Ukraine War: Who’s to Blame and What’s the Solution? A Socialist View
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 588 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2022
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Intense bombing and fighting continues throughout Ukraine as Russia’s war enters its second week. Western countries have imposed a sanctions regime on Russia that is battering the economy and hitting workers the hardest. Eugene Puryear and Brian Becker discuss the latest on the war and explore the essential historical context, establishing five basic principles and points of unity for progressive forces in the West. They also discuss how the question of war and imperialism has served as an essential litmus test for socialists in the past.
Eugene Puryear is the host of the BreakThrough News podcast The Punch Out, and co-host of the BT live video show The Freedom Side.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The war in Ukraine enters its second week. |
| 0:05.0 | We need a new system. We need a new society. |
| 0:09.0 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, |
| 0:14.0 | but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Welcome to this week's episode of The Real Story on the Socialist Program. |
| 0:45.2 | I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 0:47.0 | Today we're talking with Eugene per year, once again, about the war in Ukraine. |
| 0:52.2 | Eugene has the daily podcast to punch out. |
| 0:55.6 | He's also the anchor of the freedom side with Rania Kowik every Thursday on Breakthrough News. |
| 1:01.9 | Eugene, welcome back. |
| 1:02.8 | Thanks so much for having me. |
| 1:04.5 | Week two, the Russian government just announced casualty figures. |
| 1:08.9 | I think the reason they did so was that the Ukrainian government |
| 1:12.6 | was saying as many as 5,000 Russian soldiers were killed. Russia's official numbers were about 500 killed, |
| 1:20.1 | 498, another 1,200 injured. We don't know about casualties on the Ukrainian side, but a lot of death, |
| 1:27.2 | a lot of destruction, heavy |
| 1:29.4 | shelling now of Kirkiv and other Ukrainian cities. |
| 1:33.3 | Kiev, the capital of Ukraine is surrounded. |
| 1:37.2 | There's fierce resistance going on inside of Ukraine against the Russian military operation. |
| 1:44.1 | Eugene, before we get started or before we get into the sort of the nuts and bolts of what's |
| 1:49.2 | going on right now, sort of a new assessment, I think the important way to start for us, |
| 1:54.8 | and of course this is the socialist program, is to talk about the socialist view towards war, |
| 2:00.5 | especially war in the imperialist |
... |
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