for 48 hours before being removed. So far, we’ve had no hostility directed at us in person while we’ve been out stickering. While that’s good, we can’t afford to be complacent so, when we’re out stickering, a certain amount of vigilance is needed. My guess is that when we do eventually get hostility directed at us in person, it will be from the middle class liberal types who have swallowed the pro-Ukraine propaganda in the same way that they swallowed all of the bollocks about the Covid ‘crisis’. So, while it will be a nuisance having to deal with it, it will be mainly verbal abuse rather than anything physical.

Yes, a number of our anti-war stickers are getting ripped down. I personally am not bothered – the aim of stickering is to a) get people to start thinking about the threat of WW3 and b) to get a reaction. Stickers being ripped down is a reaction… When they get ripped down, the aim is, after a suitable period of time, to go out and replace them. The more times we go out to replace torn off stickers, the more the message that we’re determined to not give up will sink into the heads of whoever is doing this. Who is doing this is something I’ve been thinking about: So, who’s doing this and why? 20.5.24.

However, while we refuse to get riled by whoever is doing this, we are curious about their motivations. Obviously whoever it is has bought into the pro-Ukrainian propaganda we’re being subjected. They could be the middle class liberal types who have been persuaded to adopt Ukraine as a cause in the same way that many of them adopted the masking, social distancing and vaccine pushing during the Covid ‘crisis’ in 2020/21. Alternatively, they could be the older armchair warriors unthinkingly swallowing every word rabidly anti-Russian rags such as the Telegraph spew out. Taken together, both of these demographics make for a strange combination. Then again, we do live in increasingly weird times.

What also needs to be done is starting to put out feelers to people/groups who are also opposed to the drive towards WW3. They are out there but, it’s a disparate array of people spread across and beyond the political spectrum. As previously mentioned, a range of people that will be hard to form into a unified campaign. The best that can be achieved is a broad ‘coalition of convenience’. This is something that I intend to attempt address in a future blog post.