Nearly two weeks into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine the Ukrainians continue to fight, against the odds, and we continue to work to support their war of self-defence against Russian imperialism. We aim to rally the British and international labour movement to back Ukraine as the war becomes more intense and the battle for Kyiv looms.
Putin probably intends to permanently occupy much greater areas in eastern Ukraine than Russia currently controls following the predatory wars against Ukraine in 2014. He will drive out opponents from these areas and impose terror against Ukrainians who stay. He intends to force Ukraine into a post-war agreement that destroys Ukrainian self-determination, possibly partitioning the country and subordinating a rump Ukraine to Russia.
Putin may also try to enlist the Western powers to exert pressure on Ukraine to sign a lousy deal which will end the war. And he may get that help from states like Germany and France who want to re-establish stable working relationships with the Russian state as quickly as possible.
We oppose any attempts by the West to force Ukraine to sign away its rights. We demand the EU speed processes for Ukraine to join, as an act of solidarity which would offer a measure of political protection, and that the UK and European states open their borders to any and all Ukrainian refugees.
On UK demonstrations for Ukraine a tremendous upsurge of Ukrainian national pride is visible. Expat Ukrainians and their British-born families in London, Sheffield, Glasgow and Nottingham are calling for arms to defend their homeland, for sanctions, for Russians to take to the streets against Putin,
Similar protests are taking place across the world. Almost all also involve Russians who – often aghast and even ashamed - object to Putin’s war. We have nothing but praise and solidarity for Russians who take a stand against Putin’s war, and we demand the release of all those arrested in Russia for anti-war activity.
Ukrainian demonstrators in Britain call, occasionally but increasingly, for a No Fly Zone across Ukraine. The only force capable of attempting to impose the sort of No Fly Zone that protected the Kurds in northern Iraq from Saddam’s vengeance after the first Gulf war, of 1990-1 is the US military. The US is rightly giving Ukraine military equipment to fight the Russians, and should have done more earlier. But a No Fly Zone would be organised by them, not by the battered, weak, Ukrainian air force. The US is adamant that its forces will not directly confront the Russians in Ukraine. And, in fact, if they did so, it would almost certainly spiral very quickly into some sort of new World War, dragging in the whole of NATO into battle against Russia. It would probably prompt Putin to invade the Baltic states (since he would be at war with them anyway, and it would be relatively easy for Russia to encircle them by cutting off their short border with Poland).
The problem in Ukraine is not that NATO and the USA are too anti-Putin, or too intent on risking war with Russia (let alone deliberately seeking it). No: they do want Putin to step back, but what they want primarily is a deal to contain Putin and restabilise links with Russia. That ranks for them above Ukrainian rights. For a force that will champion Ukrainian rights without inhibition, we must look to the labour movement.
That fact underlines how stupid the sections of the left are who argue that the war in Ukraine is really a war between NATO and Putin. Wake up, NATO is not fighting and has no intention of doing so! Are they not even able to read the front page of the Guardian?
Knee-jerk anti-Americanism on the left is political poison. The left that navigates its way in international politics by working out what the American state is doing, then opposing US and allied policy, is not independent. It is a mirror image.
The political roots of this method lie in the Cold War when the USSR opposed the US and saw all damage done to the US and Western capitalism as positive. The propaganda outlets for the USSR in the West, the Communist Parties, promoted this nihilistic negativism in Western labour movements, poisoning Marxism as a force for human liberation in direct proportion to how successful they were.
Those ideas still remain in much of the international Marxist left’s political DNA. This is also the source of left support for Brexit and the “left” antisemitism of the Corbyn movement.
The political root of these stupidities needs pulling up, or similar mistakes will be made over and over again.
Last week that left which, day after day, told us there would be no Russian invasion, disgraced itself again. Most of the far left groups continued to stay away from Ukrainian solidarity protests. Socialist Appeal declared it would not take sides between Ukraine and Russia.
At the Stop the War meeting in London’s Conway Hall there were no Ukrainians on the platform. The only Ukrainian at the meeting objected to Jeremy Corbyn’s banal anti-NATO speech. Raising a Ukrainian flag, he demanded Corbyn protest against the Russian war, and was immediately bundled out by stewards.
Stop the War now campaigns using a logo with a map of Ukraine which omits Crimea! Crimea was seized and annexed by Putin’s Russian imperialism in 2014. By itself that tells us who runs StW. People who – effectively, practically - back Russian imperialism, though they now want it to ease off a bit.
The National Education Union’s president, Daniel Kebede, was forced to withdraw a statement from the union on the conflict after outraged union activists complained about the lack of union support for Ukraine, and that the union was demanding Ukraine negotiate with Russia on the basis of Minsk 2 (a deal which Ukraine was pushed into accepting by France and Germany in 2015).
Some members threatened to resign from the NEU over the statement. We urge members to stay in the unions and overturn pro-StW policies and end union funding for the dreadful, pro-Russia Morning Star newspaper.
Besides, if members left the NEU every time Kebede said something stupid, pretty soon there would be no one left.
One wonders if Kebede even knows exactly what Minsk 2 says. Minsk 2 is a pro-Russia document the Ukrainian state was forced to sign in 2015. It demanded the re-incorporation of the totalitarian police mini-states of the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People's Republic into Ukraine, while they still remained under Russian control. Minsk 2 is an outrageous pro-Russia document, which would abolish Ukraine’s sovereignty, but anyway it was made obsolete when Putin recognised the LPR and DPR as states distinct from Ukraine in the run-up to this war.
These tiny statelets, carved out of eastern Ukraine, which are run by Kremlin-controlled thugs, where torture is widespread, in which the economies have partially collapsed and trade unionists are driven out or terrorised, are small-scale versions of what Putin intends for Ukrainian territory he plans to permanently seize after this bloody war formally ends.
And who do British leftists, who refuse to back Ukraine, think they are to demand the Ukrainians negotiate with Putin? and even negotiate on the basis of Minsk 2? The Ukrainian government wants to negotiate, and that is its right. Our job is to rally working-class support to help Ukraine fight to defend itself. That is the division now on the UK left.
Groups like the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), covering their backsides, now finally demand Russian Troops out of Ukraine and oppose the Russian war. But that is not controversial. Almost every political organisation, from the right and left, in the entire world says that.
The issue on the left is: do you support Ukrainian self-determination, Ukraine’s war of self-defence, the demand from Ukraine for military, financial and political backing from the West? Do you work to rally the working class for Ukraine? We do, and groups like SWP (quite quietly) do not. They should look at the destruction Russian imperialism is inflicting on the towns of Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv and feel shame that they do not back the defenders.
Elsewhere in this issue of Solidarity we carry an appeal to regroup the real socialist left around a programme to back Ukraine’s right to self-determination and their fight against Russian imperialism.
Readers of Solidarity, we need your help! We have a political job to do. You can help us by moving our motions in the unions and Labour Party, donating money to us, selling our paper, and joining Workers’ Liberty.
Support the Ukrainian unions and left!
Support the Russian anti-war movement!
Defend Ukraine!
