Ukraine

Maksysm Butkevych. His t-shirt says "No one is illegal" Maksym Butkevych, a Ukrainian soldier with a long record as an anti-racist and migrants’ rights activist, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison by the “Supreme Court” of Russia’s puppet “Luhansk People’s Republic”. Ukrainian activists are saying that the case against Butkevych was fabricated and his confessions forced. Butkevych, 45, is an anarchist by political background and a journalist by trade (for some years he studied and worked in the UK). Over decades he has been involved in many anti-racist, anti-fascist, migrants' rights and...

The Communist Party of Britain’s international secretary Kevan Nelson gave a report to the party’s political committee last month, published in the Morning Star of 25-26 February. Headed “Signs of Labour collusion with ruling-class attempts to sabotage Britain’s exit from the EU”, it was terrible, even by CPB- Morning Star standards. The statement opens by quoting James Connolly’s famous prediction that the partition of Ireland would mean a “carnival of reaction” and sought to apply it to Sunak’s attempt to ease friction on the British border in Ireland and to Ukraine’s military resistance to...

Brie and Olenka, two young socialist feminists and members of the Ukrainian left party, Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement), recently toured the UK speaking at meetings and talking to activists. The comrades have been hosted by Workers’ Liberty and have addressed meetings in Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool and Brighton. Along the way they have discussed with Labour politicians, feminist activists, journalists and trade unionists. Workers’ Liberty believe it is important to listen to the authentic voice of the left in Ukraine, which has been little-heard in the UK. The Ukrainian left and unions...

Around International Women’s Day, Workers’ Liberty organised a speaker tour of socialist feminists Brie and Olenka to speak about their life and work in Ukraine. They spoke to meetings in London, Liverpool, Sheffield, Nottingham and Brighton. They also met with women trade unionists at the Women’s TUC and with MPs in Parliament. Brie spoke to Solidarity . I didn’t want to leave Kyiv, but I relocated to another neighbourhood as I used to live close to the Ministry of Defence. The area without military facilities where I moved to was eventually shelled by the Russians, although there is little...

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Michael Baker spoke with Olenka and Brie, two activists from the Ukrainian socialist organisation Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement), about how the war is affecting the struggle for women’s liberation in Ukraine, and how the international feminist movement can help. Olenka and Brie visited the UK for a speaker tour organised by Workers' Liberty, 4-16 March 2023 (more details here ). Published in our socialist feminist magazine Women's Fightback : issue 28, Spring 2023 . Can you both introduce yourselves and Sotsialny Rukh? Brie: . I came to the left in about 2014, when I joined the independent...

Two thousand marchers led by Stop the War (StW) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) demonstrated, often disingenuously, for “peace” in Ukraine, in London, on Saturday 25 February.

As the Russian offensive in Ukraine enters its second year the anniversary was marked by defiant Ukrainian protests across Europe. On 24 February, in London, thousands marched to the Russian Embassy chanting, “Russia is a terrorist state”. Hundreds marched in many towns across Britain, including over 1,000 in Edinburgh. Defence of Ukraine is still popular. The latest UK opinion poll shows 68% backing Ukraine and only 15% opposed to helping Ukraine. On the battlefield Ukraine’s victory unfortunately remains far from certain. Ukraine’s survival depends a great deal on Western — centrally...

In defiance of the facts, the Stop the War Coalition, the Socialist Workers' Party, Counterfire, etc, claim the war in Ukraine is primarily an inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and NATO, not a war of Ukrainian self-defence. (Some of Stop the War's supporters are straightforwardly pro-Russia, as was on display at its 25 February demo .) Couldn't the Ukraine conflict be transformed into an inter-imperialist war? Of course. That doesn't mean it is one now. In his response to Rosa Luxemburg's 1916 Junius Pamphlet , excerpts below, Vladimir Lenin addressed precisely this kind of issue. (At...

We are raising money to fund this speaker tour. Please donate here and share around. Tour dates Eventbrites to register for meetings here • 5 March: Reception from 5pm, London, Bread and Roses, 68a Clapham Manor Street, SW4 6DZ • 7 March: Workers' Liberty International Women’s Day meeting, London, 7.30pm, Marchmont Centre, 62 Marchmont St, WC1N 1AB • 8 March: Speaking at a fringe meeting at TUC Women's Conference • 9 March: Public meeting, Nottingham, 7pm, Mechanics Institute, 3 North Sherwood St, NG1 4EZ • 10 March: Public meeting, Sheffield, 7pm, Quaker Meeting House, 10 St James Street, S1...