Questions and answers on the war in Ukraine

1) Should the Russians and the Ukrainians be placed on an equal footing ?

No. The resistance of the Ukrainian people in the face of the Russian aggression is legitimate. While this aggression arose out of a state of rivalry between imperialist blocs, from the moment that Russia invaded Ukraine, attempting to change its government and impose its system of alliances, it constituted an attack by an imperialist power against the independence of a small country and its people. It must be condemned, just as we condemned the invasion of Libya, the Ivory Coast and other African countries by French imperialism and just as we condemned the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the USA, etc. Just as we had no choice but to condemn the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR 40 years ago, an imperialist invasion carried out in the name of Socialism. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is comparable to the invasion of Poland, the Sudetenland then Belgium and France by Nazi German.
There is a just national liberation struggle underway in Ukraine : it all then depends upon who leads it and in which direction.

2) What about Putin, NATO and the EU ?

We support neither Russia, nor Zelinsky’s reactionary bourgeois Ukrainian government (subservient to the Western oligarchs and imperialists), nor the interventions of the US, French or German imperialists via the NATO military alliance that unites them.
Russia is attacking Ukraine in the same way, for example, that the US attacked Iraq : using blatant lies to further its economic and geopolitical interests, regardless of the cost to the people. But we should not forget that it is the US and its NATO allies that are the main warmongers around the planet.
Placing the imperialists on an equal footing makes it easier to highlight the role that the working class must play. In the face of this invasion, our solidarity must be with the Ukrainian people and their workers’ and revolutionary organisations. At the same time, just as we do in France, we must denounce the responsibility that our imperialism has in this instance, refusing its belligerent manoeuvres, its nationalist propaganda and the reign of the sacred union between the classes. Our main enemy is in our own country.
Our compass must be class solidarity, not geopolitical calculations. There is currently no political force strong enough to guide the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people along a revolutionary path. We support the Russians who courageously oppose the war waged by their government. We are of course in favour of welcoming Ukrainian refugees, just as we are in favour of welcoming all refugees fleeing misery and imperialist wars whatever the colour of their skin or country of origin. We therefore decry the racist sorting of African and North African refugees at the Polish and Slovak borders and in Ukrainian train stations.

3) What is the history of Ukraine ?

For centuries, Ukraine has been the victim of neighbouring empires and expansionism : the Ottoman Empire, Poland, Russia and Austria have all fought over it. All of them denied the Ukrainians their national rights. It finally became part of Tsarist Russia. After 1917, independence was proclaimed by the nationalists and the social democrats with the backing of Western imperialists in an attempt to weaken the Russian Revolution. In response, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the Ukrainian Soviet Republic integrated into the USSR. Lenin insisted on the right to secession and the promotion of the Ukrainian culture and language (something for which Putin has criticised him). But Great Russian chauvinism developed in tandem with the bourgeois degeneration of the USSR to the detriment of the national rights of the federated peoples, including the Ukrainians. The brutal collectivisation of agriculture and the desire to increase the Russian-speaking population spurred anti-Soviet sentiment and strengthened the nationalist parties, which collaborated with the Nazis during WWII. Ukraine gained its independent in 1991 and pro-Russian and pro-Western politicians with links to powerful oligarchs (monopoly capitalists) vied for power. After years of turmoil, things came to a head with the occupation of Independence (Maidan) Square in 2014, the prelude to the overthrow of the pro-Russian president Yanukovich. The Russian state retaliated by annexing Crimea, which is predominantly Russian and home to its main naval base on the Black Sea.

4) Is Ukraine a nation ?

Yes. While the Ukrainian language is closely related to Russian, it remains a distinct language. As the “cradle of Russian civilisation”, the country’s history is often intertwined with that of Russia, albeit with its own particular course. In 1991, over 90% of the population voted for independence, even in the predominantly Russian-speaking areas of Donbass and Crimea. While Ukrainian identity may at times seem blurred and manifold, it remains very real. Despite being Russian-speakers, a large part of the population consider themselves Ukrainian and not Russian, even if Russia is seen as a sister country. In the western regions of the country (Galicia), the Ukrainian identity is very strong and the whole population speaks Ukrainian, whereas in Donbass, in the far east, the Russian language is in the majority and most people define themselves as Russian, while in most of central Ukraine languages and identities are more intertwined.

5) What is happening in Donbass ?

After the pro-Russian president Yanukovych fled in 2014, a secessionist movement developed around the defence of the Russian language, the Soviet past and jobs in the traditionally pro-Russian and industrial region of Donbass known for its mines and heavy industry. Indeed, the local economy is dependent on the Russian market. While initially popular and semi-spontaneous, this movement went on to become progressively controlled by the Russian state, bent eradicating the few progressive elements that did exist. Despite their appealing name, today, the “People’s Republics” of Lugansk and Donetsk have become mafia-like, paramilitary states underpinned by an ideology that mixes Russian ultra-nationalism and nostalgia for the social-imperialist USSR. The pro-Russian militias have been fighting the Ukrainian army ever since.

6) Are Russians in Ukraine oppressed ?

After the independence of the USSR, despite Ukrainian having been proclaimed the only official language, Russian remained the main language of the economy, the media and politics. Russian is in fact the only language that everyone understands. But pro-Western Ukrainian nationalists have been pushing to limit the use of Russian and impose Ukrainian. Over recent years, laws have been passed to make the use of Ukrainian compulsory in public administration and businesses, although they are difficult to enforce in practice. The situation in the neighbouring Baltic States, where Russian-speakers suffer severe discrimination up to and including loss of citizenship, has given rise to real concern. In short, while Russian-speakers do face unfair obstacles regarding the use of their language (which should be recognised as co-official alongside Ukrainian), there has been no racist discrimination against Russian-speakers as individuals in Ukraine to date, much less so a “genocide” as Putin claims.

7) Is Ukraine run by Nazis ?

No, although there are indeed some very active and menacing Nazi groups that harp back to the collaboration during WWII. They have even achieved good scores at the polls in the past, participating in President Poroshenko’s first government and forming militias (e.g. the Azov Battalion) that have since been incorporated into the regular army. These groups are responsible for the murder of left-wing activists. In 2014, they burned several dozen people alive in the fire at Trade Unions House in Odessa. The pro-Western governments have tended to turn a blind eye, happy to have these shock troops in the war in Donbass. Yes, there is a problem with Nazis in Ukraine. However, successive governments have always more or less maintained bourgeois democracy in Ukraine, even if the Communist Party was formally banned a few years ago. The influence of these Nazis has even decreased significantly over recent years as bourgeois power has stabilised. The current president, Zelensky, a Russian-speaker of Jewish origin, was elected on a liberal, populist and anti-corruption platform with votes from both the Western and the Eastern regions where elections could be held. Moreover, Putin is very tolerant of the Nazi groups active in Russia, committing many racist crimes without too much interference : for example, the main leader of the Russian Wagner militia (Putin’s armed wing in Africa) is an avowed Nazi. Given that Putin has never made any attempt to denazify Russia, it seems strange that this should be his motivation for his intervening in Ukraine !
There are Fascist and Nazi groups in France too (grouped around Éric Zemmour, for instance), where the far-right enjoys a 50% electoral share in the army and the police. But and that is not tantamount to saying that France is a Nazi country.

8) Why did Putin invade Ukraine ?

Russia was already unhappy with the eastward expansion of NATO and the EU, which have absorbed former Eastern Bloc countries. In 1990, in exchange for dismantling the Eastern Bloc, the US promised that NATO would not expand into other countries. (NATO is the US-led military alliance that includes Canada and most of Europe set up at the beginning of the Cold War to contain Soviet expansion.) This promise has been betrayed. The last thing Russia wants is for Ukraine to join these two organisations, which it sees as a threat to its security, especially since Russia has many interests in Ukraine, a large wheat producer and a highly industrialised country whose economy has always been very intertwined with the Russian economy and which has seen itself ousted as its main trading partner in favour of the EU. However, this is not only nor necessarily the main reason behind the Russian intervention. In his speech on the day the invasion began, Putin claimed that Ukraine was not a nation and that it rightfully belonged to Russia. In short, Putin dreamt of absorbing Ukraine, whereby this war is not a simple war of self-defence as the Russian state would have it, but an expansionist war waged under the banner of Russian nationalism. In addition, the economic crisis has been aggravating the internal social contradictions within Russian society for several years, not to mention the mass protests against the rigged elections. A war is always a good way to distract the masses from the Revolution.

9) What do NATO and the EU have to do with it ?

Some people apparently expected NATO to disappear with the end of the Cold War. Francis Fukuyama, a best-selling US writer at the time, even predicted “The End of History” and everlasting peace through free market capitalism. In reality, however, the collapse of the USSR did not put an end to the contradictions of the capitalist system or the global competition between imperialist powers. By its very nature, imperialism must continually expand and seek to impose itself on its competitors. As early as 1992, the Pentagon (the HQ of the US Department of Defense) announced that its strategy would be to “Prevent the re-emergence of a new rival [and] prevent the potential competitor from entering the market” following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In recent years, the US has sought to stand in the way of the rise of China, which it fears will take away its global hegemony. The policy of successive US governments has been diffident towards Russia over recent years, sometimes seeking to expand NATO eastwards into the former sphere of influence of Soviet social-imperialism, while at others attempting to drive a wedge between Russia and its Chinese ally.
As for the EU, it essentially serves the interests of the two imperialist powers, France and Germany, with its expansion eastwards opening up new markets and new labour reserves.

10) Is Russia an imperialist country ?

Yes, Russia no longer wields the power of the former USSR. Its GDP amounts to that of the Benelux countries or slightly more than that of Spain. But it exerts control over important natural resources, hydrocarbons and rare metals and is also a major arms exporter, investing the capital it derives from them abroad. It is trying to rebuild an export industry and has inherited a powerful army from the USSR. For several years, it has been encroaching on France’s toehold in Africa, leading to heightened tensions between it and its competitors. Russia is an aggressive imperialist country in crisis that seeks only to bend peoples to its own will and needs, not to “liberate” them from the US-led “New World Order”, as Putin claims. In Kazakhstan and in Syria, it backs predatory and murderous regimes that have nothing to envy the puppet states of French-controlled Africa.

11) Are we heading for World War III ?

Not necessarily. The capitalists are concerned with keeping the wheels of the world economic machine turning. Their concern is to remain both interdependent and competitors, and conflicts between them quickly have a major impact on the world economy. But at the same time, there have been times in history when things have accelerated and after years or decades of rising tensions, the world has been plunged into the abyss. The fact that the parties involved in this conflict all possess nuclear weapons makes the peoples of the world extremely wary.
As we go from one crisis to the next, the contradictions are becoming more pronounced and rearmament is stepping up a pace everywhere : China, Russia, Germany and France are constantly increasing their defence budgets, with military and nationalist contradictions adding to the economic and competitive contradictions. The risk of a generalised conflict is therefore resurfacing despite repeated talk of world peace following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR.

12) What is China’s role ?

It remains cautious. At the beginning of the crisis, it expressed its concern regarding the need to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine while refrained from openly condemning its Russian ally, which will need it to turn its economy around and skirt the sanctions. The Chinese banks that have been bailing out the Russian economy for the last fifteen years are worried about new Russian loans that they deem unacceptable.

13) Should we support sanctions or NATO intervention ?

No. It is always the people who suffer (Iraq, Iran), without the cause of democracy advancing one iota. On the contrary, states generally take advantage of sanctions to tighten their grip over their population. Just as we feel solidarity with the Ukrainian people who are victims of the war, we also feel solidarity with the Russian people who are courageously demonstrating their opposition to this war but who will nevertheless suffer the consequences of this inter-imperialist conflict.
Today it seems natural in Western countries to sanction and boycott Russia to punish it for invading Ukraine. However, these same countries have outlawed the boycott of Israel that is occupying Palestine. Double standards !
History teaches that the more foreign powers interfere in a country at war under the pretext of helping it, the worse the situation becomes (Libya, Syria). We denounce the war waged by Russia against the people of Ukraine, but we also denounce the quarrels between hoodlum imperialists.

14) What impact will it have on our lives ?

Macron has said that sacrifices will have to be made for the “war effort” against Russia and that “the worst is yet to come”. There will be a major increase in the military budget (at the expense of which public services ?) and in the militaristic and chauvinistic propaganda. We have already witnessed an alarming hike in energy prices amongst other things. Strong pressure will be brought to bear on the proletariat to shift its focus and struggles to support the war effort against Russia. We must refuse the sacred union with our bourgeoisie forthwith and refuse to pay for the imperialist war.
In the subjugated countries, especially in Africa, the situation is likely to degenerate even more seriously : Ukraine and Russia account for 30% of the continent’s wheat imports and famine is looming large.

15) An uncertain future but a potential for revolution !

This war can open up a revolutionary potential by destabilising Russian imperialism (already undermined by strong social and political contradictions) and by enabling the Ukrainian people to take their affairs into their own hands. In the past, wars have led to revolutions and revolutions have ended wars. Even in the darkest hour, we place our hope in the working class and the peoples. It is the struggle of the peoples that will bring peace, not haggling between imperialist shysters who divide the peoples, rendering them prey to be cheated at the UN Security Council.
It remains for the Ukrainian people, as too for the Russian people, to form a red vanguard that is resolutely anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-nationalist rooted in international solidarity between the peoples against their common enemies !