First, a general rearmament around NATO is urgently needed. Second, liquidate the ecological transition and create nuclear power plants to have clean energy of our own, without depending on Putin.

A tank moves slowly in an irregular column along the banks of the Dnieper in Ukrainian territory. It carries a camouflage roof, belied by the classic communist flag, red, with the hammer and sickle. Not the flag of one of the republics after whose recognition Putin has invaded the whole of Ukraine. Nor the Russian flag, raised by the mayor of St. Petersburg, still Leningrad, in front of the tanks with this red flag that in 1991 encircled the city to overthrow Russian President Yeltsin and USSR President Gorbachev. It is an isolated image that reveals the whole. The intervention does not stem from pan-Russian nationalism but from shared communism. Lenin took Kharkov in 1921 and unleashed Russia’s first famine: five million dead. Stalin copied him in Ukraine with the Holodomor: six million dead. A century of totalitarian dictatorship and only ten years of decaying democracy.

In Lonitza’s documentary The Event, the mayor of Leningrad, after raising the Russian flag, is seen getting into his car. The head of his bodyguard opens the doors for him: his name is Vladimir Putin and he will be a confidant of Yeltsin, whom he will inherit and disinherit in 1999. His lesson from the communist failure in 1991 is that, to restore the power of the USSR, the way is not the way of the tanks, which stalled against the cars, but to get into the car of the political leaders. After twenty years in power, their tanks drive along the Dnieper or the Kiev highway. Thousands of cars crowd the exit to Poland. The entrance is comfortably empty.

Russia, the first victim of communism

The propagandists of the [Spanish] left and of the so-called [Spanish] national right, who also liquefy with Putin, half-heartedly excuse or openly support the invasion of Ukraine, for which [Javier] Bardem and [Alberto] Garzón blame Tsarist imperialism. For various reasons, the left and part of the right blur a not always clear but always real difference between Russian nationalism and Soviet communism. The former has a particular tradition and character and seeks territorial hegemony over half of Europe and part of Asia. The second is universal, transcending geographical boundaries, and is based on an idea of Humanity that embraces all countries and is forever.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. | Kremlin / dpa

Russian President Vladimir Putin. | Kremlin / dpa

The last Tsar Nicholas II wanted to take Constantinople and proclaim Moscow the “Third Christian Rome”. The first Soviet dictator, Lenin, was fiercely anti-Christian and admitted no historical – the socialist New Man had never existed – or cultural limits. If communism seeks universal rule, it is for ideological reasons that it declares ethical: to do away with property and individual freedom, which would have prevented the full realisation of the human being. Although Russia was home to the first communist state, and the USSR was the armor and fearsome weapon of Russian nationalism, nationalism was part of communism and communism overflowed nationalism. For forty years, Chinese communism and the USSR were inseparable. Since the Chinese break with Khrushchev, their model of society and the drive for world communist leadership separated them. Today their communist status has brought them together. And the most fearsome thing about the nationalist Putin is the communist Putin. That is why the invasion of Ukraine has the enthusiastic backing of Venezuela, Cuba and all the world’s communists, in or out of [the Spanish] government. And that is why it is immoral to defend anti-communist positions and excuse Putin.

In reality, the first victim of communism was Russia, which today has half the population of 1917, with almost the same territory. The victims of Lenin, Stalin and their successors are a third of the population. But the ultimate reason for the massacres and ruin of Russia under Lenin and his successors is the same as that of China, Cambodia, Cuba or Venezuela under Mao, Pol Pot, Castro or Maduro: communism, an ideology to which the welfare and the very lives of the people have always been subordinated. Except for the communists, of course, who, representing the sacred ideology, are not obliged to respect it, but interpret it as they see fit.

When Lenin saw that his power was in danger, he launched the NEP, the New Economic Policy, which allowed the reopening of markets and the re-establishment of rural property to supply the cities, but on a temporary basis. When he was strong enough, he liquidated it. Stalin did the same: he opened his hand when he had no choice, and clenched his fist when his situation improved. The degree to which the economy is subordinate to politics explains China’s bloody evolution up to the dictatorship of Xi Jinping. After the fall of the Wall and the Tiananmen massacre, it can be said that every communist regime is based on the alliance of political commissars and economic oligarchs, united by corruption and protected by state violence. The model is Lenin’s: single party, ideological repression and police brutality. Propaganda and repression, lies and terror: that is communism.

Communist military invasions

By its totalitarian ideological nature, communism must intervene in all countries and in all forms. But military intervention, unlike terrorism and guerrilla warfare, requires more than just will. It requires military capability and strategic doctrine to use it. Lenin achieved this in creating the first communist state, and Stalin achieved it with his theory and mode of intervention. Morally, a communist army must always be ready to act for political reasons, which are determined by the party. From Lenin and Trotsky to Mao and Zu De, military doctrine is always political.

The intervention of regular communist armies beyond the borders of their countries has been going on since Lenin’s early days and for the same ideological reason: communism does not recognise borders. After signing the renunciation of the Polish territories, Lenin wanted to take them back. He thought that with the imperial remnants and the communist parties he would succeed. Before the representatives of the parties of the Third International, he put on a big show to demonstrate the seizure of Warsaw. But Warsaw resisted. He invaded Finland, and Finland resisted. He revolted Hungary, and the uprising failed. He forced the Spartacist coup in Germany, and it too was defeated. Stalin then created the doctrine of “socialism in only one country”, so that the communist parties would subordinate their interests to those of Moscow. The Spanish civil war was the showcase of this subjugation. But “anti-fascism” immediately mutated into defence of the Hitler-Stalin pact. And it was only when Hitler attacked the USSR and subjugated regions, such as the Ukraine, that anti-fascism, the Spanish war and other Soviet charlatanism were dusted off. To this day.

After World War II, Stalin broke the Yalta agreements and did not allow free elections in the area occupied by the Red Army. The Iron Curtain, in Churchill’s phrase, split Europe in two. And in the East, Soviet tanks drowned in blood all popular uprisings and attempts at reform by the communist parties and governments themselves. East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland twice, the last time in 1981, were the scenes for the application of Brezhnev’s “limited sovereignty”, strictly speaking, an adaptation by Sushlov of Stalin’s “socialism in only one country”.

The form of military intervention was of two types, both of which Putin is now using with Ukraine. In the first, East Germany, Moscow said it was not an invasion because it was legally Soviet-controlled territory, and that they were only helping to defeat the Nazi-fascist conspiracy. In the last, Poland after the Gdansk uprising, they said they were supporting General Jaruzelski in restoring order. In between, in Budapest and Prague, there was no excuse, and they slaughtered the governments of Imre Nagy and Dubcek and the anti-communists in the streets alike. The same as in Afghanistan: at the request of a comrade, one had to intervene. For or against the comrade. The USSR waged all the wars against capitalism: China, Korea, Vietnam. And it formed the guerrillas in Africa, Asia and America, especially those in Cuba. The intervention most reminiscent of that of the Ukraine is that of Hungary, led by Andropov, which caused three thousand deaths and two hundred thousand exiles.

Invasions after the USSR

After the demise of the USSR, soon to be remade into the CIS, Moscow has intervened militarily outside the former USSR, in Syria, and within the former borders. It started in Georgia, using the Ukrainian tactic: it created two separatist republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and when Georgia attacked them to prevent secession, it invaded Georgia to help them. After three episodes of war, the toll was 20,000 dead and 300,000 exiled.

Putin directly took back Chechnya, after two wars. In 1991, when the USSR was dissolved, it proclaimed itself independent, but in 1994 Moscow sent troops to take it back. After two years of war, a withdrawal was agreed in 1996. But in 1999, when Putin came to power, it invaded Chechnya and fought bitterly until 2009, when he was able to claim victory. Kyrgyzstan also asked Putin for help after bloody clashes with the Uzbeks. Moscow intervened and has agreed to a 15-year protectorate.

The first attack on Ukraine was the invasion and conquest of Crimea in 2015. Then came the creation of two pro-Russian republics and, for now, the total invasion of Ukrainian territory. But Russia has troops in eastern Moldova and pro-Russian republics. And threatens Sweden and Finland if they dare join NATO. As a good communist, Putin believes he has the right to act where his strength allows. And the world must obey.

To help Ukraine, arms and nuclear weapons

Peace between Russia and Ukraine would be possible if they shared a political model. A dictatorship born of communism and a Western European-style democracy are incompatible. Putin has Leninist political and military allies, such as Belarus. But his decisive ally is trade with capitalist countries, especially Germany. Berlin took the pro-Green pleasure of shutting down its nuclear power plants and subscribing to Russian gas. Today it would not be able to function without this cheap energy source, which is swallowed by greens and environmentalists.

Russia will negotiate if they raise guerrillas and prevent it from exporting energy. But Putin can force Russians to starve, Scholtz cannot force Germans to go cold. That explains Biden’s trick, which vetoes Moscow’s dollar purchases of technology through American banks, but with one exemption: Russian energy sales to German banks, which keep those dollar accounts until sanctions end. Germany continues to buy gas and Russia spends the dollar reserves prepared before the war and is filling its piggy bank to attack Moldova, with money from its enemies. Are we really? Are we for Ukraine and freedom? Let’s prove it. First, a general rearmament around NATO is urgently needed. Second, liquidate the ecological transition and create nuclear power plants to have clean energy of our own, without depending on Putin or the man who invented it, a certain Lenin. Clinton won the election against Bush I with the slogan: “It’s the economy, stupid! Ukraine is communism. Are we so stupid as not to see it?