By CARLOS SAPIR
On Aug. 15, two war criminals met in Anchorage. Each flew about eight hours to arrive in the Alaskan city, exchange pleasantries, speak briefly in private, and then hold a joint press conference where nothing of substance was said. While these two imperialists dined together and did banal publicity stops, Ukrainians continue to fight on the front against the invasion, determined to preserve their independence.
A publicity tour for fake peace
With much fanfare and little new to show for it, it is clear that the ultimate purpose of this summit was for Putin and his entourage to flex Russia’s diplomatic clout and recite their self-serving pablum about “denazifying” Ukraine with the smiling endorsement of the U.S. president (for his part, Trump likely expects that this will help pressure Zelensky into making more economic concessions).
Like countless imperialists before them, from Kissinger to Woodrow Wilson to Hitler, Trump and Putin take great pains to present themselves as men of peace. Standing in front of a facade emblazoned with the words “Pursuing Peace,” Trump and Putin get to pretend that what they are doing is solving a thorny problem, when in reality they are working to subjugate Ukraine and clear the way to launch the next war of their choosing.
But even as Putin and his allies like Viktor Orbán try to project that the war is already as good as over, reality is not quite so accommodating. Even the location of the summit betrays this: more typical and convenient U.S.-Russia summit locations like Iceland, Finland, or the capital cities of the U.S. and Russia themselves are off-limits due to European countries and Canada having closed off their airspace to Russian planes. Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones and cyberattacks have forced airports in European Russia to repeatedly shut down for extended periods of time. Even in Anchorage, where Trump rolled out the red carpet, hundreds of protesters also showed up to greet Putin with a sea of Ukrainian flags.
Following the summit, Trump went on to meet with Zelensky and EU leaders, making murky promises to them while siding with Putin’s demand that Ukraine make territorial concessions “for peace.” Of course, this proposal is a farce, as there is no peace for Ukrainians for as long as their country remains occupied by an imperialist power.
Trump vaguely promised U.S.-backed security commitments for Ukraine, a phrase that should cause deja vu and skepticism among Ukrainians following the proceedings: After all, the U.S., Russia and Britain promised the same thing in 1994 when they signed the Budapest Memorandum, promising to guarantee Ukraine’s independence in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapon arsenal, at the time second in size only to those of the U.S. and Russia themselves. Ukraine committed to its promises; the imperialist states did not.
Ukraine deserves self-determination, NATO’s imperialists have given it debt
Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine has been desperate to arm itself in order to fend off the invasion. Rather than dedicating its domestic production to the war effort and nationalizing Russian assets in Ukraine—which even now are still owned by and generate profits for Putin’s bourgeois allies—Ukraine’s government chose to pander to NATO’s imperialists and accept their impositions of debt, austerity budgets, and profit-driven production in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Almost immediately after taking office, Trump went and further extorted a mineral resources deal from Zelensky.
Debts and one-sided trade deals imposed on Ukraine while it is under the duress of an invasion are the essence of imperialist politics. They are morally unjustifiable, and must be denounced. The cancellation of all these debts and deals benefitting the U.S. and other imperialist states and their banks would only barely begin to address the injustices committed.
At the same time, international worker to worker solidarity can help mitigate the shortfalls that Ukraine’s neoliberal government won’t address. While modest for now, efforts like the Ukraine Solidarity Network’s current medical equipment fundraiser for Ukrainian nurses’ union Be Like Us both provide direct aid to workers standing up to the Russian invasion and build the international political ties needed for Ukrainian workers to decisively confront their own government, to be able to fight for an independence that actually means something to working-class people.
As demonstrated by the anti-corruption protests last month, Ukrainians, hardened by the war, are more than willing to stand up to their own government and force concessions when it tries to strip away their rights.
Trump and Putin have the time and resources to put on a show in Alaska and pretend that Ukraine doesn’t exist. But they have not been able to actually make Ukrainians disappear, or to make them abandon the fight that began with marches in the streets against Putin’s lackey Poroshenko, and which continues more than a decade later in the trenches fighting against Russia’s mercenaries.
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Support Ukrainian Workers!
The Ukraine Solidarity Network, a national network of organizations and individual activists in the US, has embarked on a fundraiser to raise $38,000 for the Ukrainian nurses union. The union, Be Like We Are! (Будь як ми!), is trying to raise the funds for the purchase of two medical diagnostic machines in partnership with the Ukrainian-American nonprofit, Kryla. This campaign is a vitally important opportunity to build real worker-to-worker solidarity with the Ukrainian working class. In this time of war, while Russian imperialism is ruthlessly bombing civilians, our solidarity takes on critical importance.
Resources:
GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-krylas-lifechanging-mission
Donate to Support Ukrainian Nurses! on the USN site: https://www.ukrainesolidaritynetwork.us/donate-to-support-ukrainian-nurses/ This includes downloadable literature and social media cards.
