“Stop the War”? Yes, but with victory for Ukraine!

Submitted by AWL on 15 March, 2022 - 8:58 Author: Editorial
Ukrainians fleeing

The carnage and human suffering caused by Russia’s predatory war against Ukraine is immense.

Towns in Eastern Ukraine – Kharkiv, Sumy, Mariupol – have been partially destroyed. Hospitals, public buildings, housing estates have been hit by missiles and Russian artillery fire. The battle for Kyiv will take place soon.

549 Ukrainian civilians, including 26 children, have been killed according to the United Nations estimates (as of 10 March), although the actual numbers will certainly be considerably higher. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says his armed forces have had 1,300 troops killed since the invasion. The US estimates that five to six thousand Russian troops have died.

2.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine and nearly two million are internally displaced.

In a small taste of what can be expected under Russian occupation the mayor of Russian-occupied Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has been abducted and replaced by a Russian stooge, Galina Danilchenko. 2,000 Ukrainians demonstrated in Melitopol for Fedrov’s release. Danilchenko then warned the town’s population against “provoking a reaction” and has said she intends to set up a “People’s Choice Committee” to administer the area, replacing the elected council.

A second mayor, Yevhen Matveyev, head of the city of Dniprorudne, also appears to have been arrested by Russian soldiers.

The resistance of Ukraine against a superior armed force is inspiring. The Ukrainian people have motivation to fight. They are defending their homes, families and the existence of their country. They know very well that Vladimir Putin does not accept Ukraine has the right to exist as an independent entity.

Ukrainians also understand what Russian occupation will look like because they know all about the regimes in the areas seized by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. The so-called People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk are run by gangsters who act under Kremlin orders. These mini totalitarian states use terror and torture against dissenters.

In this war the UK labour movement and left must rally in support of the Ukrainians’ right to self-determination. We support Ukraine’s fight and demand weapons from Western powers to help Ukraine win, forcing Russia to withdraw.

In the Spanish civil war, when Republican Spain fought Franco’s fascist coup, no one on the left, shrugging, even-handedly, demanded “peace” and to “Stop the War”. No, the left said: defend democracy and the workers’ movement; support the Republican war. We helped the Republican side.

Franco was not going to stop fighting. The fascist war was relentless. A bland demand for “peace” and to end the fighting could only have meant the Republic giving up.

Likewise, in a strike, we side with the workers and try to help them win. If the workers on strike choose to negotiate with their bosses, that’s their right, but it is not the job of socialists to agitate for negotiationsas the soft-option way out. No, we fight for solidarity and to help the strikers win.

And we certainly do not campaign to “Stop the Strike” and for the workers to negotiate a crappy deal with their bosses.

And yet when the left evades clear support for Ukraine, and instead demands negotiations and diplomacy to end the war, they are doing something very similar. Last week the Executive of the National Education demanded negotiations around the Minsk 2 “agreement”. Leaving aside the fact that Minsk 2 is obsolete and demanding negotiations around it leads us to believe the people who wrote the NEU motion don’t know what they are talking about, the intention of the NEU Exec is clear. They think Ukraine should stop fighting and sign a deal with Russia which would sign away their right to determine their own future.

In a strike that would be the behaviour of a bureaucrat, or even a scab.

On the British left, Socialist Worker and many of the left groups do not support Ukraine. They organise to “Stop the War” and hold meetings without a single Ukrainian speaking. They have to do that because, so far, they can not find a single “reliable” Ukrainian who will back their policy.

The Ukrainian communities in the UK know very well that something important is at stake in this war: Ukrainian freedom. They understand Ukrainian freedom is valuable, and worth fighting for.

Workers’ Liberty has taken sides, and we back the Ukrainian war of self-defence. That follows from supporting the democratic rights of the Ukrainians to self-determination, a right which is being trampled on by Russian imperialism.

Support Ukraine!

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