by Dylan and Jo Murphy

With all eyes focused on the Middle East, it appears to have gone quiet in the Ukraine with a ceasefire announced in early September. However, fighting does continue on the ground and the Kiev junta faces a tough winter in which to keep hold of power.

The official reason for the ceasefire was to allow humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Lugansk and Donetsk and prevent further suffering and bloodshed. The leaders of the break away republics of Novorossia (Donetsk and Lugansk), under pressure from Putin, agreed to a ceasefire.

All the talk of saving lives and humanitarian aid is only so much hot air. The Kiev regime has suffered a series of major defeats in its attempt to take back the breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine. By coming to the rescue of the Kiev regime by forcing this ceasefire, Putin has in effect helped the junta. Putin only stands for keeping himself and the billionaire oligarchs in power.

The Ukrainian army forces (UAF), whose soldiers have been poorly equipped and badly led, has suffered huge losses in tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft. Poroshenko has admitted that the UAF lost 65% of its heavy weaponry during the summer offensive. Numerous military units have fallen apart and abandoned their positions while many face growing levels of desertion. Faced with the increasing unpopularity of conscription amongst the population, the Kiev regime decided to go for broke with its southern offensive in August.

However, the self-defence forces have not just contained the Kiev regime's summer offensive but have routed numerous units of the Ukrainian army and the neo-Nazi National Guard battalions. The attempt to cut Novorossia in two and separate Lugansk from Donetsk has failed miserably. In late August the self-defences forces of Novorossia enveloped sections of the Ukrainian army in a series of cauldrons while the bulk of the Ukrainian army retreated.

Meanwhile, to add to military defeats, the Ukrainian economy has been in free-fall since the coup. Foreign investment and public consumption are plummeting. In the first half of 2014 GDP fell by 4.5% and is predicted to fall by 7% by the end of the year. The currency, the hrynvia, has been devalued by 62%. Inflation stands at 12% and there has been a 50% increase in government debt.

The billions in economic aid that Ukraine is receiving from the IMF and EU will not benefit the ordinary people of Ukraine. They face massive austerity. Massive price rises are expected in the autumn – gas by 73%, electricity by 40%, and water by 84%. The long suffering population face a long cold winter.

The Kiev regime has placed its hopes on agriculture, despite the cancellation of agricultural subsidies. However, due to the civil war there is a shortage of diesel, trucks, manpower and farm equipment. Taken together with the effects of wrecked bridges caused by recent flooding, bringing in the harvest is going to be a major challenge.

Poroshenko's immediate problem though is to how to stave off military defeat. It is clear from developments in the last three weeks that the ceasefire is a complete and utter sham. The Ukrainian army has repeatedly shelled Donetsk and there have been intermittent fighting at Donetsk airport. The UAF has been shelling self-defence forces in the outskirts of Mariupol. Several settlements have been attacked by UAF heavy weaponry, including Grad missiles, and there have been numerous attacks upon checkpoints held by the self-defence forces of Novorossia.

Now the Ukrainian army is regrouping and amassing military forces on the borders of Novorossia in preparation for yet another offensive to try and finish off the breakaway republics before parliamentary elections this autumn. To this end Poroshenko has been to the NATO summit in Wales and to the US Congress to ask for more military aid.

However, the morale of the self defence forces of Novorossia is high after their rout of the UAF in late August/early September. Now they number up to 30,000 and are fairly well equipped courtesy of captured material from the UAF and the Russian military surplus store (i.e. arms supplies from the Russian army).

Throughout the summer the Moscow oligarchs have tried to control the military situation in a manner that has strong parallels with Stalin's military aid to republican Spain in the mid 1930s. Moscow has used its drip, drip supply of military/humanitarian supplies to control the political and military leadership of Lugansk and Donetsk.

The UAF, on the other hand, is largely made up of territorial battalions which are poorly trained, badly equipped and led. They are suffering from collapsing morale and there have been many instances of battalions running away from the battlefield and abandoning positions. Even the punitive battalions of the National Guard, many of which are controlled by the neo-Nazis of the Right Sector, are pessimistic about their situation.

The ceasefire gives a precious lifeline to the battered and demoralised Ukrainian army. It now has the opportunity to regroup and re-equip its forces in anticipation of further military and economic aid from NATO members. The defeats of the Ukrainian army have led to a corresponding rise in anti-Russian hysteria amongst the Western media and political elite, who show little appetite for any kind of negotiated settlement with Russia.

It is still not too late for the ordinary people of Western and Eastern Ukraine to overthrow the rule of the billionaire oligarchs. Only a complete social and political revolution carried out by the ordinary people of Ukraine can save them from the evils of capitalism. Capitalism means war, poverty, hunger, mass unemployment and all the other attendant evils of an anachronistic system.

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Dylan and Jo Murphy are socialist historians active in the trade union movement