Hoy quisiera rendir homenaje a una gran luchadora por los derechos de la mujer, la abogada y profesora María Dolores Fernós López-Cepero, mejor conocida como Tati Fernós quien falleció de cáncer esta semana.  En los 75 años que esta increíble mujer vivió,  pudo lograr lo que otras personas necesitarían siglos para poder concretar.

Gracias a su trabajo, las mujeres en Puerto Rico hemos podido adelantar nuestras luchas en muchos aspectos abarcadores de género, laborales, y de equidad en general.

Entre sus muchos logros, está la creación de leyes para la Prevención e  Intervención de la Violencia Doméstica, y en contra del Hostigamiento Sexual en el Empleo.

Creó la Oficina de la Procuradora de la Mujer en el año 2001 que presidió por 6 años  y desde la cual se pudieron lanzar muchos proyectos en defensa de la mujer.

Fue fundadora y activista de la Organización Puertorriqueña de la Mujer Trabajadora (OPMT), que forma parte de la Federación Democrática Internacional de Mujeres, la FDIM. Ayudó a crear organizaciones como Matria, que adelantan programas para el desarrollo económico de las mujeres. 

Como anticolonialista tuvo también que batallar contra las acciones reaccionarias de los enemigos de la independencia. Un ejemplo es que al poco tiempo de comenzar en la Procuraduría de la Mujer, un grupo de dirigentes del Partido Nuevo Progresista que quieren la estadidad para PR, irrumpieron agresivamente en su oficina para colocar una bandera de EUA porque Fernós había rehusado tenerla junto a nuestra bandera puertorriqueña.

Y aunque el proceso colonial con administraciones de gobierno local que entorpecen y hacen retroceder los logros de la mujer, las estructuras que Tati Fernós ayudó a crear, sientan las bases de lo que últimamente nos dará la victoria. 

A esta mujer cuyo lema era luchar por lo que le exigía su conciencia, decimos hoy: Gracias Tati Fernós, ¡siempre estarás Presente! 

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci

Get PDF here

• U.S./NATO hands off Russia!
• Why Russia recognized the Donbass republics
• Brian Flores lawsuit exposes NFL racism
• Professor Rabab Abdulhadi wins second grievance at SFSU
• Oakland teachers and ILWU Local 10 join forces
• Plans to build ballpark at the Port of Oakland threatens thousands of union jobs
• A century of lies for war, about Russia
• Cuba: Ukraine and the spark of Donbass
• Biden gives Big Oil a win, gas prices going up
• Granma: Ucrania y la chispa de Donbás
• War crisis: Donbass resists U.S.-planned attack, needs solidarity
• Por qué Rusia reconoció las repúblicas del Donbas
• The Western allied nations bully the world while warning of threats from China and Russia
• The occupation of Ottawa is a far-right assault on labor and democracy
• ¡EUA / OTAN, saquen sus manos de Rusia!
• ¿Quién es ese que se escucha? Es el pueblo en pie de lucha.

SUNDAY, MARCH 13
Trans Kids Cry for HELP!
Texas Governor’s Mansion

WHAT IS HAPPENING

On February 22nd Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton put all of the families with trans children in Texas at risk by declaring that gender-affirming care was child abuse based upon Texas state law.

This threatens to take trans kids away from loving and supportive parents in order to force them to detransition in the foster care system. Additionally, this will impact the trans kids already in the states care by removing any potential support they had within the system and further traumatizing them.

This would also require mandatory reporters to out trans kids to government officials making teachers, social workers, clergy, and medical care workers to participate in state violence or face legal consequences.

In the midst of this unprecedented anti-trans state violence, hundreds of thousands of tourists will be coming into the capitol city of Texas during March 11th-19th for SXSW, bringing money and positive attention to the state and the city of Austin.

WHAT WE ARE DOING ABOUT IT:

On March 13th we plan to get out and get LOUD at the Governors Mansion in Austin from 2-4PM to make sure trans kids, their families, and the trans community is heard.

In addition to the protest on-site at the Governor’s Mansion we will be broadcasting the demonstration as a live stream so that participants can park their cars around the city, open their windows, turn the sound all the way up, and BLAST our cries for help into the world so that the people of Texas and the people attending SXSW can not ignore our suffering in this time of crisis and need.

WHO IS ORGANIZING THIS:

This event is being organized by a number of organizations. We will announce our partners over the next couple of days.

IS THERE A WAY TO HELP IF I CAN’T COME TO AUSTIN?

We will be posting specific calls for help and boosting fundraising campaigns on the event page, but if you want to JOIN THE DEMONSTRATION you are encouraged to broadcast the live stream in whatever spaces you can, be it from car speakers, a Bluetooth speaker, or any other way you can think of to make sure trans kids’ cry for help is heard.

On Facebook

In the West, media outlets are claiming that Russia’s agenda to “denazify” Ukraine is unfounded. At the same time, public opinion in Western countries is totally alienated from the Ukrainian reality, tending to believe only what is reported by the hegemonic media. The result of this is strong disapproval of the Russian attitude based on the lie that there is no trace of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine. In this sense, it is urgent that quality information be disseminated to the Western audience to avoid the proliferation of lies about the Ukrainian reality.

On almost every TV channel and newspaper in the West, Ukrainian Nazism is questioned with the worst possible arguments: Zelensky is Jewish, and the Ukrainian state is democratic. This kind of superficial thinking prevents a detailed analysis of the catastrophic situation in Kiev since the Maidan, when, through a coup d’état, an anti-Russian junta took power and institutionalized a racist and anti-Russian ideology, which remains until the current days.

When we talk about “Ukrainian Nazism” we are not saying that Kiev is a contemporary copy of Hitler’s Berlin, but that the neo-Nazi element is a fundamental point of post-2014 Ukraine. The Maidan coup was openly supported and financed by NATO as a way of undermining any Russian influence in Moscow’s own strategic environment. The aim was to make Ukraine a puppet state, commanded from Washington, ending any link with Russia. There was not only the objective to annihilate political, economic, and diplomatic relations between Kiev and Moscow, but also to eliminate cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic ties between both nations.

Since then, anti-Russian plans have been implemented. Ethnic Russians have been persecuted for the past eight years – even through systematic extermination in some regions. The Russian language has been criminalized in entire cities where the population does not speak Ukrainian. Schisms in the Orthodox Church have been supported to form a Ukrainian “national church” out of the Moscow Patriarchate. But the question remains: how has this been possible if Ukrainians and Russians are such close peoples? Many Ukrainians speak Russian and marry ethnic Russians, in addition to the fact that most of the country’s population follows the Orthodox Church. So how was it possible to initiate such a successful racist policy?

This was certainly one of the biggest concerns of the Maidan planners. And the answer lies in the Nazi element, which was very well worked out by Arsen Avakov, Minister of the Interior during the Poroshenko government. Avakov initiated a process of instrumentalizing neo-Nazi militias that had supported Maidan, making these extremist groups key points in the defense of the new Ukrainian regime. In the West, due to collective ignorance about Slavic history, many people think that Nazi racism was restricted to Jews, but in fact, anti-Russian hatred was one of the biggest locomotives of WWII, having led Hitler to the irrational decision to invade and try to annex the USSR. This sentiment is alive in these neo-Nazi militias, who are literally ready to do anything to annihilate the Russians, being much more fanatical in their racist convictions than the Ukrainian armed forces.

Groups such as the Azov Battalion, C14 and the armed militias of rightist parties such as Pravyy sektor and Svoboda operate freely in Ukraine and are most responsible for the extermination of ethnic Russians in the Donbass. These groups act with more violence and using more sophisticated equipment than the Ukrainian armed forces themselves, being the real face of Kiev’s anti-Russian brutality. As neo-Nazis, these militias have no obstacles in complying with the government’s objective of destroying any ties between Russians and Ukrainians, thus being the main allies of the Maidan era.

In a 2020 Freedom House’s report, “A new Eurasian far right rising”, it is said that the far right is one of the strongest and most influential elements in Ukrainian society today, being a sophisticated, highly professionalized, and visible political force. In other words, what would be violent and criminal urban groups elsewhere on the planet have been converted by Kiev into a pro-Maidan parallel armed force. The inspiration for this model of action comes from the original Nazism: the Schutzstaffel (SS) was one of the largest German armed political forces during the 1930s and 1940s, but the group was not part of the German Armed Forces, but a paramilitary militia instrumentalized by the government apart from the official troops. There was a major strategic objective with this: while the German military was commanded by the government, the SS fought for the Nazi Party and for Hitler – that is, if Germany surrendered, the SS would declare war on the German military. This type of “double-shielded” military system is the same one that Kiev has implemented: if one day a pro-Russian government is elected, the neo-Nazi militias will declare war on Kiev – and will be strong enough to defeat the official troops in the same way as the SS was stronger than the German armed forces.

It is necessary to note that these groups operate not only in the sphere of military force, but also in the cultural field, fomenting anti-Russian hatred among ordinary Ukrainians. The exaltation of Stepan Bandera (Ukrainian anti-Soviet nationalist leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany) is one of the symptoms of this. Before the Maidan, Bandera was a name like any other in Ukrainian history, but he came to be remembered and venerated as a national hero by neo-Nazis and anti-Russian politicians. In the same sense, these groups vandalize parishes and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church and are responsible for the consolidation of a Ukrainian mentality entirely hostile to Russia, which is gradually permeating the local population.

Ukraine is in fact ruled by a Jew and the country’s power structure is indeed publicly “democratic”, despite being internally authoritarian and corrupt. But the Nazi element is not in these aspects, but in the structure of protection of the post-Maidan Ukrainian state, which is supported by a national coalition of neo-Nazi militias whose objective is simply to persecute and kill Russians, regardless of who is in power in Kiev. It does not matter to these militias if the President of the Republic is a Jew – what matters is that Russians are dying, which favors both neo-Nazis and the pro-NATO politicians they protect. In other words, the Western media’s arguments to deny Putin’s claims about Ukrainian Nazism are weak and superficial.

Moscow is right in its concern to denazify Ukraine. It is a measure that should be taken in coalition by several countries. All over the world, Nazism is “condemned”, but only when it benefits the West. The closest political experience to Nazism in the present days has been seen and peacefully tolerated by liberal governments that claim to be defenders of human rights and democracy. Russia is simply no longer willing to put up with crimes being committed by neo-Nazis against its people and there is nothing wrong with that decision.

Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

24 de febrero de 2022 

Para tener hoy una clara posición contra la guerra y el antiimperialismo, las/os trabajadores con conciencia de clase deben comprender el significado de la decisión del 21 de febrero de la Federación Rusa de reconocer a las repúblicas Donetsk y Lugansk del Donbas como países independientes y soberanos, casi ocho años después de que declararan por primera vez su independencia de Ucrania.

Luego de una transmisión en vivo sin precedentes de la reunión del Consejo de Seguridad Nacional de Rusia, el presidente Vladimir Putin anunció: “Considero necesario tomar una decisión que debería haberse tomado hace mucho tiempo: reconocer de inmediato la independencia y la soberanía de la República Popular de Donetsk (RPD) y la República Popular de Lugansk (RPL)”.

Putin firmó decretos presidenciales reconociendo las repúblicas; estableciendo tratados de amistad y cooperación mutua entre ellos, y autorizando el despliegue de fuerzas de paz rusas en el Donbas si así lo solicitaban. Los líderes de la RPD y la RPL, Denis Pushilin y Leonid Pasechnik, firmaron decretos recíprocos.

Estados Unidos y sus aliados globales denunciaron la decisión.

La decisión de Rusia se produjo después de varios días de intensos ataques militares ucranianos contra las dos pequeñas repúblicas. Dos terceras partes de las fuerzas militares ucranianas, armadas y entrenadas por la OTAN, se encuentran en la “línea de contacto” de aproximadamente 200 millas con Donetsk y Lugansk, cerca de Rusia. Mientras tanto, unas 175.000 tropas de la OTAN también están estacionadas en la frontera occidental de Rusia.

Cientos de ataques de artillería, tiroteos y actos terroristas ucranianos se han llevado a cabo desde el 17 de febrero, matando e hiriendo a civiles y miembros de las Milicias Populares del Donbas, destruyendo hogares y dañando infraestructura vital como plantas de filtración de agua, tuberías de gas y escuelas.

Las evacuaciones masivas de civiles de Donetsk y Lugansk comenzaron el 18 de febrero. Todos entendieron que una invasión ucraniana era inminente, a pesar de que la administración Biden, tergiversando la realidad, repetía que Rusia planeaba invadir Ucrania.

Aunque el bombardeo de Donetsk, la capital de la RPD, disminuyó brevemente después del anuncio de Rusia, pronto se reanudaron los ataques ucranianos, incluyendo un bombardeo en el centro de televisión de Donetsk y la muerte de dos civiles de Lugansk por un misil antitanque ucraniano el 22 de febrero.

Lo que quiere Washington

Desde noviembre del 2021, Washington ha presionado persistentemente a Ucrania para que lance un gran ataque contra el Donbas con la esperanza de involucrar a Rusia en un conflicto y así justificar una mayor expansión de la OTAN y cerrar las exportaciones de combustible ruso a Europa Occidental.

Durante tres décadas, el objetivo bipartidista del capitalismo estadounidense ha sido dividir a Rusia y ponerla firmemente bajo el control de Washington, algo que Putin reconoció en su discurso del 21 de febrero al pueblo ruso.

El 22 de febrero, Biden y el secretario de “Defensa”, Lloyd Austin, ordenaron el despliegue de miles de tropas más, helicópteros de ataque y aviones de combate estadounidenses en Europa del Este.

Biden impuso nuevas y extensas sanciones a Rusia, incluidas sanciones individuales a los parlamentarios que apoyaron la decisión de reconocer las repúblicas del Donbas. Otros países imperialistas y regímenes títeres de EUA rápidamente siguieron su ejemplo.

Quizás lo más importante fue cuando Alemania anunció el 22 de febrero que detendría la autorización del recién terminado gasoducto Nord Stream 2 que estaba destinado a aumentar significativamente el flujo de combustible de Rusia a la Unión Europea.

Cortando esta relación, obliga a que Europa compre productos de gas y petróleo de fuentes controladas y de propiedad estadounidense, dirigiendo las ganancias a los bancos de EUA. Este fue un objetivo principal de la campaña contra Rusia de Washington. Justo entonces, los precios del petróleo y el gas subieron a niveles casi récord, con el petróleo cerca de los 100 dólares el barril el 23 de febrero.

De todos los imperialistas de la OTAN, Alemania fue el país que más se demoró en apoyar la campaña de guerra de EUA. Pero es importante recordar que Alemania, aunque es la potencia económica más fuerte de Europa, también está ocupada militarmente por el Pentágono, con la friolera de 119 bases militares estadounidenses, solo superada por otro enemigo imperialista, Japón, con 120.

La verdadera importancia del reconocimiento

El reconocimiento de Rusia de las repúblicas de Donetsk y Lugansk fue recibido con gran entusiasmo por los residentes del Donbas, quienes han vivido ocho años de guerra y sanciones de Ucrania, y les ha costado más de 14.000 vidas. Fue un reconocimiento importante, aunque tardío, de su decisión democrática en el referéndum del 11 de mayo de 2014 y los sacrificios que han hecho para defenderse de la ocupación neo-nazi y la OTAN.

Ellos entienden, al igual que los fascistas ucranianos que buscan “limpiar” la región del Donbas, que una mayor agresión de Kiev ahora significa una confrontación militar con Rusia. El presidente de Ucrania, Volodymyr Zelensky teme esto, pero como herramienta voluntaria de Washington, no tiene poder para resistir.

Al mismo tiempo, Rusia no tuvo más remedio que dar este paso, obligado por Washington. Durante ocho años, desde el golpe de estado en Kiev del 2014 respaldado por Estados Unidos, Moscú ha evitado numerosos intentos occidentales de llevar a las fuerzas rusas a una lucha con Ucrania. Pero se ha hecho evidente que se ha agotado el margen de maniobra.

Entre el pueblo ruso hay un apoyo masivo a los residentes del Donbas. Es dudoso que el gobierno de Putin pudiera haber sobrevivido el abandono de Donetsk y Lugansk.

El discurso televisado de Putin combinó una evaluación clara de lo que está en juego en la confrontación actual para Rusia con un análisis de la historia de Ucrania severamente distorsionada por el antisovietismo y el nacionalismo ruso. Debemos reconocer honestamente que esto es un impedimento para reconstruir la solidaridad entre los trabajadores rusos y ucranianos.

Pero el verdadero significado de la decisión de Rusia de reconocer las Repúblicas Populares de Donetsk y Lugansk va en otra dirección. Es un reconocimiento de las tradiciones antifascistas e internacionalistas profundamente arraigadas de la clase obrera soviética multinacional, incluso tres décadas después de la disolución de la URSS socialista.

Hoy como nunca antes, las/os trabajadores y oprimidos de los Estados Unidos y el mundo deben rechazar las mentiras de Washington, Wall Street y los medios corporativos y exigir: ¡No a la guerra con Rusia! ¡Biden, reconoce Donetsk y Lugansk! ¡Estados Unidos fuera de Ucrania!

Students & Youth! & everyone young at heart
Sunday, February 27, 5 pm ET, 2 pm PT

Join us for a film showing and mini-teach-in
Why do we say: NO U.S./NATO WAR ON RUSSIA & DONBASS

Watch Oliver Stone’s: Ukraine on Fire
Dialogue with our guest Greg Butterfield*

Sponsored by: Youth Against War and Racism
Endorsed by Peoples Power Assembly & Struggle-La Lucha

*Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield is the coordinator of Solidarity with Novorossiya & Antifascists in Ukraine. He has written extensively on developments in Ukraine and Donbass since 2014. In September 2014, he visited Crimea to meet with exiled Ukrainian activists; when he attempted to visit the city of Kharkov in eastern Ukraine, he was deported at gunpoint. In 2016, he went to Donetsk and Lugansk, attending an anti-fascist conference and visiting the people’s militia near the front line. Many of his articles and translations can be found at Red Star Over Donbass.

This is one of the recent articles by Greg Butterfield: Why Russia recognized the Donbass republics

**Our format will be meeting style so please be prepared to turn on your video. Meet and talk with the room.

Feb 27, 2022 05:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register here:  https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckdequrjojE9wCIk12MX9cH-0Hk6PrsAK1

No Wars! No Sanctions! No NATO!

The conflict in Ukraine has escalated to a dangerous level between two nuclear armed states. The United States and its allies continue to portray the current situation as one of Russian aggression without acknowledging that US-backed Ukrainian forces are attacking the Eastern region of the country and killing citizens of Russian ethnicity.

This current escalation is a serious threat to world peace and requires a unified and rapid response by anti-war organizations from around the globe to stop a major war.

To that end, we, the undersigned groups, have agreed to support a week of international action from March 1 to 7 with the following demands on our governments:

— No war with Russia

— Stop the NATO expansion

— No more weapons to Ukraine and the European Union

— Obey international laws and the UN Charter

— Resolve the current conflict within the United Nations Security Council

— Restore the Minsk Agreements

— De-escalate the threat of a nuclear war

Initial Signatories:

Alliance for Global Justice
ANSWER Coalition
CODEPINK
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
International Action Center
Popular Resistance
Roots Action
United National Antiwar Coalition
US Peace Council
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – US Section (WILPF-US)
World BEYOND War

Additional signers:

Observatorio por los Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos (People’s Human Rights Observatory)
Communist Party of Catalunya
Comité Permanente de Derechos Humanos (Permanent Committee for Human Rights) – Colombia
New York Peace Council
Progressive Center for a Pan American Project
Coop Anti-War Cafe Berlin
Pole for Communist Revival in France
People’s Party of Oregon
Boston May Day Coalition
Women Against Nuclear Power
Peace and Justice Community of Hidalgo County
Seattle Anti-War Coalition
Peace Action WI
Hilton Head for Peace
Workers Voice Socialist Movement
Veterans for Peace Madison – Clarence Kailin Chapter 25
ALL Children ALL Borders
Workers World Party
Women for Peace
Socialist Unity Party

The Leninist view of how to fight against imperialist war remains one of the most controversial and defining characteristics of the communist movement, because it means standing up to the capitalist class at the moment its fangs are bared.

Why do we think it’s important to study what Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin wrote and did during World War I, over 100 years ago?

There are two good reasons. First, Lenin’s Marxist analysis of war shows how capitalism in its highest stage, imperialism, has an insatiable thirst for new markets and bigger profits that drives it to war. That hasn’t changed.

And second, Lenin successfully used this working-class understanding of war to help bring about the socialist revolution in Russia.

In the pamphlet “Socialism and War,” Lenin called the war that had just broken out in Europe “a war between the biggest slaveholders for the maintenance and consolidation of slavery.”

Differentiating the communist position from the pacifists, who condemn all wars equally, Lenin said, “We understand that wars cannot be abolished until classes are abolished and socialism is created.”

He defined as just wars “civil wars, i.e., wars waged by an oppressed class against the oppressor class,” and wars of national liberation by oppressed countries.

“If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on [World War I era, pre-revolutionary] Russia, and so forth,” he wrote, “those would be ‘just,’ ‘defensive’ wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every socialist would sympathize with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory ‘Great’ Powers.”

Communists “of the oppressor countries should recognize and champion the oppressed nation’s right to self-determination,” Lenin wrote. “The socialist of a ruling country who does not stand for that right is a chauvinist.”

Revolutionary defeatism

“The defeat of one’s own capitalist government is the lesser evil in the struggle against the war,” he wrote. “A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war, and cannot fail to see that the latter’s military reverses must facilitate its overthrow.”

Lenin’s thoroughly internationalist perspective is called revolutionary defeatism.

Instead of using the war as an excuse to pull back from the class struggle, Lenin and his co-thinkers argued that it was exactly the time to step up the struggle against capitalism.

It would be a hard road, especially during the first wave of patriotic propaganda. But as the war dragged on and the death and suffering mounted, more workers would turn against the government and capitalism, he argued.

This is the origin of the famous communist slogan, “Turn the imperialist war into civil war.”

Some people misunderstand what Lenin meant by this. They think it means you have to show up at the very first demonstration against the war with signs reading “Turn the imperialist war into civil war.” 

In fact, Lenin argues in his pamphlet that communists should give strong support to all manifestations for peace. This is often the first step by the workers, youths and others toward anti-war consciousness.

All five Bolshevik deputies in the Duma, or parliament, took a strong anti-war stand, and the Czar exiled them to hard labor in Siberia. Factory workers passed anti-war resolutions. Strikes and demonstrations were organized. Agitation was conducted in the army, and fraternization with enemy troops was encouraged.

Because of their correct analysis of the war and their determination to continue and deepen the class struggle, the Bolsheviks were ready when mass anger at the war boiled over. In February 1917, the Russian people rose up and overthrew the Czar. Several months later, after a new pro-capitalist government showed it would continue the war, Lenin and the Bolsheviks led a successful workers’ and peasants’ revolution for socialism under the banner of “Peace, Land, Bread.”

The new Soviet government’s first act was to call on all countries to end the World War and renounce all annexations and occupations. It guaranteed the right of self-determination for all the peoples and nations oppressed by Russian capitalism.

Socialist Unity Party / Partido de Socialismo Unido statement on the military conflict in Ukraine

On Feb. 24, the anti-fascist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, together with the Russian Federation, launched a military action with the goal of “demilitarization and denazification” of the U.S.-NATO coup regime in Ukraine. It is in the interest of poor and working people, anti-war and anti-imperialist forces, especially in the U.S. and other NATO countries, to take a clear and unambiguous position in solidarity with the anti-fascist forces. The real war danger comes from U.S. and NATO forces surrounding Russia. The government in Kiev is a proxy of these forces of war, with no regard for the people of Ukraine.

For eight years, the people of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region have maintained their independence in the face of constant bombing, shooting and terrorist attacks by the Ukrainian government – a regime installed by a fascist coup orchestrated with bipartisan U.S. support. More than 14,000 people have died in Ukraine’s war on Donbass, according to the United Nations. 

Since November 2021, the U.S. has pushed Kiev to launch a new murderous invasion of the Donbass, while claiming that the real threat was from Russia against Ukraine. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its NATO military allies poured weapons and “trainers” into Ukraine, and built up their own imperialist armies on Russia’s Western borders and throughout Eastern Europe. The U.S. rejected Moscow’s just demands to guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality and pull back NATO’s armies. 

Russia officially recognized the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk on Feb. 21 – nearly eight years after the people of Donbass overwhelmingly chose independence in a democratic referendum, rejecting the rule of the pro-Western/neo-fascist coup government in Ukraine. 

The response of the U.S. and its allies was to impose new sanctions on Russia – an act of war – and to send still more troops and weapons to threaten the independent countries of the region. This included blocking the Nord Stream II gas pipeline project between Russia and the European Union, a major goal of Big Oil and Wall Street banks.

Washington and NATO deliberately and methodically pushed the Donbass republics and Russia into a corner, from which there were only two options: submit or fight back. 

On the night of Feb. 23-24, the People’s Militias of Donetsk and Lugansk and their Russian allies launched a military action with the goals of reclaiming Ukrainian-occupied areas of Donbass and demilitarizing and denazifying the Ukrainian-NATO regime. 

The People’s Militias are fighting to drive back the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including neo-Nazi battalions armed and trained by the U.S., Canada and NATO, that constantly threaten the lives of their residents. U.S. white supremacists have trained with the Ukrainian fascist gangs, something even admitted by the FBI, and gained military experience fighting against Donbass which they bring back to attack oppressed communities here. They were key players in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia., and the murder of anti-racist activist Heather Heyer.  

The Russian armed forces have carried out attacks on at least 74 military bases throughout Ukraine, many of them constructed and upgraded by NATO specifically to facilitate war against Russia. Russian, Donbass and the Ukrainian anti-fascist underground are also working to locate, capture or eliminate neo-Nazi forces, including the ringleaders of the 2014 Odessa massacre, when at least 46 people were killed at the House of Trade Unions.

The anti-fascist military action, forced on Donbass and Russia by the Western imperialist powers – principally President Joe Biden and the U.S. government – has exposed confusion and equivocation in the U.S. anti-war movement, even among socialists and communists. 

Let’s be clear: Modern capitalist Russia is not an imperialist country. It had no means to become one after the counterrevolution in the USSR. It is a regional power akin to India or Brazil, primarily an exporter of commodities, not capital. In order to maintain its independence, Russia had to ally itself with other countries in opposition to imperialism.

Ukraine’s coup regime, by contrast, is a pawn of U.S. imperialism that has been waging a brutal war on its neighbors in Donbass for eight years and offered itself as a base for NATO aggression against Russia. 

We want to remind the movement of the principles laid down at the dawn of imperialism by V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. Differentiating the communist position from the pacifists, who condemn all wars equally, Lenin said, “We understand that wars cannot be abolished until classes are abolished and socialism is created.”

If Iran attacked Saudi Arabia to stop the genocidal U.S. war on Yemen (carried out by Saudi Arabia at Washington’s behest), which also threatens Iran and its regional allies, we hope that anti-imperialists would recognize that this was a just war, despite some of our ideological differences with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet this is exactly what is happening in Ukraine today.

Our responsibility is to stop U.S. imperialism and its wars in all forms, and to stand in solidarity with those who fight against U.S. domination.

Victory to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and their allies!

Solidarity with the anti-fascist underground and exiles of Ukraine!

U.S./NATO: Hands off Russia! Get out of Ukraine and Eastern Europe!

Dismantle the imperialist NATO war machine – bring all the troops home now!

Comunicado del Partido de Socialismo Unido sobre el conflicto militar en Ucrania

El 24 de febrero, las Repúblicas Populares antifascistas de Donetsk y Lugansk, junto con la Federación Rusa, lanzaron una acción militar con el objetivo de “desmilitarizar y desnazificar” el régimen golpista de Estados Unidos y la OTAN en Ucrania. Es en el interés de las/os pobres y trabajadores, fuerzas contra la guerra y antiimperialistas, especialmente en EUA y otros países de la OTAN, tener una posición clara e inequívoca en solidaridad con las fuerzas antifascistas. El verdadero peligro de guerra proviene de las fuerzas estadounidenses y de la OTAN que rodean a Rusia. El gobierno de Kiev es un representante de estas fuerzas guerreristas, y no tienen en cuenta al pueblo de Ucrania.

Durante ocho años, las/os habitantes de Donetsk y Lugansk en la región del Donbas han mantenido su independencia frente a los constantes bombardeos, disparos y ataques terroristas del gobierno ucraniano, un régimen instalado por un golpe fascista orquestado con el apoyo bipartidista de EUA. Más de 14.000 personas han muerto en la guerra de Ucrania en Donbas, según las Naciones Unidas.

Desde noviembre del 2021, EUA ha presionado a Kiev para que lance una nueva invasión asesina del Donbas, al tiempo que afirma que la verdadera amenaza viene de Rusia contra Ucrania. Mientras tanto, EUA y sus aliados militares de la OTAN vertieron armas y “entrenadores” en Ucrania y construyeron sus propios ejércitos imperialistas en las fronteras occidentales de Rusia y en toda Europa del Este. Estados Unidos rechazó las justas demandas de Moscú de garantizar la neutralidad de Ucrania y retirar los ejércitos de la OTAN.

Rusia reconoció oficialmente la independencia de Lugansk y Donetsk el 21 de febrero, casi ocho años después de que el pueblo de Donbas eligiera abrumadoramente la independencia en un referéndum democrático, rechazando el régimen del gobierno golpista prooccidental y neofascista en Ucrania.

La respuesta de EUA y sus aliados fue imponer nuevas sanciones a Rusia, un acto de guerra, y enviar aún más tropas y armas para amenazar a los países independientes de la región. Esto incluyó el bloqueo del proyecto de gasoducto Nord Stream II entre Rusia y la Unión Europea, un objetivo importante de los bancos de Wall Street y las grandes petroleras.

Washington y la OTAN empujaron deliberada y metódicamente a las repúblicas del Donbas y Rusia a un rincón, del que solo había dos opciones para salir: someterse o contraatacar.

En la noche del 23 al 24 de febrero, las Milicias Populares de Donetsk y Lugansk y sus aliados rusos lanzaron una acción militar con el objetivo de recuperar las áreas ocupadas por Ucrania en el Donbas y desmilitarizar y desnazificar el régimen ucraniano-OTAN.

Las Milicias Populares están luchando para hacer retroceder a las Fuerzas Armadas de Ucrania, incluidos los batallones neonazis armados y entrenados por EUA, Canadá y la OTAN, que amenazan constantemente la vida de sus residentes. Los supremacistas blancos de EUA se han entrenado con las bandas fascistas ucranianas, algo que incluso el FBI admitió, y adquirieron experiencia militar luchando contra Donbas; experiencia que traen para atacar a las comunidades oprimidas aquí. Fueron actores clave en la manifestación “Unir a la derecha” en Charlottesville, Virginia, y en el asesinato de la activista antirracista Heather Heyer.

Las fuerzas armadas rusas han llevado a cabo ataques contra al menos 74 bases militares en toda Ucrania, muchas de ellas construidas y mejoradas por la OTAN específicamente para facilitar la guerra contra Rusia. Antifascistas de Rusia, Donbass y Ucrania clandestinos también están trabajando para localizar, capturar o eliminar a las fuerzas neonazis, incluidos los cabecillas de la masacre de Odessa de 2014, cuando al menos 46 personas fueron asesinadas en la Casa de los Sindicatos.

La acción militar antifascista impuesta en Donbas y Rusia por las potencias imperialistas occidentales, principalmente el presidente Joe Biden y el gobierno de EUA, ha expuesto confusión y equivocaciones en el movimiento contra la guerra de EUA, incluso entre socialistas y comunistas.

Estemos claros: la Rusia capitalista moderna no es un país imperialista. No tenía medios para convertirse en uno después de la contrarrevolución en la URSS. Es una potencia regional similar a la India o Brasil, principalmente un exportador de productos básicos, no de capital. Para mantener su independencia, Rusia tuvo que aliarse con otros países en oposición al imperialismo.

El régimen golpista de Ucrania, por el contrario, es un peón del imperialismo estadounidense que ha estado librando una guerra brutal contra sus vecinos en Donbas durante ocho años y se ofreció como base para la agresión de la OTAN contra Rusia.

Queremos recordar al movimiento los principios establecidos en los albores del imperialismo por V.I. Lenin, el líder de la revolución bolchevique. Al diferenciar la posición comunista de la de los pacifistas, que condenan todas las guerras por igual, Lenin dijo: “Entendemos que las guerras no se pueden abolir hasta que se acaben las clases y se cree el socialismo”.

Si Irán atacó a Arabia Saudita para detener la guerra genocida de Estados Unidos contra Yemen (llevada a cabo por Arabia Saudita a instancias de Washington), que también amenaza a Irán y sus aliados regionales, esperamos que los antiimperialistas reconozcan que esta fue una guerra justa, a pesar de algunas de nuestras diferencias ideológicas con el gobierno de la República Islámica de Irán. Sin embargo, esto es exactamente lo que está sucediendo hoy en Ucrania.

Nuestra responsabilidad es detener el imperialismo estadounidense y sus guerras en todas sus formas, y solidarizarnos con quienes luchan contra la dominación estadounidense.

¡Victoria para las Repúblicas Populares de Donetsk y Lugansk y sus aliados!

¡Solidaridad con la clandestinidad antifascista y los exiliados de Ucrania!

EUA/OTAN: ¡Fuera sus manos de Rusia! ¡Fuera de Ucrania y Europa del Este!

¡Desmantelamiento de la maquinaria de guerra imperialista de la OTAN – que regresen todas las tropas a casa ahora!