The delegates to the Unity for Socialism and Revolution conference, called by the publication Struggle-La Lucha, voted unanimously to express solidarity with Palestinian liberation leader Rasmea Odeh and condemn the revocation of her visa by the German government.

The German government’s actions, at the urging of the local fascist AfD Party, has prevented Odeh from speaking. The conference statement demands an end to police harassment of Odeh and other Palestinian leaders, and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, the conference statement rejects any attempts to silence this crucial struggle or equate it to anti-Semitism. Rasmea Odeh’s right to struggle in support of her people must not be compromised. The Palestinian people have the right to speak out against the Israeli settler colonial state and its apartheid policies.

We join millions around the world in the condemnation of the horrible anti-Muslim hate crime that has taken the lives of 50 people and injured dozens at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Our sympathy and solidarity go out to the victims and their families and to the Islamic community everywhere.

The prime minister of New Zealand is moving toward gun control and is being praised by the international media. There are calls for mass campaigns of education to counter bigotry and white supremacy. Others blame social media, and still others call for more surveillance and vigilance by various police agencies in the Western capitalist countries to stop mass hate crimes before they can be carried out.

But the fact is that those police agencies only react to the most egregious of racist crimes. The police role under capitalism isn’t to protect people from fascism. It is to protect business property from working-class rebellion. The police are even known to encourage fascist and paramilitary organizing — now commonplace in the imperialist centers of Europe and the United States, and in other regions of the world. Fascist violence is kept in reserve in order to serve the capitalist class if and when it is needed.

The mass murderer at Christchurch published his “manifesto” on fascist websites and emailed it to New Zealand’s prime minister moments before beginning the massacre. In it, he expressed his approval of U.S. President Donald Trump’s contempt for Islam, his admiration for white supremacist Dylan Roof, who killed nine people at an African-American church in Charleston, S.C., and his adulation for Anders Breivik, a Norwegian far-right anti-immigration terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011. The killer’s jacket had an embroidered patch with the logo of the Ukrainian fascist paramilitary group Azov Battalion, whose members have now been incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard by the U.S.-backed regime.

Donald Trump is the most openly racist president since Ku Kluxer Woodrow Wilson and has demonstrated a kinship with white supremacist groups again and again. He has lent inspiration to and played a leading role in the war on immigrants and refugees. But he didn’t start it.

The rise of right-wing violence, immigrant bashing and openly fascist organizing presaged the election of Trump and has to be seen in the context of the decades of imperialist war which have thus far failed to resolve the capitalist economic crises.

Through Democratic and Republican administrations, as the Pentagon has careened from one war to another with the other imperialist powers in tow, they’ve exacted massive death tolls, the destruction of infrastructure, the end of states, and even, in the case of Libya, the reintroduction of the slave market.

Fascists and mainstream politicians alike have scapegoated those overwhelmingly Muslim refugees fleeing the Pentagon-led destruction of their homelands. The momentum for the attacks on immigrants and on Islam comes from the global capitalist ruling class, the filthy rich who depend on all forms of bigotry as a way of dividing the working class and of instilling terror.

The billionaires who reap the rewards of capitalism may not sit together in a room and plot each murderous attack, but we also can’t be fooled by the crocodile tears of the establishment press. The global capitalist class benefits from the terror against immigrants and refugees, just as they do from police brutality against Black and Brown youth.

The power of the capitalist class will not be turned against the fascist violence. Only a militant working-class movement, in solidarity with immigrants and refugees, can and will end the rising fascist threat.

A terrible tragedy is unfolding in the southeastern African countries of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. On March 15, Cyclone Idai hit the Mozambican port city of Beira and went inland.

An estimated 2.6 million people may be affected. The United Nations believes that Cyclone Idai “may be the worst ever disaster to strike the southern hemisphere.” (Guardian, March 19, 2019)

Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi declared three days of national mourning. The president said the death toll in Mozambique may exceed 1,000 people.

At least 400,000 people are homeless as almost all of Beira is flooded. Almost a hundred people were killed in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe. Electricity exports to South Africa from Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa dam were disrupted.

Cyclones in the Indian Ocean are what hurricanes are in the Caribbean. Capitalist climate change has been increasing the intensity of these storms.

Mozambique is the third most vulnerable country in Africa to climate change, according to the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.

Reparations now! Lift the sanctions!

Over 68 million people live in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. All three countries were exploited as European colonies. Like all African nations, they deserve reparations for centuries of genocide.

Britain occupied Malawi and Zimbabwe while Portugal ruled Mozambique.  

Africans were kidnapped from Mozambique and enslaved. When the people of Mozambique fought to free themselves from Portuguese rule, the Pentagon supplied napalm bombs and other weapons to its NATO ally Portugal.  

Portugal was then under the longest lasting fascist regime in Europe. Africans fighting for their own freedom also helped kick this hated government off the backs of the Portuguese working people.

The People’s Republic of China has offered to help Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

So what is Trump & Co. going to do? The U.S. capitalist government can give over $3 billion annually to the Israeli apartheid regime occupying Palestine, but it let Black people drown and starve in New Orleans.

Instead of helping, the U.S. is continuing its economic sanctions that have hurt the people of Zimbabwe, just like it does against Cuba and Venezuela.

Zimbabwe’s “crime” is that African farmers took over land stolen by European settlers. That’s what should have happened, but didn’t, to Southern plantation owners following the U.S. Civil War.

On Saturday, May 25 — African Liberation Day — people will march in Washington, D.C., to demand the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe. Organizing to build this demonstration and going to D.C. is also a way to demand aid for all the cyclone’s victims.

For more information, contact the December 12th Movement at 718-398-1766 or send an email to Info@d12m.com

In February 2014, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and installed a far-right regime representing Western imperialist interests, local oligarchs and neo-Nazis. The new government launched a war against the rebellious Donbass mining region, which has cost at least 13,000 lives so far. People in Donbass declared independence, creating the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).

I met university student Katya A. in Donetsk in May 2016. Then, she had recently joined a circle of left-wing activists, which included some experienced organizers forced to emigrate from western Ukraine. Today, Katya is not only pursuing her master’s degree, but has become a dynamic women’s and communist youth leader. She has also represented the Donbass struggle abroad. She spoke with Struggle-La Lucha about her experiences.

Struggle-La Lucha: The Ukrainian regime’s war against Donbass started nearly five years ago. Did you live in Donetsk at that time? What do you most remember about the early days of the war?

Katya A.: At the time of those events I lived in Donetsk, like I have for most of my life. I only left for two months in the summer of 2014. When I returned home in September, the war was in full swing.

Then, I was just starting to become interested in Marxism. I was a loner and didn’t participate in any movements. I don’t like to remember those days. I’m often ashamed that I took a detached position then. On the other hand, I didn’t have good teachers and mentors.

SLL: How have the past five years shaped your political views and activities?

KA: Now, I’m a member of the Aurora Women’s Club. Our main activity is education. We study women’s issues from a Marxist standpoint, watch films, discuss books, hold popular science lectures and so on. Another important aspect of our activity is a philosophical circle where we study political economy using original sources and the Marxist classics.

More recently, I’ve become a member of the Komsomol, a communist youth organization. We have a lot of plans. I see that many young people are actively interested in leftist ideas. I’m very pleased that my peers want to study Marxism, to understand the essence of things under capitalism.

War is a hard experience both in terms of shaping political views and shaping character. But I clearly understand that capitalism brings with it destruction and death. We must be strong and not give up in our struggle.

SLL: How would you compare the situation of workers in Donetsk with what existed before 2014, especially for women? What about the economic blockade imposed by Ukraine and the West?

KA: The economic blockade and war have had a negative impact on the working class, particularly women. We are all potential migrants now. Many people are left without work.

Workers from Donbass are frequently deceived. They are mercilessly exploited. Often, they are forced to work illegally. Some have become freelancers or work remotely, but in this case there are problems with cashing electronic payments. To do this, you must either pay big interest here, or go to the nearest Russian cities — Rostov or Taganrog.

Nevertheless, unlike Ukraine and the cities and villages of the DPR occupied by Ukrainian troops, we have relatively cheap public utilities. Most students receive scholarships. Although they are small, it helps with our difficult conditions.

SLL: What similarities do you see between what happened in Ukraine five years ago and the current situation in Venezuela and other Latin American countries targeted by the U.S.?

KA: It’s obvious to me that all these events are imperialistic games. By the way, we often forget that imperialism is not only a direct military invasion. It has long acted in other ways, for example by imposing economic dependence on some countries, huge debts, subordinating their industry. Vladimir Lenin wrote beautifully about this in his book Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Our struggle is a struggle against imperialism, which five years ago aimed its predatory view at our country. Naturally, in Latin America the situation has its own specifics, but these are all phenomena of the same order.

We are in solidarity with the people of Venezuela, closely watching the events taking place there. Unfortunately, many leftists, instead of expressing solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, are beginning to criticize the system that has developed there. In my opinion, at this moment such criticism only serves the imperialists.

First of all, Venezuela needs to defend its independence. Ukraine failed to do this. Although this country used to be largely dependent, now it can hardly be considered an independent political entity at all. Look what happened to what was once the richest Soviet republic! Ukraine has become the poorest European country. It is waging war against the people of Donbass, while hypocritically asserting that this is an integral part of the Ukrainian state.

It feels like a large-scale and inhuman experiment was conducted on Ukrainians. People swallow propaganda garbage, Donbass-phobia and social racism flourishes, while the rightists feel extremely comfortable. These are the consequences of this combination of imperialism, neoliberalism and stupefying nationalism.

SLL: Recently, it was reported that white supremacists from California were trained by an armed fascist battalion in Ukraine. How do you assess the connection between the ultraright takeover and the spread of neofascist movements in the West?

KA: The growth of neofascist movements in the West began before Maidan. Naturally, this is a process, not a single event. Right-wing and conservative regimes have been established in many European countries. You don’t need to go far for an example: look at Ukraine’s neighbor Hungary, where Viktor Orbán rules.

Obviously, the world is experiencing a period of reaction. We see how country after country is falling under the control of right-wing or even neofascist rulers. And surprisingly, the right-wingers get along well with each other.

In Ukraine, as I said, the ultraright feel great. They can smash Roma settlements with impunity. They attack left-wing activists, people from the LGBTQ community, feminists and others who somehow do not conform to their notions of a “normal person.” Then, there are the attacks against people who take a firm anti-war position, or the terror that they carry out in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk.

By the way, the Ukrainian fascist battalions don’t just train their foreign “friends,” but are also actively engaged in raising children in this “patriotic” spirit.

This war attracted many rightists who began to fight on the side of Ukraine. There are even Russian fascists on their side. The far right understand that they have a common cause. And for them, the war in Ukraine is also an excellent training ground, no matter how scary it sounds.

SLL: How can workers and leftists in the United States help the struggle of people in Donbass?

KA: People should know about what is going on in the Donbass. I often encounter foreigners who have no idea about our struggle — they’ve never even heard about what is happening here.

I believe that workers and leftists in the United States can help us by breaking through this information blockade. Donbass has a lot in common with Palestine. But while the whole left knows about Palestine, few people speak about Donbass.

We are very grateful to those comrades from the U.S. who do not forget about us and constantly raise the agenda of Donbass.

Read Aurora Women’s Club’s 11-point program, issued on International Women’s Day.

In February 2014, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and installed a far-right regime representing Western imperialist interests, local oligarchs and neo-Nazis. The new government launched a war against the rebellious Donbass mining region, which has cost at least 13,000 lives so far.

Struggle-La Lucha spoke with Alexey Albu, a former deputy of the Odessa Regional Council and a leader of the revolutionary Marxist organization Borotba (Struggle), which is outlawed in today’s Ukraine. Albu survived the fascist massacre at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, and was forced to leave Ukraine. From outside the areas controlled by the current government in Kiev, he has been working for the country’s liberation since then.

Struggle-La Lucha: There’s been enormous repression inside Ukraine against opponents of the regime. Even journalists and activists who sided with Euromaidan in 2014 have been targeted in some cases. How many political prisoners does Kiev currently hold and what is their situation? What is the status of the underground resistance inside Ukraine today?

Alexey Albu: Unfortunately, we do not have objective figures on how many oppositionists are in prison today. But in 2015 their number was about 1,500, of whom about 700 were members of the Donbass militia. That is, in fact, about 700 were prisoners of war, and 800 were political prisoners.

But today the numbers are much less. Some make a deal with the prosecutors and get out. Some are released because the government cannot prove their guilt, because there is not even circumstantial evidence. Some are exchanged [for captured Ukrainian troops in the Donbass republics]. So today, unfortunately, we do not have an objective picture.

We try to help communist political prisoners, as well as other anti-fascists, whom we know. We collect money, transfer it to human rights organizations and groups that buy nonprohibited necessities and send them to the prisoners.

The armed resistance that our comrades from the Ukrainian Red Army (URA) began and that was picked up by other autonomous groups was a fiasco. All the attacks against the Nazis, the offices of ultraright volunteers and their sponsors did not inflict serious harm.

Our comrades from the URA have concluded that such attacks must be supported by political work. For example, if we manage to create an alternative authority, we must be able to protect it. But no matter how much we attack the buildings of the junta, nothing will change until we can offer society an alternative. For this reason, our comrades from the URA militant groups decided to suspend such activities.

It is also worth noting that it is very costly, and the results were negative: not only was there insufficient strength to overthrow the regime, but comrades were imprisoned. It’s good that we managed to pull out our heroes, like Vlad Wojciechowski and others whose names I cannot mention right now. But some of our comrades are still in prison.

SLL: NATO military forces and Western intelligence agencies have been active in training and advising the Ukrainian military, including neo-Nazi battalions, in the war against the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). Do you see NATO offering membership to Ukraine?

AA: This option is being worked on by the top leadership of NATO. But there are some reasons why, in my opinion, this will not happen in the near future.

I will try to explain how we see it from afar: Every month, the capitalist crisis that began in 2008 increasingly exacerbates the contradictions between the imperialist center and the various subsystems or secondary economic blocs — European, Russian, pan-Arab, Chinese, Indian — and also the so-called “economic periphery.”

It’s obvious to everyone that the conflict in Ukraine is the result of an economic “attack” against the Russian economic bloc, of which Ukraine has been a part for centuries. Historically, it was one state and economic strings stretched from Ukrainian turbine factories to Russian aircraft factories, from Russian ammonia producers to Ukrainian fertilizer plants, and so on.

That is, the rupture of all economic relations with Ukraine is a serious blow to the economy of Russia, and therefore to the economies of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and other countries which are closely connected, with a single center located in Moscow.

So, returning to the question of Ukraine joining NATO: The imperialists’ main goal at the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine was successfully fulfilled: the economic ties were broken. Nazis blocked the railways, blocked checkpoints on the border with Russia, blew up power lines and so on.

If we consider a potential military conflict between Russia and its allies and the NATO bloc, then of course, NATO needs Ukraine. But why start a new military conflict if you can just incite Ukraine against Russia? If you can just provoke that conflict and supply Ukraine with weapons?

I understand perfectly well that Vladimir Putin is a bourgeois politician, but fortunately, he has enough wisdom not to succumb to all the provocations that the Ukrainian side is trying to organize.

SLL: In the past year there were some big personnel changes in the leadership of the Donbass republics. The Minsk negotiations have been stalled for a long time. There have been big buildups of armaments by Ukraine in the war zone, but so far no new military offensive. How do you view the situation inside the republics today? What is the situation of the workers and of the left movement?

AA:  New DPR and LPR heads Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik are people from the same cohort as former leaders Igor Plotnitsky and Alexander Zakharchenko. Therefore, nothing has changed.

Regarding the Minsk negotiations, yes, many items in the accords were not implemented. Ukraine hasn’t released the political prisoners, hasn’t implemented the constitutional reforms, and so on. But they are partially implemented: after all, the parties do not go on the offensive, do not use heavy artillery, do not occupy inhabited settlements controlled by their opponents.

The result of the Minsk agreements is a decrease in the amount of blood spilled. And this is definitely good. The armed forces of the people’s republics have become more serious and organized. But of course, people are tired of being stuck between Ukraine and Russia. People want the conflict to end as soon as possible.

The situation inside the republics is quite difficult. But in some ways, it is much better than in Ukraine. Utilities, housing, food and clothing are cheaper than in Ukraine. However, due to the economic blockade, many enterprises have been shut down, and it is quite difficult to find a decent job. Many people have to live on savings, and many serve in the military. Therefore, the position of the workers is quite difficult. But these are objective reasons related to the war.

Speaking of the left movement, it’s worth noting that those left-wing groups that existed in 2014-2015 have almost ceased to exist. Political life is crushed by the burden of war. Public initiatives do not have the support of the young republics, since the new governments are afraid of the emergence of opposition groups within the DPR and LPR.

However, speaking for Borotba, I can say that in four years we have not encountered any obstacles to our activities. We freely hold our meetings, lay flowers at the monument to Lenin, hold commemorative actions dedicated to the massacre of the Odessa anti-fascists on May 2 and other events.

SLL: What similarities do you see between what happened in Ukraine five years ago and the current situation in Venezuela and other Latin American countries targeted by the U.S.?

AA: Analyzing the situation in Venezuela, we see that the same funders that worked in Ukraine paid for the buildup of the crisis: Freedom House, USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development], the International Republican Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy and others.

We see that the imperialists use the same tactics: they create organizations to influence the electoral process, the same as in Ukraine. In Ukraine, it was the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, and in Venezuela it’s Foro Penal Venezolano. For riots in the streets and attacks on “undesirables,” mobile fighting units are created, consisting of so-called civil society activists. In Ukraine, this was the right-wing organization AutoMaidan, in Venezuela the Guarimberos. And so on. …

Of course, there are differences due to local specifics. In Ukraine, the right-liberal opposition in 2013 was united, and in Venezuela, the opposition is strongly split. In Ukraine, there was no real strong national leader — President Viktor Yanukovych turned out to be a wet rag. In Venezuela, there is a strong leader — Nicolás Maduro.

Therefore, there is a chance that the imperialist forces will break their fangs.

SLL: Activity by neo-Nazi groups in Europe and the U.S. has surged in the years since the Ukrainian coup. How do you view the relationship between what happened in Ukraine and the spread of neo-fascist movements in the West?

AA: The right-wing international has long been a fait accompli. The far right coordinates very well on matters of anti-communism and other political issues.

Today, the ultraright in Ukraine is very deeply integrated into the official security agencies: the police, the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU), the army, the prosecutor’s office. Bandit formations control the illegal arms trade. Moreover, neo-Nazi groups control part of the border between Ukraine and the European Union in the Carpathians.

Therefore, there is a very serious threat, which I always tell our European friends about, that in the event of social upheaval, the neo-Nazis of Ukraine can very quickly arm their associates from Europe with the help of smuggling. It’s really dangerous.

SLL: What are the prospects for an anti-fascist revival in Ukraine and the former Soviet countries?

AA: The prospects are excellent. The main thing is to bring our ideas to the masses and to organize well.

SLL: How can working people and the left in the U.S. aid the struggle of people in Ukraine and Donbass?

AA: We are very grateful to you for your help in our struggle. For us, the dissemination of information about the crimes of the neo-Nazis and about our struggle to an English-speaking audience is invaluable.

Your translations have managed to open the eyes of thousands of people in the U.S. and in Europe. We remember well how you greeted [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko with the flags of Borotba in the U.S., and how you assisted the relatives of our comrade Andrey Brazhevsky who was killed on May 2. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you again, all of you!

In conclusion, I want to say that the world and all of us are on the verge of tremendous changes, and it is very important that we have the opportunity to influence them.

I want to wish you success in your struggle. The stronger you are, the stronger we will be. And vice versa: the stronger we are, the stronger you will be.

Long live proletarian solidarity! Long live a new world without exploitation! Forward to socialism!

Part 1: 5 years after Ukraine coup, ‘Building communist organization is first priority’

Los Angeles — On Feb. 19, John Parker of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice and Struggle for Socialism-La Lucha por el Socialismo spoke here at a meeting of Arab Americans for Syria (AA4Syria) about U.S. attempts to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and sabotage the Bolivarian revolutionary process.

Parker was invited to speak based on his having visited Venezuela and the fact that Struggle-La Lucha has been organizing demonstrations and meetings on the issue. The International Action Center West Coast, of which Parker is director, has also organized alongside AA4Syria in fighting against the U.S. imperialist war on the Syrian people.

Also on the program was Riad Saeid, who spoke about the current situation in Syria. The highly political discussion that followed hit on the many parallels between the struggle for sovereignty in both countries.

AA4Syria has endorsed the March 16 action to defend Venezuela in Los Angeles. Among the other sponsors are the American Indian Movement SoCal, Unión del Barrio, School of the Americas Watch-L.A., CISPES-L.A. Chapter, Eastside Greens of L.A. County, Radio Justice, the Humanity First Coalition, California for Progress, the International League of Peoples Struggles-Southern California, the Democratic Socialists of America-L.A., the People’s Power Assemblies, the International Action Center West Coast and the Harriet Tubman Center.

Five years have passed since the Obama administration helped to overthrow the elected president of Ukraine in February 2014 and installed a far-right dictatorship loyal to Washington. Today, the Trump administration is trying to carry out a similar regime change in Venezuela.

In the 1990s, the breakup of the socialist Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism caused enormous hardships for working people in Ukraine and all of the former Soviet republics.

What have these last five years brought to the Ukrainian people?

Today, workers are poorer than ever, thanks to austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, whose loans keep the current regime in Kiev afloat.

Utility and heating prices are through the roof. More and more people, especially young workers, are forced to migrate to other countries in search of work.

Privatization has sped up, with U.S. and Western European agribusiness and energy companies among the biggest beneficiaries. Energoatom, the company that oversees Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, secured funding from Washington to build a nuclear waste storage facility — widely seen as a precursor to turning central and eastern Ukraine into a toxic waste dump for NATO after Germany rejected that honor.

Who oversaw these brutal “reforms”? None other than Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, who served as the virtual colonial governor of Ukraine from 2014 through 2016. Today, Biden is touted as a possible “progressive” challenger to Donald Trump in 2020.

Rampant repression

Independent union activity is repressed, and so are workers’ organizations.

The Communist Party of Ukraine, once the country’s largest political organization, cannot get on the ballot for this spring’s presidential elections, although a law to ban the party outright is still under appeal. Its symbols are prohibited and its supporters, even elderly people, face violent attacks when they gather in public.

Struggle-La Lucha spoke with Alexey Albu, a former deputy of the Odessa Regional Council and a leader of the revolutionary Marxist organization Borotba (Struggle), which is outlawed in Ukraine. Albu was forced to leave the country under threat of death in May 2014. He has been working from exile for Ukraine’s liberation for nearly five years.

According to Albu, the number of political prisoners in Ukraine peaked at around 1,500 in 2015. The numbers have declined since then, though objective figures are unavailable. Many prisoners were deported or exchanged for Ukrainian troops captured in the Donbass; some have been acquitted and others have cut deals after becoming demoralized. But arrests of leftists, journalists and other opponents of the regime are still frequent.

Ukraine has become a veritable base for the U.S.-dominated NATO military alliance. NATO arms, trains and advises Ukraine in its criminal war against the people of the Donbass region. That includes neo-Nazi battalions incorporated into the “official” armed forces structure.

President Petro Poroshenko has promised to enshrine joining NATO in the Ukrainian Constitution if he is re-elected this year, as is widely expected.

Regime change model

The Euromaidan movement, the public face of the violent coup that called itself the “Revolution of Dignity,” followed a pattern that will seem familiar to those observing today’s campaign against the government of Bolivarian Venezuela.

The same code words of “democratic movement” versus “dictatorship,” demonization of foreign leaders and their allies, and crocodile tears for the suffering of the common people, were all in play.

For years, Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington sought out alliances with local oligarchs seeking greater economic ties with the West, who were willing to open up the country to U.S. economic, political and military domination, and to aid the U.S. campaign to isolate Ukraine’s historic trading partner Russia. They put pressure on Ukraine’s officials to get with the Western program.

Students and intellectuals of the Ukrainian upper classes and diaspora were trained in regime change methods, including the manipulation of Western “human rights” rhetoric and social media. And Washington coordinated closely with the neo-Nazi right wing, long nurtured in the U.S. and Canada during the Soviet period, who flooded back after the fall of the USSR.

Flexing its “humanitarian intervention” muscles to the fullest, Washington pushed forward Western-approved, “progressive” nongovernmental organizations as the face of the Euromaidan movement. But today when women attempt to march against rampant domestic violence or the LGBTQ community organizes events in Kiev, they are quickly suppressed by security forces and neo-Nazi gangs — who were the real core of the 2014 coup.

It’s a pattern of manipulation and disinformation aimed at confusing public opinion generally and the progressive movement in particular, both in the targeted country and abroad, and used many times in the past quarter century, from Yugoslavia to Libya to Nicaragua to Syria — and, of course, in Venezuela.

Bombs are still falling

On Feb. 18, three bombs exploded in the center of Donetsk, capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The explosions happened near governmental offices and the headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission that is supposed to monitor truce violations. Later than night, villages on the republic’s borders faced intense shelling by Ukrainian military units.

The war on Donetsk and Lugansk, begun by Kiev shortly after the coup five years ago, continues. Although the fiercest fighting ended after Ukrainian troops were routed in the Debaltsevo operation in February 2015, civilians continue to die, and homes, schools and hospitals continue to be bombed. Ukrainian terrorist actions have surged in the past year, including the assassination of Donetsk leader Alexander Zakharchenko last summer.

According to the most recent report of the United Nations Monitoring Mission on Human Rights, from April 2014 to the end of 2018 some 12,800 to 13,000 people were killed in the war. But many people believe this is a vast undercount. In 2015, a report leaked from the German intelligence services estimated the number of dead at 50,000.

Anti-fascist uprising

Although geopolitical and economic competition underpinned splitting Ukraine, hatred of Russia and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, as well as other national minorities, was fuel that the right wing used to power its 2014 coup. Russian speakers make up the majority of the population in the country’s east, which is also more working class in composition and where the anti-fascist and internationalist traditions of Soviet times remain strong.

Many of these eastern cities rose up in resistance against the pro-U.S. coup. Crimea, home to a naval base coveted by the U.S., voted to leave Ukraine and rejoined Russia. Residents of the Donbass mining region seized government buildings and declared independence. A popular referendum in May 2014 overwhelmingly approved independence from now U.S.-allied Ukraine, creating the anti-fascist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Ukraine started a war against Donbass even before the independence vote. It hasn’t stopped for a single day, despite a peace agreement — brokered by Germany, France and Russia in 2015 — called the Minsk Accords. Kiev’s forces violate the military side of this agreement on a daily basis, while the government has refused to enact the political measures that would guarantee some protections to Donetsk and Lugansk.

An economic blockade is another component of the ongoing war against Donetsk and Lugansk residents. The only available route for trade in needed food, medicine and other essentials is through Russia. Any company or individual that trades with the republics is subject to U.S. and European sanctions, as well as making themselves a target for the fascists. And Russia itself has been subject to tightened sanctions.

Rise of fascism and white supremacy

This May 2 will mark five years since one of the worst atrocities of the Ukrainian coup: the Odessa massacre, when nearly 50 anti-fascists were burned, shot and clubbed to death by a fascist mob in that port city.

Family members and friends still gather on the second day of every month to commemorate the fallen outside the House of Trade Unions, despite frequent attacks by police and fascists.

Everyone knows about the growth of white supremacist and fascist organizations and violent acts in the U.S. and Western Europe in these last five years. How is this connected to the coup in Ukraine and other imperialist regime-change operations?

Last year a group of armed white supremacists, who took part in the Charlottesville events that killed anti-fascist Heather Heyer, were indicted in California. Among the specifics on their FBI rap sheet: that they had trained with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine.

This is more than just an isolated case of blowback. Over many years, the U.S. export of and support for fascist violence abroad, to maintain its empire of profits, has inevitably found its way back home. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during the Vietnam War, the bombs dropped on other countries also explode here.

In the coming weeks, Struggle-La Lucha will publish a series of interviews with activists, militia fighters and political leaders exploring the effects of the last five years on the workers of Ukraine and the Donbass republics, political exiles, women, youth and others. These voices of Ukrainian anti-fascists will not only help to expose the reality hidden by Washington and the mass media, but may also offer important lessons for our own struggle against the ultraright and imperialism.

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.

In February 2014, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and installed a far-right regime representing Western imperialist interests, local oligarchs and neo-Nazis. The new government launched a war against the rebellious Donbass mining region, which has cost at least 13,000 lives so far.

Struggle-La Lucha spoke with Alexey Albu, a former deputy of the Odessa Regional Council and a leader of the revolutionary Marxist organization Borotba (Struggle), which is outlawed in today’s Ukraine. Albu survived the fascist massacre at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, and was forced to leave Ukraine. From outside the areas controlled by the current government in Kiev, he has been working for the country’s liberation since then.

Struggle-La Lucha: It’s been five years since the culmination of the Maidan coup in Kiev. Soon, we’ll mark five years of the war against Donbass and the massacre in Odessa. As someone who was forced into political exile in 2014, what is your situation today? What is the position of political exiles from Ukraine generally?

Alexey Albu: Five years ago, the ultraright forces unleashed a civil war in Ukraine. On one side of the conflict were the oligarchs and their chained dogs — the ultranationalists. On the other side were the people who did not agree, but who, unfortunately, were not unified in their outlook.

The united resistance movement was called “Antimaidan.” We were united by three main ideas: anti-fascism, anti-oligarchism, and ​​integration with Russia and other countries that emerged as a result of the collapse of the USSR. Personally, my comrades and I consider the true separatists as those who separated Ukraine from the USSR in 1991, which means that in our worldview the war is taking place on the territory of the Soviet Union. It is for this reason that we do not consider ourselves political exiles, since we are in our own country.

If we talk about the conditions in which people who consider themselves political emigrants live today — they are certainly difficult. Anti-fascists who left the occupied part of Ukraine found themselves in countries with different laws, without official status, without regular work, with broken social ties. In fact, everyone had to start their lives from scratch.

In order to improve their position in society, various organizations and associations were created, such as the Union of Political Prisoners and Political Emigrants of Ukraine, the Committee for the Liberation of Odessa (Committee on May 2), the Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine and others. But because all the participants had roughly the same social status in the new “post-emigration world,” no one could help each other.

On one hand, this circumstance gave rise to some internal conflicts, and on the other, it strengthened certain opposition groups. The conditions which we all fell into became a kind of test. Some passed it with dignity, some did not.

The situation is worsened by the fact that the parts of the former USSR — Belarus and Russia — which are closest to Ukraine in culture and language, could not provide full assistance to people who temporarily left the occupied territory of Ukraine. In this regard, people have a lot of problems associated with the immigration authorities.

Legally, Russia and Belarus do not have the right to grant political asylum status. And the status of temporary asylum was granted only to residents of two regions of Ukraine: Donetsk and Lugansk. Thus, the residents of Odessa, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kiev and other cities that were forced to flee from repression found themselves in the situation of illegal residents.

This worries us communists, but we understand that if the left forces were stronger in Russia and Belarus, there would be no such problems.

I and many comrades from Borotba are in the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LPR and DPR). There are no legal problems here, because many comrades have Ukrainian passports. However, there is a rather difficult social situation caused by the war.

SLL: What are your political activities now?

AA: Today, our main task is to support those Borotba activists and supporters who remained in the occupied territories. The methods and forms of work and political struggle have changed significantly, and under the neofascist dictatorship in Ukraine we cannot do what we could during the period of bourgeois democracy. Therefore, we are constantly searching for openings.

We continue to conduct small agitation campaigns — to paste up leaflets explaining the class essence of Ukraine’s problems, to draw graffiti, to hang out red flags. But we are unable to openly hold a rally or a demonstration. Even closed roundtable meetings are blocked by representatives of the special services and the nationalists.

We also continue propaganda work on social media and in those Russian media that are read in Ukraine. We focus on personal communication with many people, on interaction with friendly organizations that remain on the other side of the front line.

Also, our comrades are busy developing a draft of a new Constitution of Ukraine, in order to offer it to the public.

Unfortunately, solving everyday problems takes up a lot of time that could be spent on the revolutionary struggle. Therefore, we believe that gradually it is necessary to return to a professional approach to work. To this end, we are doing a lot of work to raise funds for Borotba. However, due to the fact that most of our comrades live in difficult social conditions, this process is rather difficult.

SLL: For five years, the U.S./EU-backed regime in Kiev has carried out economic “reforms” aimed at further privatization and penetration by Western capitalists, including austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund. How has this affected the situation of workers in Ukraine?

AA: We are quite familiar with the works of V.I. Lenin, and we know that class consciousness cannot emerge from the working class by itself. It can only be brought in from the outside, by the communists. To this end, large-scale propaganda and organizational work needs to be carried out. Naturally, in the conditions after the defeat of the Antimaidan, it is extremely difficult to carry out such work.

We all see the result: the working class is disorganized, morally depressed, and worst of all, it doesn’t recognize itself as a working class.

Many politicians who opposed the Kiev junta believed that the more the social conditions of the workers deteriorated, the sooner they would rise up to fight. However, we Ukrainian Marxists fully understand that in order for the working class to rise up to fight, a communist organization must appear in society. Building such an organization is our first priority.

SLL: How do you assess the upcoming presidential election in Ukraine scheduled for March 31? Do you think that President Petro Poroshenko will be re-elected? Does the left have any role in these elections?

AA: We believe that the part of the population that opposes the current state of affairs is simply not represented in the Ukrainian political process. Parties and organizations that could represent their interests are simply banned or are under the complete control of the security services.

Therefore, we discussed this situation with our comrades and prepared this appeal to the citizens of Ukraine:

“Since the coup d’état and beginning of the civil war, a complicated political situation has developed in Ukraine. Today, there is not a single presidential candidate who advocates for an alternative point of view on the future socio-political and economic development of Ukraine, or for the peaceful resolution of internal and external conflicts, while respecting the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens.

“There can be no free will according to the rules of the nationalist dictatorship, who are henchmen of external forces.

“For a large part of the population — for example, Russian-speaking citizens and left-wing parties — it has been impossible to nominate a candidate who is untainted by cooperation with the current bloody marauders.

“Under these conditions, Borotba declares a categorical rejection of the next electoral farce imposed on the Ukrainian people by the illegitimate Kiev regime.

“Mass political repression against dissidents, war crimes against their own people, unparalleled enslavement and subjugation of broad sections of working people — this is the result of the rule of the current government. So what reason do sensible people have to believe that they will be given a ‘democratic choice’?

“Recognition of the legitimacy and participation in the electoral process is a betrayal. Only resistance, only systematic work to dismantle the criminal regime, makes sense for us.

“We will never forgive the oligarchs who unleashed the war; we despise their Nazi dogs, who carry out the evil will of the fat cats. We do not accept the logic of the naive, who see ‘oppositionists’ in those who have been quietly working for the past five years according to the rules of the governing clique of war criminals and state terrorists.

“As long as the Kiev regime of usurpers and executioners is not deposed, and the villainous clique of Poroshenko and his minions does not receive a well-deserved punishment, we will not accept any elections or other attempts to legitimize the ‘Maidan regime.’

“The only real choice for the Ukrainian people is a victory over the oligarchic and neo-Nazi power in Ukraine! We urge everyone who hates this power to unite with their friends and loved ones, with like-minded people!

“We encourage the establishment of communication and coordination with other people who want to dismantle this system! We urge you to join the already existing resistance of the Nazi, oligarchic pack!

“We have no other way but to fight and resist! The real revolution is ahead!”

End of part 1

New York — The week of Feb. 17-23 marks five years since a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine, overthrew the elected president and installed a far-right government that includes open neo-Nazis. Anti-fascists and anti-war activists are using this tragic anniversary to warn workers of the similar campaign being waged by the Trump administration today against Venezuela, and to build solidarity with those fighting the repressive Kiev dictatorship.

A squad of activists, including members of Struggle-La Lucha, went to New York’s Times Square at rush hour on Feb. 18 to hand out leaflets and hold an informational picket outside the U.S. military recruitment center. They distributed a flyer headlined “U.S. coups: Ukraine 2014 – Honduras 2009 – Venezuela 2019? We say no!” It provided information on the effects of U.S. supported coups on the people in these countries and the importance of taking to the streets on Feb. 23 for the global #HandsOffVenezuela day of action.

Pickets chanted: “USA, CIA, out of Ukraine! Hands off Venezuela!” Signs also pointed to the need to stop the ongoing war by Ukraine, armed and funded by the U.S./NATO, against the anti-fascist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Although bitter cold and high winds made leafleting difficult, many passersby took flyers. Some stopped to listen and expressed solidarity with the anti-war activists.

On a few occasions, the anti-war squad was challenged by groups of right-wing Venezuelans who live in the U.S., who claimed that socialist President Nicolás Maduro is “starving the people.”

When confronted with the destruction that U.S. sanctions, coups and military interventions have wreaked on other countries, their only response was to shout, “Maduro is a communist!”

When this reporter asked one of the right-wingers if she thought Trump was really intervening for humanitarian reasons, she responded, “Of course they will take the oil, but that’s fine. … We have to get rid of that communist dictator Maduro.”

This was a valuable admission of the priorities of the Venezuelan upper classes, who are willing to sacrifice their country’s sovereignty and resources to suppress the Bolivarian movement of workers and peasants.

Barbara Larissa, a Brazilian worker living in the U.S., told Struggle-La Lucha why she joined the action: “The U.S. is well known for its history of invasions and coups around the globe, like the intervention in Ukraine five years ago that is still happening, causing damage to that country and its people. It needs to stop.

“Now all of Trump’s attention is on Venezuela,” she explained, “because he decided to support Juan Guaidó, favorite of the far right, and give Venezuela back to capital again.

“Our current president, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected last year with U.S. and mass media help. Now, Trump wants to work very closely with Brazil, to get Bolsonaro’s support to invade Venezuela with the help of Colombia. We are already denouncing Bolsonaro’s government around the globe. He is a threat to Brazilian people and to the world,” Larissa concluded.

Hands off Rep. Ilhan Omar!

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is under attack by members of both the Democratic and Republican parties because she has called out a pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Omar is a Somali-American woman, and along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, is one of the first two Muslim women elected to the U.S. Congress.

The fury unleashed against Omar brings to mind the struggle of Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a strong ally of the Civil Rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Like Omar’s critique of AIPAC, Powell’s fight against racism was unacceptable in the halls of Congress.

After a long and valiant struggle, Powell was forced out of his congressional seat. But in the process, he was embraced by anti-racist and progressive activists, not only in his congressional district in Harlem, but nationwide. The progressive movement of today needs to be ready to stand with Rep. Omar against this current racist and reactionary campaign.

AIPAC is the lobbying group whose mission it is to keep U.S. elected officials paying no mind to Israel’s bloody repression of the Palestinian liberation struggle. It’s considered one of the most influential lobbying organizations in Washington.

AIPAC facilitates frequent, large campaign contributions to candidates, passes out all-expense-paid trips to Israel for politicians and their families and probably does much more that will never be revealed publicly. In doing so, AIPAC buys congressional silence about the illegal settlements that displace Palestinian families, the murders of Palestinian children by the Israeli “Defense” Forces (IDF), the blockade and constant military attacks against Gaza, the racist treatment of African immigrants and much more.  

For years the U.S. political establishment, college administrations and corporate media have been trafficking the idea that any criticism of Israeli apartheid is anti-Semitic. This propaganda war has been ratcheted up as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) has grown on college campuses across the country and awareness of Israeli apartheid has gained ground. The reaction has been swift and merciless. Journalist Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN in November 2018 for his solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Omar vs. war criminal Abrams

It isn’t only Omar’s criticism of AIPAC — which is simply not done in Congress — that has prompted the reaction against her. She also went after death merchant and newly appointed Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliot Abrams in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Feb. 13 for his historic, murderous role in Latin America and his conviction in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration.  

It’s no surprise that the howls of condemnation have been erupting from right-wingers in Congress and even from Trump — who has called for Omar’s resignation. But the list of Democrats attacking her is also a long one, and includes prominent figures like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chelsea Clinton and a host of lesser-known Democrats hoping to make a name for themselves by defending Israeli repression of the Palestinian people. It points to the bipartisan nature of support for Israel.

AIPAC is funded by right-wing, pro-Israeli forces in the U.S. and is a useful tool for Israel as it fights for any of its own interests that may from time to time come in conflict with its sponsor: U.S. imperialism. And the millions of dollars that flow in and out of AIPAC have fueled the false notion that Israel controls U.S. foreign policy.

But those millions that AIPAC spends are overshadowed by the billions of dollars dispensed from the U.S. treasury to fund the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the bloody repression against the Palestinian people carried out to maintain it.

Israel: military outpost of U.S. imperialism

Reuters reported on Jan. 29 that Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, after returning from one of the previously mentioned all-expenses-paid trips to Israel, called for the $38 billion in military aid already guaranteed to Israel over the next 10 years to be considered only “a floor.”

Perhaps the bribery of the trip helped them to feel good about their work, but this funding has been a constant of U.S. imperialism for decades and few have ever even hinted at an interruption of the funding — even in the aftermath of some of the worst atrocities committed by the IDF.

Israel is a military outpost for the interests of U.S. imperialism as it seeks to extend its control over oil resources and strategic military advantage throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The historic theft of Palestine, a bloody land-grab much like the genocidal campaign against Indigenous people in the Americas, was and remains central to the interests of U.S. imperialism.

The struggle against U.S.-backed and U.S.-funded Israeli apartheid cannot be won in Congress. The anti-war and anti-racist movements need to defend Rep. Omar and extend support for the Palestinian people in the streets.

Hands off Ilhan Omar! Palestine will never die!