Defend Ukraine’s independence!
For defeat of Moscow’s invasion!
US troops, nuclear arms out of Europe, all of Europe!
https://themilitant.com/2022/03/05/defend-ukraines-independence-for-defeat-of-moscows-invasion/
March 14, 2022
“No to war!” protesters chant in St. Petersburg Feb. 25. More than 7,000
have been arrested as tens of thousands joined actions in 54 Russian
cities against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
AP/DMITRI LOVETSKY
“No to war!” protesters chant in St. Petersburg Feb. 25. More than 7,000
have been arrested as tens of thousands joined actions in 54 Russian
cities against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The following statement was issued March 3 by Jack Barnes, national
secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, on behalf of the SWP National
Committee.
The Vladimir Putin regime in Russia has unleashed a murderous war,
including massive bombardment of civilian-occupied urban centers in
Ukraine. In face of this intentional carnage, and despite Putin’s
dangerous and provocative action placing Moscow’s nuclear forces on high
alert, Ukrainians are fighting courageously, often arms in hand, to
defend Ukraine’s national sovereignty and independence. The Socialist
Workers Party hails their resistance and calls for the defeat of Putin’s
invading forces.
As the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union collapsed in face of massive
popular mobilizations at the beginnings of the 1990s, Ukraine was one of
14 former republics to declare national independence. Now Putin’s regime
is ruthlessly seeking to claw back, under Moscow’s hegemony, those
nations incarcerated in the czarist prison house of nations,
regenerating the Russian empire today with Putin as its czar.
Putin’s aim is “to erase our history, erase our country,” as Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky concisely put it March 1.
Putin insists Ukraine is not a nation and has no right to exist as one.
“Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia,” he claims. It
is “an inalienable part of our own [Russian] history, culture and
spiritual space.” He proclaims that his hoped-for resurrection of the
empire is a step toward rejuvenating Christendom, with its “Holy See” in
the Russian Orthodox patriarchate of Moscow.
Russia’s armed forces are facing tenacious resistance and taking
thousands of deaths and injuries in the first week of the assault. In
face of these setbacks, Moscow’s armed forces have now stepped up heavy
bombardment of residential and commercial areas in hopes of sowing
terror and cowing the Ukrainian people into submission. Russian planes
and cruise missiles have struck apartment buildings, homes, schools,
hospitals and railway stations in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv and
numerous smaller cities. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported
March 1 that 2,000 civilians had been killed during the first week, as
well as many Ukrainian soldiers.
Apartments destroyed by Russian shelling in Irpin, near the Ukraine
capital. Meeting widespread struggle against their invasion, Russia’s
rulers are targeting urban areas, killing civilians.
REUTERS/SERHII NUZHNENKO
Apartments destroyed by Russian shelling in Irpin, near the Ukraine
capital. Meeting widespread struggle against their invasion, Russia’s
rulers are targeting urban areas, killing civilians.
Under Putin’s direction, his high command is intensifying siege warfare
against the entire population of Ukraine, cutting off electricity, water
and sanitation, and cellphone, television, and radio communications.
In face of the rise of Jew-hating demagogy and violence in today’s
world, there is mounting disgust among Jews in Ukraine and beyond at the
outrageous claims by Putin — himself a product of Russia’s notoriously
Jew-hating secret police, formerly called the KGB — that the aggression
aims to “denazify” Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Zelensky is Jewish, with a grandfather who fought in
the Soviet army to turn back the German imperialist invaders, and other
family members who were killed in the Holocaust. On March 2
“denazifying” Russian missiles struck a TV tower in Babyn Yar — the site
of the slaughter of more than 30,000 Jews by Nazi forces during World
War II — desecrating a Jewish cemetery. No wonder Jews around the world
are seeing more of the truth and encouraging Jews in Ukraine to join
with others there to stand and fight.
More Russian soldiers and sailors are becoming demoralized and
disillusioned. They’ve been lied to by Putin’s regime about what to
expect, being told they’d be welcomed as “liberators,” and would quickly
roll over Ukraine’s military forces. Now they’re not only taking
substantial casualties but facing shortages of food and fuel. Some are
disobeying orders to shell civilian targets; retreating from battle or
surrendering without a fight; even sabotaging or abandoning Russian
military equipment.
Inside Russia, tens of thousands have poured into the streets of cities
and towns all across that vast country to demand a halt to the war. They
are doing so in face of police repression, with more than 7,000 arrests
the first week, as well as government threats of being charged with
“treason.” Street demonstrations are spreading across Europe, the
Americas, and worldwide, as well.
The Socialist Workers Party opposes the broadly aimed economic and
financial embargo imposed on Russia by the U.S., European, and other
imperialist ruling classes, as well as military maneuvers by these
governments. Those sanctions ultimately fall most harshly on working
people in Russia.
Washington and its capitalist allies in London, Paris, Berlin and
elsewhere shed crocodile tears over Ukraine’s national sovereignty and
the plight of its people. High-flown phrases aside, however, their only
real concern is to protect their own profits and strategic political
interests in the region. The Socialist Workers Party demands the
complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops and both conventional and nuclear
arms and nuclear missile systems from Europe!
Since the 1990s, both Democratic and Republican administrations and
Congresses have acted to reinforce U.S. imperialism’s post-World War II
position as the dominant “European” military power. In collaboration
with other imperialist governments in Europe, as well as the other
bourgeois regimes involved, Washington has extended the reach of its
armed might close to Russia’s borders. This includes deployment of
ballistic missiles in Poland and Romania.
Putin’s efforts to excuse his bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine on
grounds of moves by Washington and other NATO governments are as cynical
as they are false. A sovereign and independent Ukraine poses no military
threat to Russia of any kind.
At the same time, the Socialist Workers Party lends no political
confidence to the capitalist government in Kyiv, which stands behind
Ukraine’s wealthy rulers in their pressure on the living and job
conditions and political rights of coal miners, rail workers, farmers
and others among the oppressed and exploited.
The Socialist Workers Party stands and acts on our communist continuity
with V.I. Lenin, under whose leadership the Bolshevik Party in October
1917 led the working class to state power in Russia. It was that
revolutionary workers and peasants republic that ensured the right to
self-determination to oppressed nations formerly trapped within the
czarist empire.
In 1922, after consolidating victory over the counterrevolutionary
armies of the capitalists, landlords and 16 invading foreign powers, the
Bolshevik-led government established a voluntary federation of the
Russian, Ukrainian, and four other republics: the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.
Communists in Russia, Lenin insisted, must “declare war to the death on
Great Russian chauvinism.” It was only after the counterrevolution led
by Joseph Stalin against Lenin’s proletarian internationalist course
that Ukraine and other oppressed peoples were again denied their
language, cultural, and other national rights.
Members and supporters of the Socialist Workers Party are campaigning to
get out the truth about the Russian government’s murderous assault on
Ukraine’s sovereignty, on its right to exist as a nation. We and fellow
communists in other countries will organize to get this statement, along
with weekly Militant coverage of the struggle of the Ukrainian people,
into the hands of working people far and wide, including strike picket
lines, social protests, at workers’ doorsteps and everywhere else we go.
And to take them with us in protests against Russia’s invasion that are
occurring across the United States and the world over.
The Socialist Workers Party is mobilizing its candidates for the U.S.
Senate, House of Representatives, and other public offices to use the
2022 election campaign period to maximize getting out the truth and
presenting an independent working-class foreign policy. A foreign policy
that starts from the interests of the toilers at home and
internationally — not from hypocritical chants about “democracy” and
“freedom” behind which the capitalist rulers seek to mask their
exploitation and oppression of billions the world over.
The stakes are enormous. Working people must see the necessity of taking
political power into our own hands — as toilers did in Cuba at the
opening of the 1960s, following a popular, workers-and-farmers-based
revolution — or we will face a future of social devastation, reaction,
world war, and even nuclear catastrophe.
Join us in this effort to raise an independent working-class voice in
the United States — to have an impact on public opinion here, elsewhere
in the Americas, Europe, and the world. Join us in demanding:
For the defeat of Moscow’s murderous invasion and bombardment of Ukraine!
Defend Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty!
Get Washington’s nuclear weapons and armed forces out of Europe, all of
Europe, now!