<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukraine is approaching a fifth winter since the beginning of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, and Putin\u2019s offensive against the country and its civilian population has again intensified. During the first six months of 2026 alone, the UN recorded 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 injured, a 37 percent increase in civilian casualties over the same period in 2025, as Russian missiles, drones and glide bombs continued to strike cities and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine. These are verified<\/a> civilian casualties, not an estimate of the total human cost of a war in which military casualties on both sides are counted in the hundreds of thousands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The International Workers League\u2013Fourth International (IWL-FI) participates in the Convoy with a class-independent perspective and calls for unions, student organizations and social movements to participate in it and help make it a success. We do so because Ukraine is fighting a war against imperialist occupation and because international solidarity with that resistance remains necessary. But our solidarity is not with the Zelensky government, NATO or the European Union. We want the Convoy to strengthen relations between workers and social movements internationally and the independent organizations of workers, students and the left inside Ukraine: forces that participate in the resistance while fighting for their own interests against the Ukrainian government and bourgeoisie and opposing NATO and EU encroachment in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Against this renewed offensive, the International Solidarity Convoy to Ukraine<\/a>, planned for November 2026, is bringing together a wide range of trade unions, civil-society organizations and grassroots movements. The Convoy will travel through several routes across Europe before entering Ukraine, collecting generators, medical equipment, transport and other supplies identified in consultation with Ukrainian organizations and communities. As of August 2026, more than eighty organizations and prominent political figures across more than fifteen countries had endorsed the initiative, among them major trade unions, solidarity organizations, NGOs and political forces, while meetings along the route are intended to involve feminist, environmental, LGBTIAQ+, student and human-rights organizations.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A History of Workers\u2019 Solidarity with Ukraine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This solidarity effort builds on previous ones. Some of the unions and activists involved in the present Convoy participated in the earlier Workers\u2019 Aid Convoys organized after the invasion through the International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle (ILNSS), including CSP-Conlutas of Brazil.
The first Workers\u2019 Aid Convoy was prepared almost immediately after the Russian invasion. Following discussions with independent trade unionists from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, the International Labour Network approved the initiative at its fourth international meeting in Dijon in April 2022. Solidaires from France, CSP-Conlutas from Brazil, Inicjatywa Pracownicza from Poland, ADL Cobas from Italy and G1PS from Lithuania participated alongside Ukrainian activists and trade unionists. At the end of April they brought around 800 kilos of supplies to Kryvyi Rih, including generators, batteries, food and equipment requested by the independent miners\u2019 and metalworkers\u2019 union, before joining Ukrainian activists in Lviv<\/a> for an international workers\u2019 gathering around May Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was not conceived as aid delivered to the Ukrainian government. Supplies went directly to workers\u2019 organizations, while political discussions addressed both the Russian invasion and the problems facing the Ukrainian working class. The Network supported the defeat of Russia, defended antiwar activists in Russia and Belarus, called for the cancellation of Ukraine\u2019s foreign debt, and opposed the measures being prepared by the Zelensky government against labor rights. From the beginning, the aim was to support the resistance without asking Ukrainian workers to abandon their own class interests for the duration of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A second Workers\u2019 Aid Convoy later in 2022<\/a> brought together additional unions from France, the Spanish state and Britain. Delegates returned to Kryvyi Rih, where independent trade unionists described workers joining the military and Territorial Defense while those remaining in the mines faced deteriorating conditions, attacks on labor rights and employers exploiting wartime restrictions. The contradictions and betrayals of the Zelensky government have not deterred key sectors of the Ukrainian working class from combining these struggles: participating in the effort to defeat the Russian occupation while defending themselves against their bosses and their own government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The third convoy, in June 2023, expanded these connections among unions. Delegates travelled through Lviv, Kropyvnytskyi, Kryvyi Rih and Kyiv and met the Independent Trade Union of Miners, the Free Trade Union of Education and Science, the Free Union of Railway Workers, medical workers, the student union Priama Diia (Direct Action) and Solidarity Collectives. The convoy provided funds for independent unions\u2019 daily work, equipment for union members serving in the armed forces, and food and hygiene products. Priama Diia received funds for its organizing, while equipment was delivered<\/a> to miners who had gone to the front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IWL supported and participated in these initiatives through CSP-Conlutas and the International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle. They were modest efforts compared with what Ukraine needed, but politically they mattered. They created material and political relations of solidarity that did not pass through NATO, Western governments or the Ukrainian state, putting international trade unionists directly in contact with those resisting the invasion while continuing to organize as workers, students and socialists for a real Ukrainian independence: from Russian imperialism, from Western imperialism, and from economic exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Ukrainian Self-Determination, Against Russian and Western Imperialism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Convoy is also an opportunity to reaffirm the character of the war in Ukraine: a war of imperialist aggression that Western governments have sought to use for their own purposes. Russia is an imperialist state that invaded an oppressed country, annexed parts of its territory and denies Ukraine\u2019s right to exist as an independent nation. Whatever the objectives of Washington, Brussels or the Zelensky government, the Ukrainian people are fighting a war of national liberation against that invasion. Western weapons have not transformed Russia into an oppressed country or Ukraine into an imperialist one, nor have they turned the Ukrainian population resisting occupation into a proxy army whose national struggle can simply be dismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imperialist states always intervene according to their own interests and seek to subordinate the countries they claim to assist. This cannot be an excuse to abandon legitimate struggles for national liberation. We must actively support Ukraine\u2019s right to obtain weapons wherever they are available, but it is not the task of the international working class to present Washington, London, Berlin or Paris as agents of Ukrainian liberation. We must build an independent way out based on working-class international solidarity. The same governments that have supplied limited arms to Ukraine have enabled or directly supported Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza and attacks against Iran. In Ukraine, they have decided which weapons would be provided, when and under what conditions, while using the war to justify enormous increases in military expenditure and advancing their own interests in Ukraine\u2019s economy and reconstruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Western capital is already moving into strategic sectors of the Ukrainian economy. In 2024, the Ukrainian government relaunched large-scale wartime privatization. The state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC), one of the world\u2019s major producers of titanium and zirconium raw materials, was sold for 3.94 billion hryvnias to Cemin Ukraine, controlled by the international NEQSOL group headquartered in Amsterdam, Baku and Kyiv. The Irish multinational CRH, one of the world\u2019s largest building-material corporations, completed<\/a> a \u20ac100 million acquisition of two Ukrainian cement plants, Volyn-Cement and Pivden-Cement, consolidating a major position in an industry central to reconstruction. In 2025, the Trump and Zelensky governments signed<\/a> the U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund agreement covering new projects in minerals, oil, gas and related infrastructure. Ukraine must contribute 50 percent of royalties and license payments from new and certain dormant natural-resource permits to the Fund; the United States receives preferential rights if it chooses to acquire resources produced by participating projects, while U.S. military assistance can itself be credited as an American capital contribution. The resources legally remain Ukrainian, but the agreement gives U.S. capital and the U.S. state a long-term stake in their exploitation and in Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The war has also left Ukraine with an enormous debt burden. By July 2026, state and state-guaranteed debt had reached $214 billion, including $163 billion in external state debt. The European Union is now Ukraine\u2019s largest creditor, accounting for \u20ac72.5 billion, or almost 39 percent of the entire public debt. The IMF projects public debt<\/a> at around 112 percent of GDP in 2026 and acknowledges that, before further restructuring, the debt remains unsustainable.
Much of this financing is concessional, and some recent G7 loans are intended to be serviced from revenues generated by frozen Russian assets rather than ultimately by Ukraine itself. But Western creditors have not agreed to cancel Ukraine\u2019s accumulated foreign debt. In April 2026, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other official creditors extended the suspension of debt payments until 2030, but the agreement requires the deferred principal and capitalized interest to be repaid between 2035 and 2039. Ukraine should not emerge from a devastating war for national liberation carrying a debt that gives foreign governments and financial institutions enormous leverage<\/a> over its economy and reconstruction. Cancellation of Ukraine\u2019s foreign debt is therefore part of the struggle for genuine national self-determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We fully support the defeat of Russia\u2019s invasion and Ukraine\u2019s recovery of all occupied territories. But the future of Ukraine belongs to the Ukrainian people, not to Moscow, Washington, Brussels or foreign corporations. International workers\u2019 solidarity must defend Ukraine\u2019s right to defeat the occupation and to determine how its economy is reconstructed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The struggle to establish a class independent camp for national liberation is also taking place inside Ukraine. The Zelensky government has attacked labor rights during the war, restricted collective bargaining and pursued neoliberal reforms opposed by Ukrainian unions. It is now openly presenting<\/a> state assets to international investors: at the 2026 Ukraine Recovery Conference, the State Property Fund advertised what it called \u201cEurope\u2019s largest portfolio of state assets,\u201d including the titanium and zirconium producer Demurinsky Mining and Processing Plant and the Mykolaiv Alumina Plant. Ukrainian workers are sacrificing enormously to prevent their country from being conquered by Russia. They should not emerge from the war to find their factories, public services and natural resources privatized or placed at the disposal of domestic oligarchs and foreign capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Against this program, revolutionary socialists active in Ukraine\u2019s independent unions have defended a working-class program for the war and reconstruction: nationalization under workers\u2019 control of strategic sectors of the economy, including the assets of the oligarchs; expropriation of companies that collaborate with or profit from the Russian occupation; cancellation of the foreign debt; and the use of these resources to finance the resistance, wages, public services and reconstruction.This does not counterpose social struggle to national liberation. Ukrainian workers, who are paying the greatest price for the defense of the country, should control its resources and determine its future. A genuinely independent Ukraine<\/a> cannot mean liberation from Russian occupation followed by subordination to domestic oligarchs, Western corporations, the IMF or the governments financing reconstruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The present Convoy brings together forces with very different positions on these questions: trade unions and grassroots organizations alongside NGOs, elected politicians and bourgeois and reformist political forces. We do not need political agreement with all of them to collect generators, ambulances and medical supplies for Ukraine. We participate without hiding our differences or abandoning our program, concentrating our solidarity on the independent forces of workers and youth inside the Ukrainian resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Priama Diia and the Independent Forces of the Resistance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Much of the debate outside Ukraine speaks as though supporting the resistance means supporting Zelensky, reducing the war to Putin versus Zelensky or Russia versus NATO. But Ukrainian society has its own conflicts and organizations, and these did not disappear with the Russian invasion. Independent unions have continued organizing in mines, railways, schools and hospitals while many of their members joined the military. Solidarity Collectives has supported anti-authoritarian activists and trade unionists serving in the armed forces while carrying out humanitarian work in communities affected by the war. These are the forces with which international trade unionists and socialists should build permanent relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The independent student union Priama Diia<\/a> (Direct Action) is one of them. Rebuilt by a new generation of activists beginning in 2023, it defines itself as an independent, grassroots and horizontal student trade union. It organizes around free education, student housing, university democracy, discrimination and conditions in student dormitories while supporting the struggle against the Russian invasion. Its activists have opposed the government\u2019s \u201coptimization\u201d and merger of universities, which threaten institutions and student accommodation when students displaced from occupied and frontline territories are particularly dependent on affordable housing and public education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Priama Diia activists have organized demonstrations despite the danger of Russian missile and drone attacks and the pressure to postpone social demands in the name of national unity. International support has also helped the union preserve its political independence. In its 2026 statement to the ILNSS Priama Diia explained that international fundraising had allowed it to develop without becoming financially dependent on Ukrainian political actors. Class-to-class solidarity can strengthen the capacity of independent Ukrainian organizations to fight and organize without tying them to governments or bourgeois political forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case of Maksym Shumakov shows why this independence also has to be defended. Shumakov, a former leader of Priama Diia at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv and an editor associated with Commons, is facing a criminal investigation under Article 436-1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code concerning the dissemination of communist symbols. Police searched the apartment where he was staying in June 2025 and confiscated his telephone, laptop, documents and flash drives. ZMINA\u2019s 2025 annual report states that its monitoring of his publicly accessible Facebook page found no images or videos containing communist symbols. His equipment remained confiscated for more than a year. When police contacted him in July 2026, ostensibly so that he could request its return, he was instead served a formal notice of suspicion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proceedings remain disturbingly opaque<\/a>. According to Shumakov and his lawyer, the notice identifies dates of Facebook publications without explaining in detail which material constitutes the alleged offense. His lawyer described the material they had been able to identify as mainly reposted articles dealing with Marxism, Marx, criticism of Marx and analyses of contemporary Russian ideology, while the defense had still not been given access to the full case file when ZMINA reported on the case. We demand the return of Shumakov\u2019s equipment, the defense of his due-process and political rights, and the dropping of proceedings based on the circulation of legitimate political, historical and philosophical material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Supporting Ukraine against Russian imperialism does not require silence about repression or attacks on workers\u2019 and students\u2019 rights inside Ukraine. Workers and students need their own organizations and democratic freedoms precisely in order to participate in the resistance without abandoning their own struggles. Trade unions and student organizations participating in the Convoy should build direct relations with Priama Diia, Solidarity Collectives and the independent unions, and make solidarity with Shumakov part of that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Free Denys Matsola and All Ukrainian Prisoners<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The campaign for Denys Matsola should be part of this solidarity. Matsola was a founder and leader of the independent student union Direct Action while studying at Tavria University in Crimea, part of the same independent student-movement milieu as Priama Diia. He participated in environmental campaigns and struggles against illegal construction, supported the Crimean Tatar movement and joined protests associated with the Crimean Maidan. When Russian forces occupied Crimea in 2014, he opposed the annexation and helped Ukrainian military personnel trapped in their bases before eventually leaving the peninsula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He later worked with East SOS assisting people displaced by the war in the Donbas, with Right to Protection and as a journalist reporting on conditions in occupied Crimea. He also campaigned for prisoners held by Russia, including filmmaker Oleh Sentsov and anarchist Oleksandr Kolchenko. Matsola joined the 501st Separate Marine Battalion before the full-scale invasion, where his close friend Vladyslav \u201cIskra\u201d Zhuravlev was already serving. Both fought in the defense of Mariupol and became Russian prisoners of war in April 2022. For years their friends and comrades campaigned for them together. In May 2026, Zhuravlev finally returned to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange after more than four years in captivity. Denys did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are serious reasons for concern about his condition. Testimony collected by East SOS from former prisoners placed Matsola in SIZO No. 2 in Kineshma in Russia\u2019s Ivanovo region, where he was reportedly held for a prolonged period in solitary confinement and subjected for several months to severe restrictions on food. Human Rights Watch concluded in December 2025 that Russian authorities and military forces had systematically tortured and ill-treated Ukrainian POWs, documenting beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, mock executions, attacks by dogs, inadequate food and denial of medical care. The organization specifically documented severe abuse<\/a> at Kineshma SIZO No. 2, the prison where Matsola was reported to have been held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle adopted a resolution in November 2025 calling for Matsola and Zhuravlev to be included in prisoner exchanges. One of them is now home. The campaign should concentrate its efforts on the other. Unions participating in the Convoy can adopt motions demanding Matsola\u2019s release, publicize his case and write to the authorities involved in prisoner exchanges, while connecting his name to the thousands of Ukrainian POWs and unlawfully detained civilians held by Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Ukraine to Palestine and Iran: Against All Imperialisms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n