TWO THINGS at least could be expected from the moment the Ukraine war began. First, there would be reports of atrocities committed by Russian troops. And second, that Putin’s apologists would seek to dismiss such accounts as a “false flag” operation.

The horrifying reports of the killing of civilians in Bucha and elsewhere are likely to prove true in essence, even if exaggerated in scope.

The fact is that all armies commit atrocities in wartime, particularly if they are operating in a hostile environment, as the Russian army clearly is. To assert, as the Russian Defence Ministry did, that “not a single civilian” had been harmed by its forces is absurd. It assumes that the Russian army is either uniquely decent or uniquely disciplined. There is little evidence for either proposition.

Fighting amidst a population that does not want you there leads unavoidably to random and gratuitous acts of violence, as we saw many times over in Iraq and Afghanistan when under foreign occupation.

Nevertheless, the West has been boasting throughout this war about the skill and success of its propaganda operation, spinning fact, half fact and falsehood together into a narrative to justify escalation of its confrontation with Russia.

It strains credulity to imagine that this sophisticated media apparatus was not primed to make the most — and more — of the real depredations of the invader. There have already been a number of false stories pumped out, including the massacre of the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island, happily all now alive, well and at liberty.

More balanced media reports state that in parts of occupied Ukraine the Russian troops behaved reasonably while in others they acted brutally. The longer a conflict goes on, the more the balance tends to tip towards the brutal.

This only establishes two things. First is that all allegations of war crimes need careful independent investigation with the guilty held to account — not just in Ukraine but in Yemen too, to take the most glaring current example. One-sided justice is no justice at all.

The second is that this conflict needs bringing to an end as rapidly as possible, to minimise further civilian suffering. It is evident that elements within Nato, with Boris Johnson’s government in the forefront, have a very different agenda. They want no peace unless it is on the basis of a categorical Russian defeat. That is the position of the impeccably liberal Economist newspaper, for example.

Russia may well not deserve to gain from its illegal invasion, however much it is a response to years of Nato expansionism and Ukrainian nationalist chauvinism. Nevertheless, a military defeat for Russia remains unlikely. If it happens at all it could only be at horrific human cost. Fantasising about a Kremlin coup against Putin is a dream, not a policy.

Yet the outlines of a negotiated settlement may be in view. Ukraine seems ready to abandon its demand for Nato membership, in return for some form of international security guarantees. The issue of sovereignty over Crimea, now part of the Russian Federation, will be kicked into the long grass. Russia’s demand for regime change in Kiev has clearly been dropped.

The issue of the governance of the Donbass seems more intractable. Here concessions by Ukraine risk provoking some sort of backlash against Zelensky from Ukraine’s potent far right. Nor is it clear what view the people of the disputed regions — two-thirds of which were controlled by the Ukrainian government prior to the invasion — hold on their future.

Those are not issues we can resolve in Britain. What we can do is raise the demand for peace and for the British government to get off its bellicose high horse. Tory machismo at the expense of other people’s lives needs to be replaced by serious support for a diplomatic end to the war.

Even President Zelensky knows the danger. There is a Nato camp, he said last week, which doesn’t “mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.”

Seems to me he has Boris Johnson’s number alright. “Victory,” he added, “is being able to save as many lives as possible… Our land is important but ultimately it’s just territory.” Perhaps Zelensky’s many loud admirers in Westminster could take note.

Man and beast, sanctions hurt us all

A war starts in Ukraine and pigs are slaughtered in Ireland. Bread is unavailable in Beirut supermarkets. Lights may start to go off in Germany. Competing monetary systems loom in place of dollar-based globalisation.

This is already a world war, economically. The disruption to trade, magnified mightily by the sanctions imposed on Russia by Nato and its immediate allies — and ignored by everyone else — means that the ripples from this war reach every shore. Working people everywhere are going to pay for the great power clash over Ukraine.

War is multi-faceted and so is peace. No resolution to the Ukrainian war is going to suspend capitalism’s malaise, nor will it restore globalisation to its previous pristine condition. But ending the sanctions against the Russian economy — let’s waste no sympathy on oligarchs losing their yachts — is in the interests of working people here. Not to mention pigs in Ireland — the victims of war-inflated animal feed prices it seems.

Call out the poverty cycle

People face “a historic shock to real incomes” according to Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England. I am not sure he thinks this is a bad thing — he was last heard from urging workers to accept pay cuts in response to the economic crisis.

It bears repeating that this looming historic fall in living standards comes on top of a decade-and-a-half of no growth in real incomes at all. It is not a boom-and-bust cycle but a stagnation-and-slump cycle without apparent end. It can’t be over-emphasised how much the stability of the system relies on working people not noticing these things. Socialists’ first responsibility is to point them out. Capitalism will never collapse from a sense of shame, as Bailey proves.