[Ángeles Maestro is a leading figure in Spain when it comes to internationalist and solidarity activism. A former communist deputy, today she is not only highly critical of the positions of that party but also denounces its permanent ideological retreats.

She has denounced with all her might the Psoe-Podemos compromise, and now that the NATO war is endangering the whole world, she has no doubts about where to stand, repudiating imperialism and the interventionist maneuvers of the Atlantic Alliance.

We spoke with Nines Maestro about how she views this confrontation from a country like Spain, which, like the rest of the European Union, is once again on its knees before U.S. arrogance.]

Carlos Aznarez: US imperialism has been subordinating the European Union in an uninterrupted process since NATO was created in 1949, six years before the existence of the Warsaw Pact.

Ángeles Maestro: Indeed, the explicit objective of NATO’s existence was to confront the Soviet Union but also to subordinate the European Union and to prevent the establishment of any kind of alliance, regardless of the ideology of the Soviet Union, with Russia and at that time with its satellite countries. The very existence of this alliance negated the military sovereignty of each and every one of the countries of the European Union.

CA: The Spanish State voted at one time against joining NATO, but then Felipe Gonzalez and his party erased with their elbow what they had written with their hand…

AM: The Spanish State, since 1982, has been part of the military structure of the Alliance, following a referendum in which the conditions were absolutely unfulfilled. I remember that Spain is not only part of the military structure but even a leader of the Psoe itself, as Javier Solana, was secretary general of NATO during the war of destruction and provoked explosion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The other conditions of the referendum such as the Non-installation of nuclear weapons was also discarded by means of bilateral agreements with the United States, by which Spain renounced the right to ask if the ships, the airplanes that cross its skies or the American military bases themselves harbor nuclear weapons or not. On the other hand, as is quite evident, the military presence in U.S. bases on Spanish soil has only increased.

This government, which claims to be the most progressive in history, is playing one of the most undignified roles, competing with the government of (José María) Aznar and the Azores trio (George W. Bush, Tony Blair and the former Spanish president) in the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Spanish State is going even further than other European Union countries in supporting NATO’s offensive against the Russian Federation.

Not only that, but the Psoe government together with United Podemos is preparing for the NATO summit to be held in Madrid at the end of of June of this year and there have been declarations from the leaders, including those of the Communist Party of Spain and its Secretary General Enrique De Santiago, assuring that Spain will fulfill its commitments to NATO and they are collaborating in each and every one of the government’s decisions.

Curiously, after the last congress of the Communist Party approved the exit from NATO and the dismantling of the bases, in a very explicit and clear demonstration of what the congresses of a Communist Party are for, and their leaders trample on all the agreements of those congresses and of course the legitimate interests of the peoples of the Spanish State.

Considering that, as has happened in all previous wars, the American and NATO bases are foreign territory and can be a military objective of the countries that are attacked by NATO. That terrible sensation is the one we communist and left-wing people are experiencing, having governments as unworthy as those of the Psoe or the Popular Party.

CA: It is foreseeable that from the bases of the left that are not sold out to NATO there will be a reaction against the submissive approaches of the leaders.

AM: We must say that platforms and committees are being organized in different towns of the Spanish State and also in Madrid against this NATO summit asking for the immediate exit of Spain from the Alliance and the dismantling of the bases, the non participation of the Spanish army in the attack on any country and denouncing the government that is preparing this NATO summit in which the incorporation of Ukraine to NATO is also expected.

CA: This reminds us of when Bush ordered the attack and invasion of Iraq and a patriotic hysteria arose in the United States that spread around the world, where Saddam Hussein was targeted, he was the “enemy” to be defeated, and NATO was the “good guy in the film” for the West.

AM: This hysteria is now repeating itself and the Olympic Committee decides that no Russian athlete can compete, or FIFA eliminates the Russian soccer team from the World Cup in Qatar, or the censorship of this world dictatorship bans RT and Sputnik.

There is a McCarthyist “wave” as never before seen, accompanied by the media. But in your analysis you have pointed out a very interesting fact which is the regrettable role being played by a certain political left, which includes communist parties, Trotskyists and also bien pensantes intellectuals of “progressivism” who when the time comes to take one side always put themselves in the middle or on the opposite side.

CA: How do you think this will evolve as NATO continues to advance? It is clear that NATO wants and needs to destabilize Russia and then go after China. How do you think the population, which is now mostly chloroformed, will react to these events?

AM: The moment is complicated, what you have said is precisely like that: communist parties, NGOs, and other organizations of the left are as always taking the side of imperialism, what we call here “ninis”, which means, what has happened in any attack on any country, is the demonization of the corresponding leader.

There was talk at one time of “neither Bush nor Saddam”, “neither NATO, nor Milosevic”, “neither NATO nor Qaddafi”, demonizing Bashar Al Assad in the case of Syria, and so on. In reality, it is an attempt to equate the aggressor with the aggressed. Moreover, with the media lies, which are very important to remember: when the invasion of Iraq was justified, it was because they had non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the image of a cormorant full of oil dying on a beach was used to prove that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, or the thousands of images that never existed.

There is the case of the story of what was later shown to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, a teenage girl crying because newborns had been ripped from incubators, and it was clearly a constructed story. Or the bombings attributed to Qaddafi who was said to be bombing his own people.

So all these media lies are constructed, and they encourage the position of some leftist organizations that jump on the “No to war” bandwagon, accusing Russia of the Invasion of Ukraine, in an attempt to whitewash the attacks of imperialism that Ukraine represents in relation to Russia and other countries in the area.

I also wanted to point out when you asked what will be the reaction of the population, that many times I remember that maxim that the dominant ideology is the ideology of the ruling classes, and that the media in power of the multinational oligarchies collaborate to shape those supposed public opinions.

CA: The reality is that with obsequious pro-Yankee positions such as those in Europe, the consequences will soon be felt by the populations of each country.

AM: In Europe, the consequences include the U.S. and the European Union imposing sanctions on Russia, and those who pay for them are the peoples of the EU. In particular, with the ban on exports to Russia many small companies are reacting, seeing their businesses ruined by the impossibility of exporting different agricultural products to Russia, let alone in a situation of bestial crisis like the one we are living through, the cancellation of the purchase of gas from Russia.

This is the most important issue for the United States because the gas pipeline that was supposed to bring Russian gas directly to Germany and the rest of the European Union, was 30% or 40% cheaper than gas bought from the United States, a product of fracking, and also of much higher quality because the US gas is full of impurities.

At this moment I can say that modest families, not only the poorest ones, are no longer able to use electricity for heating or to use electricity when the sun goes down, and when the economic repercussions arrive, we will see that the United States sanctions against Russia are paid for by the peoples of the European Union.

Therefore, at the beginning I pointed out how in the very existence of NATO, beyond the confrontation with the communist Soviet Union, the fundamental objective is to subordinate the European Union to its interests, paying directly the consequences because the geographical relationship of the European Union with Russia is much greater than that of the United States or Great Britain, who are the great instigators of the NATO offensive.

Of course, the aim of Great Britain and now of the USA is to prevent the natural alliance between countries that are very close to each other and therefore tend to establish trade relations for the purchase and sale of their products. I think it is important that the denunciation of U.S. imperialism which is striking Russia on the backs of the peoples of the European Union is very much present.

For example, when the European Union in the previous crisis imposed sanctions on Russia, the farmers of some countries put mountains of peaches or other products that they could not export to Russia, they burned flags of the European Union and they were not leftists or communists but farmers who saw that they were destroying their economic possibilities.

Objectively, all the measures imposed by the pandemic, the digitalization, the end of small and medium enterprises, placed millions of workers in a terrible situation. Without a doubt, the sanctions against Russia will be paid by our peoples and will place many people in very strong contradictions, not ideological but economic and trade possibilities.

Putin has been patient without limits before finally attacking those he considers enemies of Russian security, he tried in the Minsk meetings to reach agreements to avoid what is happening now, before finally recognizing the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, who were the ones who fought for all these years.

Hence, Putin has prioritized several points for which he will withdraw his soldiers from Ukraine. He pointed out two of them at the beginning of the defensive operation: demilitarization and denazification. There are many in the world who are unaware of what is happening in Ukraine when people say that there are Nazis and a government that sponsors them.

CA: Tell us about this issue that Europe should be concerned with instead of very lightly lining up behind NATO.

AM: Actually, the Nazi presence in Ukraine has remained very strong, organized and armed since World War II. They are the same symbols and heirs of the former Nazis. I hope that people who read or listen to us remember the Nazi offensive in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and the nations that formed the bloc of the Soviet Union at that time.

It was a genocide, an extermination in which the massacre was systematic and overwhelming against the peoples, it was not against armed people, they were no armed fights and military confrontations but mass murders, which made up the total balance of the 27 million dead of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, the great majority of them civilian population.

The people of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are well aware of what “Nazi” means. They are serial killers who exterminate entire populations, homosexuals, blacks, gypsies, Jews and who have ethnic cleansing intentions. This included the extermination of the Jews in the Second World War, which leads to the fact that within Israel itself there are demonstrations against Israel’s support to the Ukrainian Nazis.

But of course, this whole process has had at its core the Donbass, Lugansk and Donetsk. It began with a coup d’état fabricated by the European Union and the USA in 2014, a coup d’état that was penetrated to the core by the Nazi organizations that occupy prominent positions in the army and police, in which the Nazi battalions are integrated.

It should be remembered that there was also the massacre of workers, taking advantage of the fact that in the towns of the former Soviet Union and Ukraine the May 1st demonstration is succeeded by a series of activities and celebrations culminating on May 9th, which is the anniversary of the entry of the Red Army into Berlin.

There was a demonstration of workers who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, leaving 50 dead and more than 150 missing. There is a powerful image that gives an idea of the cruelty of these people and there is a paper written by a comrade who was part of the battalion of International brigades in Donbass, entitled, “The Hypocrisy of a Leftist “No to War” that Comes too Late” and it included a terrible image of a young pregnant woman bent over a table, who was strangled with a telephone cable when they entered to burn those who were left alive in the House of Trade Unions.

When the Russian government made the decision to recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, I believe that it did so ultimately upon hearing the statements of the Ukrainian government which was preparing to invade Crimea, calling not only for Ukraine’s entry into NATO but also the installation of nuclear weapons underground and NATO biological warfare laboratories in Odessa.

When the Russian government made the decision to protect the People’s Republics by acceding to their request for help and the denazification of Ukraine, it was simply pre-empting what was undoubtedly underway on the part of the US, the European Union and the Ukrainian puppet government.

President Zelensky, who certainly in this whole scenario can hardly be said to be serving the interests of his own people, but rather a Nazi presence that intends to carry out the genocide of the Russian speaking and culturally Russian population along with all the ethnic minorities that stood in the way of the Ukrainian Nazi’s patriotic cleansing. Ukraine is a puppet of the European Union and the USA, and ultimately of NATO.

CA: Do you see prospects that in this situation Russia will lean more towards China and together with other countries, such as Belarus, Iran and perhaps India, will aim to form a block against the aggressive NATO adherents?

AM: China’s rapprochement is a historical tradition in Russia, before, during and after the Revolution. Russia is a Eurasian country and there is a tendency towards alliance or closer cultural and economic ties, etc., with Europe and another inclination that turns fundamentally towards Asia and China.

I believe that the whole process of sanctions and military escalation around all Russia’s borders, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, encircled by NATO, inevitably result, as is happening to Iran and other countries, in the search for alliances against aggressive imperialism that threatens the people. These alliances are commercial and energetic, involving all kinds of commodities.

Now they are intensified by the sanctions themselves, seeking commercial exchanges in their own currencies and progressively abandoning the dollar while establishing military alliances. The declarations of the Chinese government state that in the face of any aggression against Russia, China would respond, although China is also under siege.

The US and NATO encirclement is taking place in the China Sea, and exacerbates China’s own movements and internal conflicts, leading to a coincidence of interests and the formation of blocs that will inevitably confront with a NATO which, given the economic decline, especially in the productive sectors, is becoming more intense, there are those who speak of civil war in the US.

The situation of massive poverty in many sectors is unsustainable, and here is some evidence: all the multinationals of digitalization, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc., have been detrimental to the productive structure of the US and other countries, and this is causing internal tensions and leading to the prediction of a loss of the elections by the Democrats.

These supposedly progressive democrats, as history has shown us, are controlled by the great economic powers and by the nuclear military complex, but without a doubt it is the democratic governments that have been the most aggressive in relation to the invasions of countries, coups d’état, blockades, etc.

(Courtesy: Struggle La-Lucha, a US based socialist publication.)