By Tarás Shevchuk
February 24 marks three years since the large-scale invasion and occupation of Ukranian territory. It has been three years of constant bombardment, destruction of many cities, torture, and summary executions of Ukrainian fighters captured and imprisoned by Russian troops. Tens of thousands of civilians have died and nearly 100,000 children have been abducted and forcefully taken to Russia for “re-education”. Putin’s war crimes are an amplified replica of the crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers sent by Hitler between 1941-1944. This extermination echoes the one also unfolding in the Zionist genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The peoples of the world must not forget these crimes against humanity and demand the punishment of war criminals like Putin and Netanyahu!
The aggression started in 2014
This imperialist aggression began long before February 2022. It began as a counterrevolutionary response to the triumph of the immense popular uprising that overthrew President Yanukovych in February 2014. The first episode was the forced annexation of Crimea in March 2014-camouflaged by a supposed referendum at gunpoint by Russian FSB paramilitaries-and the beginning of the invasion of Donbass in April 2014. The latter was disguised by the farce of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk.
And what was the reaction of the so-called “Western democratic powers”? They only expressed hypocritical “deep concern”! But on March 24, after the annexation, German Chancellor Merkel continued to talk on the phone with Putin to “analyze the status of Crimea” before the G-7 meeting. And so they have continued until now. And they have even increased their purchases of cheap gas and oil from Russia, even after the current invasion!
In 2015, Merkel and Macron organized another farce in the form of the two of them plus Putin and Poroshenko, then president of Ukraine, called the “Minsk negotiations.” Poroshenko – an oligarch known as the “Chocolate King” because of his famous international confectionery company – was a true traitor of Ukrainian sovereignty. He acted as a passive accomplice while Putin sent trains loaded with weapons to Donbass – through Ukrainian territory – under the guise of “humanitarian convoys”. And moreover he has kept his factories in the Russian region of Lipetsk running throughout the years of aggression against Ukraine.
Since then, thousands of fighters have died defending Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbass. However, the Poroshenko government, including the current one, never had a policy aimed at truly protecting national independence and countering the massive aggression and plunder. On the contrary, they favored capitulation to international capital, including Russian imperialism.
The full-scale invasion in February 2022
Emboldened by the inaction of “Western” imperialism and the cowardice of Ukrainian rulers, Putin decided in 2022 that his “second most powerful army in the world” would be able to “take Kiev in three days,” overthrow the government and replace it with his puppet – former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed in 2014 by the popular Maidan uprising. The only thing the White House offered the incumbent president at the time was to flee abroad “while it’s not too late”, on an Air Force plane!
However, the revolutionary energy of the Maidan – latent among the masses despite reactionary deviations and false electoral alternatives – exploded as an unstoppable torrent of patriotism to resist the invaders from the Belarusian border to the north, in the Kiev region. There were ten volunteers for every weapon. Men and women of all ages, even teenagers under 18, fought to get weapons and go into battle!
So it was that Ukrainian heroism, with few and rudimentary weapons and only cell phones for communication, forced Putin’s hordes to retreat north. Those Russian special forces and paratroopers left a trail of military hardware in their wake. But they also left a trail of horror. There were peaceful inhabitants murdered with their hands tied behind their backs in the areas they had occupied, such as Bucha or Irpin. These aberrations will remain as objective testimony to the genocidal nature of Putin’s aggression.
It was thanks to the sacrifices of ordinary people that the president did not have to flee. Whatever the outcome of this war and its political consequences, the heroism of the Ukrainian people, who did everything to expel the invaders and save Kiev, will remain in the world’s collective memory.
From the first day and in the following months, hundreds of thousands of ordinary workers volunteered. Before the invasion, the army had 50,000 poorly trained troops. During those months in 2022, it reached 450,000 troops. In addition, there was a boom in public donations – in every supermarket and shop there were collection boxes for the FDU, the Ukrainian Defense Forces – for the purchase of equipment and weapons. Thousands of workshops were organized to make uniforms and camouflage nets. And most importantly: the development of the Territorial Defense, TRO, which proved to be the most effective of all defense initiatives in the country. It emerged as a true self-organization of the masses for the struggle.
However, this massive influx of fighters from the exploited classes, who armed themselves and began to cut their teeth in the struggle, and were potentially capable of defeating the aggression of one of the largest military machines, aroused suspicion and fear among the Western imperialists themselves who supposedly “support the Ukrainian cause.”And they began to apply pressure with their geopolitical scriptwriters. This perverse chorus was led by the decrepit imperialist ideologue – now deceased – Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State under Nixon, who, after the collapse of the USSR, publicly argued that “the world order tacitly accepted by the great powers is legitimate”.
After Moscow’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 and its armed intervention to deepen the separatist conflict in Donbass, Kissinger continued to see Ukraine as part of Russia’s sphere of interest. He visited Moscow in 2017. He became an apologist for Moscow’s imperialism, recognizing that Russia, as a great power, has a legitimate right to dominate its “sphere of influence,” disregarding – as a good imperialist should – the interests and aspirations of developing nations, not only in the former USSR but around the world.
Writing in the Washington Post less than a month after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, Kissinger declared: “For Russia, Ukraine can never be simply a foreign country.” He urged “the wisest Ukrainian leaders” to “adopt a policy of reconciliation between the different parts of their country. And during the past three years, these ideas were adopted as guidelines by CIA Director Bill Burns and National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan of the Joe Biden administration. Although, depending on the occasion, they showed a “different face” through Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The “final solution” proposed by Trump
It should come as no surprise that Trump, with his harsh and brutal style, is essentially continuing along the same lines as Kissinger, seeking agreements with Putin behind Ukraine’s back. And for the puppet Zelensky, Trump’s message is: “We’ll find a place for him at the table.” But nobody has asked the Ukrainian people, the legitimate interlocutor! And especially not the Ukrainian resistance and the working class that is its backbone!
The answer to the just cause of the territorial integrity of Ukraine is nowhere to be seen in these negotiations. No way! The new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said it with aplomb in Warsaw: “It is very unrealistic for Ukraine to seek to regain all of the territory occupied by Russia.”
Trump’s objective, like a true “vulture”, is to take advantage of the situation in which the Russian offensive is slowing down on all fronts, with the exhaustion of its troops, armored vehicles and war equipment, and with the failure so far of the intervention of North Korean troops. In other words, he aims to take advantage of the obvious fragility of the Russian economy and the weakness of the regime to agree with Putin on a “ceasefire” that will allow for the colonization of Ukraine on both sides of the Russian occupation by U.S. corporations, while also seeking to compromise future cooperation with Russian corporations.
Let’s take the example of the much-discussed reserves of strategic metals on Ukrainian territory, the so-called “rare earth metals”. Trump’s ultimatum to Ukraine has already been spread around the world: “Unrestricted access to these reserves in exchange for the resumption of shipments of new armaments”. Zelensky has already sent his answer in writing. But what is not so well known is that almost 40% of these reserves are located on the territory occupied by Russia. Who will Trump negotiate with to prevent China from taking them?
NATO and the EU Reveal Their Crisis and Imperialist Nature
Trump’s phone calls and proposals to Putin, who later announced that they were “committed to working together” on the margins of the EU and the other NATO members, have caused a major crisis between European imperialism. The thunderous declarations of its envoys, such as Pete Hegseth at the NATO meeting: “We see no place for Ukraine in the alliance.” In response, Zelensky made pitiful pleas to “have security guarantees before going to negotiate with Putin” have also deepened the crisis. Hegseth has also suggested forming a joint army with the European imperialists to guarantee continental security. On the other hand, JD Vance, Trump’s vice-president, on the eve of the elections, took the blame for supporting the parties of the European far right and accused the current main European governments of being “unable to respond to external threats that are not as great as those from within”, referring to the waves of migration.
To sum up: the crisis and impotence of the EU imperialist bloc and its acute contradictions are paralyzing NATO
This situation has revealed that placing hope in “security guarantees” through NATO membership or through the deployment of European imperialist troops on Ukrainian territory, as Zelensky has long demanded, is a reactionary utopia that we reject because it aggravates Ukraine’s colonial subordination to various imperialisms.
After all, it was the armed working class that “guaranteed security” by driving the Russian hordes out of the Kiev region! Not imperialist NATO!
Ukraine’s security threatened by its own oligarchy
The Ukrainian people are increasingly aware that the country’s most vulnerable point has been and continues to be the policies of the current government in Kiev. At the beginning, many of the allies and agents of Russian imperialism – such as the oligarch Medvedchuk, Putin’s godfather – were still entrenched in the regime and had significant influence on government decisions. Many, not all, have already been purged. But all the “institutions” of power, which represent the interests of the big oligarchs, local capital and foreign corporations, have not and will not put the economy at the service of national defense and the social interests of the workers.
- That is why the country is forced to go into debt with the IMF lenders and must obey their dictates!
- That is why they are selling their most fertile lands and minerals, such as titanium, to foreign corporations. And now to Trump also the “rare earth metals” in exchange for indispensable weapons!
- That is why, when the country is at war, the steel factories are paralyzed and social inequality worsens!
- That is why, during this war in 2023, the oligarch Kolomoisky – although he was in prison for his multiple crimes – sold his share in the KZRK mining and metallurgical plant in Krivyi Rih to the famous Russian oligarch Voievodin! And this led to the paralysis of the enterprise and a crisis for thousands of workers.
- That is why, three years after the invasion, the production of ammunition is still not sufficiently developed and efforts are not focused on the mass production of drones!
- Due to the oligarchic composition of the Rada (unicameral parliament), it has adopted laws on conscription with the creation of territorial conscription centers, TZK, which has caused violent conflicts with their coercive action against the exploited and poor sectors as they exempt the rich who pay exceptions.
Ukraine’s security is guaranteed by its sovereignty. - Ukraine deserves to achieve national liberation and true independence. Despite the exhaustion of the Ukrainian working class and people from the sacrifices of these past three years of full-scale war, despite the growing grievances of their own government that have eroded the initial massive will, they continue to resist stoically. Further advances have been made in the Kursk area and now in Bryansk, and the occupiers have been pushed back to some key points in the Donbass area.
- The brigades in charge of drone warfare are making history, managing to hit military targets hundreds of kilometers inside the Russian territory. They managed to destroy important parts of refineries, supply bases and command posts of Russian troops. On the other hand, it should be noted that “partisanshina”, the partisan resistance movement, continues to operate in the occupied territories, punishing collaborators, carrying out acts of sabotage and informing Ukrainian intelligence about the location and movement of Russian troops. And this movement would grow exponentially in the event of the government’s capitulation with regard to these territories. That is why we are convinced of Ukraine’s military capacity to overcome the obstacles in this war.
- The main obstacles are in the political and international arena. In order to respond to these obstacles, the Ukrainian working people must achieve social emancipation. And to make this happen we need an independent political organization of the working class. We at the IWL are committed to this effort and promote with all our modest forces the only reliable guarantee: the solidarity of the international working class and the oppressed peoples of the world.
