Strike on Aid Distribution in Ukraine: 50 Dead, and the War Goes On

According to France 24, the toll from Monday's Russian strike on a humanitarian aid distribution point in southern Ukraine has risen to 50 dead. Rescue workers announced it on Friday. Bodies are still being recovered from under the rubble. The toll may therefore rise further.

What we do not know: the dispatch gives neither the exact town, nor the identities of the victims, nor Moscow's version, nor Kyiv's version of the circumstances. We refuse to fill those gaps. People were queuing to receive food or medical supplies, and they died. That should be said without embellishment.

Then comes the uncomfortable question: who benefits from this war? Not those who were standing in line. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

A war of this scale is neither an accident of morality nor the whim of a single man. Lenin saw "rivalry in the conquest" as a central feature of the foreign policy of the great powers (our translation, The State and Revolution). Spheres of influence, markets, resources, transit routes: Ukraine is a terrain where these rivalries collide. Sanctions, arms contracts and military alliances are their political wrapping, as our notes on imperialism and finance capital remind us.

The state, in this affair, does what Lenin said it does: it acts as the instrument of a ruling class. In Moscow, it defends the interests of an oligarchy that wants to keep and extend its regional grip. Elsewhere, Western capitals speak of a "rules-based order", but their arms manufacturers are counting their orders. Everyone invokes the "defence of the homeland". Lenin already mocked such phrases, which serve mainly to cover the predatory interests of "their" bourgeoisie.

This excuses nothing, and does not relativise a strike on unarmed civilians. It only explains why the war lasts: too many people profit from it, provided they are not in the queue. Ukrainians pay with their lives, Russians sent to the front pay too, while arms shareholders watch their order books fill.

The condemnations will come, solemn and numerous. They bring no one back. The only useful question remains who decides to carry on, who cashes in, and who buries the dead. For now, the dispatch gives only the figure: 50 dead, and it is not final.