Ukrainian and Russian socialist organisations are saying that the war on Ukraine is an act of Russian imperialist aggression. They have nothing but contempt for the argument “Of course, Russia should withdraw from Ukraine — but it’s really all the fault of NATO.”
Ukraine's left
Even before the launch of the Russian invasion the Ukrainian anarchist website Nihilist had defined any such invasion as an act of imperialist aggression. It would be:
“A conflict between the empire and the former colony: domination and enslavement on their part, and emancipation and decolonization on our part. Russia’s position in this conflict lies in the belief that Ukrainian independence is a mortal danger to the half-collapsed Russian empire. The Kremlin believes that Russia’s ‘historical mission’ will fail if its closest neighbours — the former Soviet republics — adopt ‘Western values’ that are destructive to dictatorial power and incompatible with Moscow as a model.”
This was also the core of a statement issued by the Ukrainian socialist organisation Prolyetar Ukrainii on the day Russia launched its invasion (24 February):
“The current war is not a direct clash between the imperialist camp of the U.S. and the EU (NATO) on the one side and Russia and its satellites on the other side. Neither the US, nor the EU, nor NATO are fighting in this war! This war is imperialist and neocolonial only from one side — from the Kremlin, which is trying to reclaim its former part of the empire.”
A statement issued by the Ukrainian Social Movement (SM) the same day declared:
“Ukraine has been directly attacked by Russian imperialism. The reason for this military operation is Putin’s imperial ambitions. His government wants to subdue the Ukrainian people, who do not support an authoritarian dictatorship.”
Russia's left
A statement issued by the Russian Socialist Movement (RSM), also on 24 February, likewise stated:
“Thesole reason [emphasis added] for this intervention is the imperial ambitions and the irrepressible greed of the Russian elites. … Today is not the time to have discussions about the political regime in Kiev. The aggressor is obvious.”
The same point was emphasised in another statement issued by the RSM on 25 February:
“Russia has unleashed a new war [following that of 2014]. Its aim is to turn the whole of Ukraine into the Donbass [occupied by Russia since 2014]. Because it is easier for bloodthirsty puppets to rule the intimidated population of a ravaged country. To cite [protection of] the Donbass as justification for the invasion of Ukraine diverts attention away from the catastrophe sweeping across both Ukraine and Russia, a catastrophe which has not been unleashed by NATO, and not by Ukraine either, but by the Russian Federation.”
A resolution adopted by the Russian “Anti-War Round Table of the Left Forces” the same day condemned the Russian invasion as:
“Solely [emphasis added] the satisfying of the unhealthy foreign policy ambitions of a narrow circle of individuals in the leadership of the country, and also a way to divert attention away from the failures of the Russian government in domestic politics.”
The resolution was signed by members of the RSM, the Socialist Left Movement, the Revolutionary Workers Party, Workers’ Russia, the Moscow University Solidarity Trade Union, the Russian Communist Party and, on behalf of Rabkor, by Boris Kagarlitsky.
Some of the signatories to that statement, it is true, have a dubious past. But it may be the case that the invasion has led them to a political self-reassessment.
Saying what is
These statements are not examples of the kind of facile, almost nationalistic, “division of labour” preached by the Stop the War Coalition (STW) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), whereby it’s ok for socialists in Russia to target Putin, but socialists in the West must ease off on Putin and target NATO instead. According to an article on the STW website, for example: “Our own government is not our only enemy but the one that we have to fight against primarily. The same is true for those in Russia, the US and anywhere else.”
Nor are they the “stick-bending” advocated in an article on the website of Counterfire (one of the main components of the STW): “For the anti-war movement, the task will be to bend the stick in the other direction — in the spirit of saying the ‘main enemy is at home’.”
The statements by the Ukrainian and Russian socialist organisations are simply a statement of what is: the nature of the conflict as an outright attack on Ukraine’s right to national self-determination by Russian imperialism.
The Western left
Attempts by sections of the left in Europe to revive the false narrative of the “fascist coup” of 2014 (i.e. the mass Maidan protest movement) and pose the war as the result of NATO expansion have triggered some particularly sharp polemics by Ukrainian socialists.
An article by the Ukrainian anarchist Dmitry Machnik entitled “Why are Western leftists so fucked up?” says:
“Western leftists and anarchists don’t ask us whether we need medical supplies, food, and military equipment. They ask us about fascists patrolling the streets in Ukraine. Sweet Jesus, our president is Jewish, and the only right-populist party in the parliament is fucking pro-Russian. The benign discussion of what should be an uncontroversial issue within the leftist crowd makes them lose their mind, blaming Ukraine for the mere existence of the far-right movements within. And how about the fact that Russia doesn’t even try to cover up its imperialist plan for Ukraine, one that cannot be justified by any leftist ideals? Nyeeh, it’s all NATO’s fault. NATO should pull out of Ukraine! Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Fuck us.”
A Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv by Social Movement (SM) member Taras Bilous is aimed at “those sections of the Western Left who imagined ‘NATO aggression in Ukraine’, and who could not see Russian aggression.”
Amongst their many failings is that “they exaggerated the influence of the far-Right in Ukraine, but did not notice the far-Right in the ‘People’s Republics’ and avoided criticising Putin’s conservative, nationalist and authoritarian policy. Part of the responsibility for what is happening rests with you.”
This was not an isolated failure but part of “the wider phenomenon in the Western ‘anti-war’ movement, usually called campism by critics on the Left.”
Just as sections of the left were silent on Russian involvement in the war in Syria on the basis that “the main enemy is at home”, so too now “we have seen the same ideological cliché repeated over Ukraine.”
Bilous concludes: “A large part of the Western Left should honestly admit that it completely fucked up in formulating its response to the ‘Ukrainian crisis’.”
The sentence “today is not the time to have discussions about the political regime in Kiev” in the SM statement of 24th February should be read in the context of the articles by Mrachnik and Bilous.
The SM is not saying that discussion and criticism of the Ukrainian government is off-limits.
It is saying that responding to the Russian invasion by asking how many fascists there are in the Ukrainian government (answer: none; and Ukraine is the only country in the world apart from Israel to have simultaneously had a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister) is deliberate diversion, obfuscation and whataboutery.
The same exasperation with the wilful refusal of sections of the European left to confront the reality of the nature of the war in Ukraine can also be found in an article by Ukrainian anarchist and former member of DIEM 25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) Denys Sultanhaliiev:
“After the horrific attack by imperialist Russia on democratic Ukraine, they are still continuing the rhetoric of blaming NATO and the EU. I have never been a big fan of NATO as a defence structure, but what DIEM25 are doing is pathetic political opportunism. Their (i.e. the European left’s) declared concerns for minorities somehow goes hand in hand with ignoring agency and the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people. … In the worldview of such ‘leftists’, all decisions belong to the few strongest players at the table, and all the rest are vassals and representatives of someone’s interests.”
Noting that the Polish organisation Razem has resigned from the “Progressive International” and DIEM25, because of their position on Ukraine, Sultanhaliiev concludes: “In the Polish left, Ukraine finds a close friend, while the Western left continues to shock with their ignorance and disregard.”
A further, more diplomatic critique of the position taken by sections of the European left, epitomised by the STW, is provided in the article “US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes” by Volodymyr Artiukh, now an Oxford academic but written “as a member of the post-Soviet left”.
After praising the European left for what it taught the post-Soviet left in the early years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Artiukh points out that the world has changed and that Russia now pursues its own political agenda:
“In spite of what many of you claim, Russia has regained agency and is able to shape the world around it. The Russian warring elites are able to impose their delusions and transform them into facts on the ground. These delusions are no longer determined by the US or Europe, they are not a reaction, they are a creation.”
Consequently: “Analysing American neo-imperialism and the expansion of NATO is not enough anymore as it does not explain the world that is emerging from the ruins of the Donbass and Kharkiv’s main square.”
Artiukh concludes: “I have been reading everything written and said on the left about last year’s escalating conflict between the US, Russia and Ukraine. Most of it was terribly off, much worse than many mainstream explanations. Its predictive power was nil.”
Which logic?
The position taken by Ukrainian and Russian socialists has a logic and consequences. In Russia it means the risk of imprisonment. In Ukraine it means taking up arms in defence of Ukraine:
“Anti-authoritarian forces have organised their own international detachment within the framework of the Territorial Defence of Ukraine. In addition, dozens of our friends are defending the capital and large cities with weapons in their hands.
“Now we are reaching out to comrades from all over the world! Today, in Ukraine, we have the opportunity to create an International Legion of Territorial Defence.”
The position epitomised by the STW and the SWP has a logic and consequences as well: ritualistic rallies (at which speakers well past their sell-by date fail to even mention Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) and a bogus “anti-imperialism” with no purchase on reality.
The war which the STW seeks to stop — insofar as it has ever really been concerned to stop a war — is the imaginary one of a war of NATO against Russia which just happens to be in Ukraine, not the real war now underway in Ukraine.
Listen to what socialists in Ukraine and Russia have to say!
Comments?We welcome replies, corrections and debate pieces. Contact us