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Vol. 79/No. 34 September 28, 2015
As fighting lulls, Ukraine
gov’t attacks working class
BY NAOMI CRAINE
“Peace Breaks Out in Eastern Ukraine,” declared a headline in London’s
Financial Times Sept. 13. “Guarded Optimism as Cease-Fire Holds,” said
the New York Times. The renewed truce between the Ukrainian government
and separatist forces backed by Moscow, which took effect Sept. 1,
registers the still shaky consolidation of a de facto buffer zone under
the influence of the Russian government in parts of the provinces of
Donetsk and Luhansk.
At the same time the capitalist rulers of Ukraine are seeking to
stabilize their crisis-ridden economy and relations with imperialist
lenders by deepening attacks on the working class. The government headed
by billionaire President Petro Poroshenko is clamping down on political
and union rights, trying to roll back the space and self-confidence
workers and others won in the popular upsurge that ousted Moscow-backed
President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
As part of efforts to reach a more secure set of international alliances
in a world of growing crisis, the Barack Obama administration has been
seeking a “reset” with the Vladimir Putin regime, signaling its
willingness to accept a buffer zone in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow
considers its “near abroad.”
Washington needs to accept “Moscow as a great power that possesses real
and legitimate interests, especially in its border areas,” wrote former
State Department official and long-time leader of the Council on Foreign
Relations Leslie Gelb in June. Doing so, he said, will allow the U.S.
and Russian governments to “step up joint action based on common
interests on other critical fronts such as terrorism, Syria, Iran and
nuclear proliferation.”
In the wake of Yanukovych’s ouster, Putin moved to prevent Washington
and NATO from exerting influence on Russia’s border, organizing the
occupation and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and launching attacks
on the native Tatar people there. Moscow also instigated separatist
forces, sending in soldiers, weapons and advisers, to seize areas in
Donetsk and Luhansk, fueling a war that has left nearly 8,000 dead in
the last year and a half.
In February the German and French governments brokered an agreement in
Minsk, Belarus, between Kiev, Moscow and its separatist followers. Under
the deal, the Ukrainian government will not regain control over the
eastern border with Russia until a political settlement is reached
creating a decentralized, special status in the separatist-run areas,
ensuring Moscow’s ongoing sway.
As part of implementing the Minsk agreement, the Ukrainian parliament
approved a constitutional change Aug. 31 that grants the regions more
autonomy. In their sharpest clash with the government to date, members
of the rightist Svoboda Party and Right Sector protesting the vote
attacked police and national guard forces outside the parliament,
detonating an explosive device, killing three and injuring dozens.
Within the so-called People’s Republic of Donetsk, a Sept. 4 shake-up
put Denis Pushilin in charge of the separatist parliament, ousting
Andrey Purgin, who had opposed the Minsk agreement and called for Moscow
to annex eastern Ukraine. Pushilin, whose background includes
participation in a massive Ponzi scheme in Russia in the 1990s, is seen
as “always ready to precisely follow Kremlin orders,” Volodymyr Fesenko,
a Kiev-based political analyst, told the Associated Press.
Gov’t assaults workers’ rights
For working people in Ukraine, the biggest threat comes from the
Poroshenko government as it drives to advance the interests of Ukrainian
capitalists. Parliament is expected to approve a draft labor law later
in September that would give bosses more power to set work rules, impose
forced overtime, and expand use of temporary workers.
The rulers have given the green light to a wave of physical assaults
against the Communist Party of Ukraine. CP offices have been
fire-bombed, members beaten and framed up, and the party barred from
participating in coming elections in December. This is the leading edge
of the use of thuggery as well as legal assaults against trade unionists
and others who oppose government policies.
In August the government banned 38 books from being imported from Russia
and published a list of artists who “pose a threat to national
security.” In June it canceled permission for the Socialist Ukraine
party to publish its newspaper. These follow the “decommunization” laws
Poroshenko signed in May, which attempt to dictate one “official”
version of history and were used to justify banning the Communist Party.
Dozens of masked men who said they were with the Right Sector attacked
the office of the Opposition Bloc in Kharkiv Aug. 3, trying to stop the
party, which includes members of Yanukovych’s former Party of Regions,
from registering candidates in the elections.
Coal miners and other workers have had to strike and protest in ongoing
efforts to receive their wages. Starting Aug. 26, miners at the
Selidivvugillia mine, backed by the Independent Trade Union of Coal
Miners of Ukraine, went on strike and blocked roads, demanding back pay,
safer working conditions and improved health care.
Meanwhile, Crimean Tatar leaders forced out of their homeland by the
Russian occupation announced plans to launch a protest along the border
between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine in late September. They are
demanding that Moscow release Ukrainian political prisoners, remove
restrictions on Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian media in Crimea, stop
persecuting Tatars and other Ukrainian nationals and remove the ban on
Refat Chubarov, Mustafa Dzhemilev and other Tatar leaders.
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