March 10 – The Ukrainian authorities, being in a state of shock and fearing for their fate, organized a widespread witch hunt. Every day in the territories controlled by Kiev, there are detentions, abductions and torture of political activists and civilians who disagree with the policies of the central government.

People simply disappear and only a few days later, after relatives or friends start sounding the alarm, it becomes clear that something has happened to them. Political activists and public figures who opposed the Ukrainian authorities are now recording uncharacteristic video messages to the Russian authorities and Russian society.

This is how it became known that Kiev political scientist Dmitry Dzhangirov was kidnapped a few days ago. Thousands of Dmitry’s subscribers noticed that an anti-Russian statement was broadcast on the air of his YouTube channel “Capital,” which makes us all think that Dmitry Dzhangirov is alive, but held captive by nationalists or Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officers.

The well-known Kiev political activist Dmitry Skvortsov stated on his Facebook page that SBU officers were breaking into his apartment. He wasn’t heard from again.

A few days ago, the head of the Leninist Communist Youth League of Ukraine, Mikhail Kononovich, and his twin brother, head of the anti-fascist union, Alexander Kononovich, were kidnapped in Kiev.

On March 3, Alexander Matyushenko, a left-wing activist from Dnipropetrovsk, was one of the first to be repressed. He is currently being held in a pre-trial detention center on charges of treason without a court decision. Alexander’s partner is raising funds to pay for a lawyer. Most lawyers in Ukraine are afraid to take such cases or charge large amounts of money to do so. If you would like to contribute to his defense, contact SolidarityUkraineAntifa [at] gmail [dot] com.

On March 4, militants of the territorial defense of Kiev detained an opposition politician and parliamentarian, Nestor Shufrich. Shocking footage of the illegal interrogation spread around the world, but this did not stop the punishers.

On March 7, in Odessa, armed Ukrainian militants burst into the apartment of the parents of well-known journalist Alexander Voskoboynikov. They demanded that the door be opened for them or they would knock it down. When the parents opened it, the nationalists went in with weapons in their hands.

We have all witnessed horrific footage of the torture of prisoners of war, including a military pilot. When he was wounded and captured by the Ukrainian Nazis, they called his wife from his phone and told her to look for a new husband, hinting that they would kill him.

It is impossible to watch without tears the video in which Ukrainian emergency doctors, instead of providing medical care, mock patients by exerting moral pressure on them and filming it on cameras.

All these egregious facts testify to the widespread and gross violation of basic human rights. All these facts testify to the violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, adopted on August 12, 1949.

We believe that the people of the U.S. and Europe need to know who their governments support. They should know that their taxes are spent on torture and abuse, on the maintenance of neo-Nazi organizations, which in many countries, including Russia, are considered illegal.

We urge you to go to the consulates and embassies of Ukraine and demand the release of illegally detained politicians and activists. Demand an end to the witch hunt. Demand respect for human rights and the Geneva Conventions!

They can still be saved!

Alexey Albu is a coordinator of Borotba (Struggle) and a survivor of the Odessa massacre. He has lived in exile from Ukraine since 2014.

Translated by Greg Butterfield

This interview with Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield was originally published by Russian-language news service and Telegram channel Readovka on March 9.

Elena Nikolaeva: What was the impetus for the beginning of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine? What role did the United States play in the conflict? 

Greg Butterfield: The government of the United States was the instigator of the current crisis between Russia and Ukraine. 

The world watched the drama unfold over the last several months. While shouting from the highest rooftops that evil Russia was about to attack poor Ukraine, the Biden administration and NATO alliance pushed Ukraine’s Zelensky regime to launch a big new attack on the Donbass republics. The point was to force the Russian government into a corner where it would have no choice but to respond, and in this way to justify NATO aggression.

Since Russian President Putin officially recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the joint antifascist military operation began, the pounding war drums have reached truly incredible heights here. I have seen nothing like it since the weeks immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. – at which time the propaganda led to the monstrous U.S. wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In the mainstream media, no alternative views are permitted. On social media, anyone who questions the U.S. narrative is immediately labeled a Russian agent and subject to being banned or restricted.

Unfortunately, the immense pressure of the imperialist state and media has had its effect on the leaders of anti-war forces in the U.S. and other Western countries. Many of those who just weeks ago were warning that NATO was pushing Russia into a corner are now denouncing Russia’s defensive actions in Ukraine, singing in perfect tune with the imperialists. They have forgotten, and some never understood, the plight of the people of Donbass and the power of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine. 

Those of us who continue to stand up to the U.S. and NATO are determined to keep telling the truth. We know that the majority of humanity – from Cuba and Venezuela to China and North Korea to Syria and Yemen – are not fooled by the U.S. war propaganda. We’re confident that the lies will soon begin to collapse under their own weight and we will be able to win many workers and progressive people to solidarity with the people of Donbass and Russia.

EN: Russian forces have discovered secret laboratories and documents confirming the development of bacteriological and nuclear weapons. Why does Ukraine need these when its government also declares that it is a peaceful country?

GB: For the past eight years, since the Euromaidan coup in 2014, Ukraine’s government has been a thinly veiled disguise for U.S. and NATO control of the country. The real decisions are not made in Kiev, but in Washington. 

Besides robbing the Ukrainian people of their industry and vast resources developed in Soviet times, the U.S. goal has been to turn Ukraine into a base for subversion and military attack on the Russian Federation. The biowarfare labs set up there are a perfect example of this. 

In 2014, the U.S. and NATO hoped for a much more direct route to attack Russia. They wanted to seize the strategic naval base in Crimea. Thankfully, the Crimean population thwarted this plan with their popular referendum that led to Crimea’s return to Russian sovereignty. 

Since that time, the resistance of the heroic people of Donetsk and Lugansk has been very important, delaying the plans of the U.S. and NATO. 

EN: The West has imposed sanctions on all Russian citizens. Do you think this could turn into a problem for those countries?

GB: First we should state that sanctions are merely another form of war – one that primarily targets the civilian population, no matter how much the media talk about “Russian oligarchs.”

There are two ways in which the intensification of sanctions will undermine and ultimately turn against the Western imperialists and their aims. 

First, the sanctions will create hardship for workers and poor people in these countries. In U.S. states like California, where cars are essential, gas prices have already shot up to $7 a gallon or more because of the war crisis. This is great for the big oil companies, who are the main beneficiaries of the crisis, but poison for the people.

The dumping of more billions and trillions of dollars into the weapons industry will increase inflation and mean even less money available for programs that fund basic human needs like health care and housing. This will cause the class struggle to intensify and anti-war sentiments to grow in the U.S. and Europe.

Second, the attempts to cut off Russia from economic relations with the West will mean that Russia, China and other countries targeted by the U.S. will grow even closer and have greater cooperation – economic, military and political. This can only strengthen the global alternative to Western imperialism. 

The most urgent task of anti-imperialists in the West today is to stand up and tell the truth in defiance of the tidal wave of U.S. war propaganda. For example, on March 8, a group of comrades from the Socialist Unity Party protested at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C. 

They delivered a letter demanding the Kiev regime release Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich, leaders of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine, who were arrested by the notorious Security Service of Ukraine on March 6. 

We must seize every opportunity to expose the fascistic character of the Ukrainian regime and the danger NATO poses to Donbass, Russia and the people of the whole region.

Source: Readovka

“Now, the people of Donbass will be able to leave their shelters and play in a park with their children, without fear of blowing themselves up, for the first time in 8 years.”

I am writing this trying to contain the rage and indignation I feel at the reactions of the Western left and society in general about the Russian counter-attack against Ukraine.

The truth is that I do not expect much from this. I have more than enough proof that there is no one more blind than the one who does not want to see, and that no matter how much you repeat a thousand times that the TV manipulates, you continue dancing to the rhythm that the western mass media set for you.

Yesterday I saw the social networks full of NO TO WAR posters which have been cleaned of the almost 20 years of cobwebs since the war in Iraq.

I could say that those same posters have been forgotten at the bottom of the drawer of infamy, while Israel massacred Palestine. While the U.S. ravaged Afghanistan, or Libya, in massive bombings that resulted in the deaths of more than 150,000 people, including thousands of children. Deaths which the US has refused to investigate. But to say all this, it would be too easy. I could say that when the media told you again, that as with Libya you had to intervene in Syria, you kept quiet while the US attacked a sovereign country and plundered its oil reserves.

I could also say that so far in February 2022, there have been deaths in Palestine, in Damascus by Israeli bombing, as well as in Yemen and Somalia. And your little posters were still forgotten.

I could also say that Western policies have caused a continuing genocide in the Mediterranean waters, but 4 assholes would accuse me of demagoguery. It is clear that there are deaths that matter, and others that do not.

As Malcolm X used to say, be careful with the media, otherwise you will end up defending the oppressors.

But I want to focus on the war that broke out in Ukraine in 2014, to which, your vapid posters are 8 years too late. Everyone can become absent-minded, we can all make mistakes, but it is also possible that there is something more perverse depending on the “oversights”.

To have memory is something very important, especially in a society that manufactures throwaway conflicts for which most people only react by placing a fashionable avatar in their profile picture, which days later with the appearance of any tabloid article, news about soccer or any other bullshit expires in infertile soil.

First of all it is necessary to understand that a war nowadays does not appear out of nowhere and that many of us understand that the global war started a long time ago. Another thing is that the media we feed on, decide what the weather is, or what conflicts exist or do not exist, but there are many corners of the world that have been at war for years and are invisible because the economic interests behind it favor the western alliance USA-NATO.

For years NATO-USA has been breaking its commitment and building military bases establishing its troops along the Russian border, with the intention of weakening and besieging the Eurasian countries that could compete with the dollar and the euro.

It is as easy as looking up on a map the NATO bases around the world and you will see how the military moves of harassment have been ongoing for years.

The Ukrainian War is just one more chapter in a much longer series and it is essential to keep this in mind when analyzing the events of the last few days.

First of all, and to warn the rats that may appear, I will say that Putin disgusts me, and that Russia is not the USSR and its policies have nothing to do with its Soviet past, but I refuse to put the focus on Russia, because I consider that it is putting the balance axis in the wrong place which can only lead to manipulated positions.

I am going to focus on my beloved people of Donbass.

When in 2013 the Maidan movement emerged as a supposed social response to political corruption, the workers and miners of the Donbass viewed it with sympathy, despite the fact that they were involved in a coal strike, of cities long abandoned by the administrations, which was far away from the life of the capital.

From here we also saw the images of the mass demonstrations in Kiev and how they clashed violently with the police.

Up to that point everything was going well. The red-black flags gave a nice touch for a society of spectacle like ours to applaud the symbols and support these movements.

Things started to go awry when the demonstrators attacking the police were in paramilitary uniforms and Nazi symbols began to appear on their shields. Something was beginning to smell. The red-and-black flag turned out to be the symbol of the Ukrainian insurgent army of Nazi Stepan Bandera, who allied himself with the German Nazis in World War II, carrying out massacres of his fellow Ukrainian Jews that shocked the Germans themselves.

It is curious to see how if someone throws a stone at the police in Euskadi, Catalonia or Madrid, they are little less than a terrorist, and when someone burns a policeman alive in Venezuela or Ukraine, they are an activist for freedom.

The fact is that the events that followed were known to all. President Yanukovych (just another corrupt man, like any other) left Ukraine and the coup d’état put in place a recognized fascist like Poroshenko. The Nazis took to the streets. Gradually it would be discovered that such protests were supported by briefcases of American dollars that were pumped into raising this monster of war.

The violence since then has been savage and daily. The first thing they did was to go to communist and anti-fascist headquarters and smash them. Armed Nazi groups came to all the assemblies, and said, either join us or we will kill you. Many fled and moved away, other so-called comrades joined the Nazi ranks in pursuit of Ukrainian Unity. An absurdity, but so it was.

The population of Ukraine is very heterogeneous, with 20% people of Russian descent, mainly settled in the east of the country, in the mining basin of Donbass. There are also Tatars, Belarusians, Romanians, Moldovans, Hungarian Poles, Gypsies, Jews, etc.

In eastern Ukraine, when Stalin sent thousands of Russian workers to populate the abandoned coal-rich Donbass area to exploit the mines, Russian and Ukrainian families merged, creating a healthy coexistence with more brotherly love than hatred. Families of Russian fathers and Ukrainian mothers and vice versa were quite normal there.

But ominously, something was brewing years ago.

First of all, education began to whitewash the insurgent army of Stepan Bandera, who had been considered unpatriotic outlaws, and began to sell them in schools as “heroes for the fatherland” (today it is easy to find primary school books with children drawn with the red-and-black emblems of these murderous savages).

On the other hand, from the main political talk shows on Ukrainian television, began to be created the breeding ground of ethnic hatred very well designed and cooked, in which the Russian population was presented as the culprit of all the economic ills suffered by the Ukrainian people. All of this was complicated by Yanukovych’s local policy of favoring trade relations with Russia rather than with “prosperous Europe”.

In these talk shows they began to portray the population of the Donbass as almost subhuman monkeys who were only good for picking coal mines, in contrast to the Ukrainian population of Kiev with its university and its modern world. There was a constant bombardment of ethnic hatred.

There is a video on the internet in which a famous Ukrainian talk show host is seen saying “It is a hard truth to accept, but those people are a burden, they impoverish us, and they occupy a space that we real Ukrainians need. It is hard to say, but there are people in Donbass who must die.” Just like that, and without relinquishment. Meanwhile, for years, in parallel, the Pravy Sektor and Svoboda, the main Ukrainian Nazi parties, paramilitarily trained their militants in war and combat techniques with Western money.

Returning to the Maidan, the effect of all this strategy bore the fruits they expected. Nazi and racist hatred was translated into lynchings in Kiev of racialized people, homosexuals, leftists, or those nostalgic for the Soviet past. The murders were happening every day. At that moment is when the paramilitary groups of extreme right, are formed as official military battalions, paid with a good salary directly from the wallets of local oligarchs like Kolomoski among others. These battalions are heading for the Donbass.

While these formations march emulating in symbology and uniforms the German Nazi groups, the civilians of Kiev applaud them while chanting “death to the Russians”, “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes”. Tragedy was in the air.

While the Nazi units were on their way to raze the people of Donbass to the ground, the ultra-nationalist civilian hotheads began to impose their law in all the cities. The first thing they did was to tear down all the statues of Lenin (in the east there is one in every town) and to lynch all those they considered enemies of the fatherland.

There are many images of different events, where groups of young and not so young people mercilessly kick the heads of the elderly carrying flowers to the statues of Lenin.

Most of these uncontrolled beatings ended in death.

People from the East, of Russian origin, were forced to respond. Seeing what was coming, they began to gather around the squares and statues of Lenin to demonstrate their position and organize their self-protection.

The fateful day that changed the lives of thousands of people in many countries arrived. May 2, 2014.

The soccer league, “coincidentally” in the middle of that hotbed, organized a friendly match “for the homeland” between two soccer teams with major fascist supporters. Before the match they all joined in a demonstration for the unity of the Ukrainian homeland.

Near the route of this demonstration, an encampment of anti-Maidan demonstrators of Russian descent was established at the gate of the House of Trade Unions.

In Russia their “holy week” is marked by Soviet history, and from May 1, the Day of the Working Class, to May 9, commemorating the Day of Victory against the Third German Reich, are holidays, and people take advantage of them to visit relatives and go on excursions. So the anti-Maidan camp had only several hundred people, mostly pensioners and youngsters.

At a certain point of the fascist march, they deviated from the route and headed en masse towards the House of Trade Unions. There would be a great deal to say about how it all happened and which agents were involved, but if I go into that now, I’ll never finish.

We all know the result. The people in the camp, seeing that enraged mass of Nazis with Ukrainian flags, were forced to take refuge inside the building.

The Nazis surrounded the building and set it on fire with everyone inside. More than 50 victims, including 16-year-olds, burned to death. There is footage available for anyone to see of a pregnant woman strangled by the Nazis with a telephone wire while the rest of the demonstrators shouted “death to the Russians”.

People who tried to flee the flames and jumped from a third floor onto the street were met with steel bars and beaten to death by the mob of “innocent civilians”.

The real data is that in addition to those 50 people burned, there are another 150 who disappeared without knowledge of where they had ended up.

The infamy would not end there, because the authorities, who were present at that attack without doing anything, even collaborating. The only people they arrested for these events were those who had been attacked. Meanwhile, Ukrainian politicians publicly applauded the events on the Internet. The images of the bodies of the burned comrades are terrible.

Also terrible are the images of many Ukrainian girls and boys in their early twenties, filling the Molotov cocktails with which they would burn their comrades alive. Or the images of the leader of FEMEN in Ukraine celebrating the massacre with the burning building behind her (it is as easy as searching in Google “Femen, Odessa”).

Here, in our country, the same media that are telling you how bad the Russians are and that you should take to the streets to protest against this war today, are the same ones that after those events published the following headlines : “MORE THAN 50 DEAD IN CLASHES WITH THE PRORUSSIAN SEPARATISTS”.

You have to be deeply despicable and criminal to publish that, selling the victims as executioners, nothing new under the sun.

The events that followed this were expected.

Nazis lynching, hanging, burying alive Russian civilians, raping women, crucifying people they would later set on fire. It would be very easy for me to attach the photos of all this, but I do not want to fall into morbidity, and for respect to the friends and companions of the victims, who will have these images engraved in their memory without having them continually before their eyes.

But as I said, those images are public and are available to anyone who bothers to look for them. I don’t expect to change the minds of those who deny this and prefer to swallow the shit that the media shovels into their mouths. They have enough to contend with in their despicable existences.

Before the Ukrainian discourse that called to take Donbass and exterminate that 20% of its population in the east, they were forced to respond to defend their families and their homes.

Referendums were held in which it was decided to become independent from Ukraine and to ask Russia for help. In Crimea, for example, 97% of the population is Russian, and the results of these referendums were predictable. Nobody wants to stay in a country where they want to kill you.

A number of independent People’s Republics of Ukraine are declared.

The Ukrainian army declared war and the Nazi battalions (Azov, Aidar, etc…) began to surround and bombard the most representative pro-Russian cities.

It must be said that all this civil and ethnic war was concealing NATO’s plans to take over a very important enclave in its covert (and not so covert) economic cold war against Russia. They staged a coup d’état, put in place a Western puppet and set up military bases on Russia’s doorstep. For that, a very important strategic piece was the Crimean peninsula with its naval bases and control of the Black Sea.

Russia is not stupid, and immediately supported the Crimean referendum by annexing it.

Neither Kramatorsk nor Kharkov were prepared to withstand the military artillery siege and soon succumbed. The scenes of Nazi violence that would follow in those days were overwhelming.

But Lugansk and Donetsk became strong. The workers, miners, civilians, and also some policemen and soldiers of Russian descent, organized themselves, took barracks and armed themselves by forming popular self-defense militias. They were not willing to let themselves be killed.

The Nazi battalions and the Ukrainian army surrounded them, creating an encirclement that isolated these cities and began to mercilessly bombard the civilian population in violation of all human rights conventions and covenants.

The first thing they did was to bomb the water, electricity and power plants. Leaving the population without water, without electricity, without communications, radio, telephone and television. Then they destroyed the main transportation routes to prevent them from obtaining supplies of food.

Your little No War signs were sleeping peacefully in the dusty closet of your consciences. The international community remained silent.

For months these cities were ravaged in the cruelest way. Thousands of people, old people, children, etc., were dismembered and blown to pieces in a bloody carnage.

Hospitals, schools, kindergartens were not spared from the bombs. The surrounding towns and villages were destroyed. An exodus of hundreds of thousands of people was generated and they were welcomed in Russia to be protected from the bombings.

The sadism of the fascists emulates Franco’s Spain with the bombing of La Desbandá. On the last road that remains untaken from Lugansk and that connects it with Russia, something terrible happened. The Ukrainian army informed the civilians of Donbass that they would stop firing for 24 hours so that all civilians who wanted to flee to Russia could do so immediately.

Caravans of buses began their journey along the road. The Ukrainian army opened fire and massacred the entire convoy, reducing it to rubble of smoldering, smoldering wreckage of twisted iron among charred bodies. The same army that is now being punished by Russia. He who kills with iron, dies with iron.

I have said that the event of May 2 marked many of us forever, and amid tears of rage and desire for justice many people decided to leave everything and offered their own hearts as a shield and their hands as tools to defend the people of Donbass from the fascist butchery. I was one of the people who left everything and took a plane alone, amid tears of fear, to cross thousands of kilometers, break through the siege of the Ukrainian army and plant myself in Lugansk to help a people forgotten by all of you.

What I was able to see there, many people dismiss as Russian propaganda. It would take me a long time and many more counseling sessions to overcome the terrible images and experiences that I had. I had to exert myself with all my strength,  my physical and mental agility, not to die on numerous occasions. All around me, not so fortunate, I could see the mutilated bodies and the scattered viscera of children, old people, innocent men and women. That smell, that blood, those images will never be forgotten in my life.

It has been 8 years during which the Ukrainian army has mercilessly and uninterruptedly massacred the people of Donbass. 8 fucking years during which you all have kept a cruel and complicit silence. From the media, to those of you who are now taking out your offensive little No to War signs.

The “official” civilian victims, which are infinitely shorter than the real ones, recognize 14,000 people killed.

The Nazi battalions in turn, took over entire villages, raped at will all the women and girls, looted the houses, tortured the men and even held orgies in which they raped babies in front of their mothers. You can see for yourselves who the Tornado Battalion really was.

In the time I lived with them I could see how they suffered in 40 degrees heat, without a drop of water, without being able to eat, or wash ourselves, sleeping in corners, basements and even sewers to avoid the continuous pounding of Ukrainian bombs.

President Poroshenko was applauded by all Ukrainians when he said “our children will be able to go to school while the children of Donbass will have to hide in cellars like rats”. All his people applauded him. The same people who granted the portfolio of the Ministry of Defense in wartime to the Nazi leaders of the Pravy Sektor. Being an innocent civilian does not exempt you from giving power to real psychopaths to torture, kill and rape without mercy.

Now, Russia, which has long warned that it would not allow itself to be further besieged and endangered, has decided to act. Evidently, they are doing so to protect their interests and to prevent NATO from continuing to arm and surround them with missiles and troops. I will not be the one to sympathize with Putin or today’s Russia. Far from it. But I refuse to participate in this infamy by putting the focus on Russia. It seems to me to be completely blind. In the first place because the consequences of the geostrategic confrontation of large blocs involve many responsible parties who have been bombing other lands for years and moving their forces to continue extending their domination, and I see it as completely legitimate that other countries that see what is coming to them should also move their forces.

On the other hand, because as I have already said, the war which all of you are suddenly worried about because the news is dictating it, did not start on February 23rd, 2022. This war has been mercilessly murdering an innocent population for 8 years while you stood on the sidelines or looked the other way. Your little “No to war” signs are cruelly too late and in the indirect service of NATOist interests.

They seek to turn you into other manipulated accomplices of the barbarism that our people have been suffering under for 8 interminable years, during which Ukraine ignored all the points of the Minsk agreements.

I would like you to make the effort for a moment to understand the rage and indignation that I feel when I see you all jumping now.

Regardless of Russia’s real intentions, what is certain is that finally, the people of Donbass will stop suffering and living hidden in basements of blood-spattered ruins.

The truth is that this terrorist and murderous Ukrainian army is being demilitarized by destroying its bases, its powder magazines and warehouses of weapons and bombs that they will no longer be able to drop on Donbass.

What is certain is that the battalions of ultra savage neo-Nazis like the Azov battalion will no longer rape and torture because yesterday they died by thousands in their military base in Mariupol. Their Nazi leaders have been eliminated and there is a very long list of war criminals who are being captured and will be tried before the people of Donbass.

The “innocent civilians of Kiev” have been frightened for a day by sirens, hiding in basements, and on subway platforms, and weeping in images relayed to us by all the special envoys in Kiev who have never wanted to set foot in the massacred cities of Donbass. You have all been outraged by this in 24 hours, are the lives of the children of Donbass not worth the same?

Your No to War would be satisfied if Russia withdraws from Ukraine. And you would again keep the little posters obedient to the media, to again keep silent and bury with your own shovels the sons and daughters of Donbass.

The truth is that I despise you.

I would like to accompany you to the orphanages we have visited in Donbass, of children who have been left alone forever in a destroyed land. Those orphanages from which I left crying with rage and sadness when I saw how they were used to throw themselves to the ground in a ball at the order of the teacher to protect themselves from the bombs when they were 5 years old. And how day by day, these children have been decimated.

Don’t expect me to join you now in crying out against war.

War always is and always will be a rich man’s mess that the poor pay for. But this war has destroyed many, many lives that look at you from oblivion while you try to protect their executioners.

I am not saying that all this makes it legitimate for civilians to die in Ukraine. I will not be hypocritical, some will die and it is impossible to avoid it in such a scenario. But the truth is that unlike the Ukrainian army, which systematically slaughters civilians, and even this morning killed two teachers in a school in Gorlovka, the Russian army is trying to inflict casualties only among the military, although on TV they tell you otherwise by using archive images of bombings in Syria or other countries. The propaganda machine is working at full throttle. What I do say is that it is infamous that you would talk about it when there are tens of thousands of dead children, elderly men and women who have received neither your support nor your solidarity.

Do not ask me to feel sorry. I will not be so cynical as to say that I was almost killed. I took all the risk to go there with my heart as a shield to stop the bullets against the people. But in my heart are many people I saw die, many children I saw cry (and die too), many old people who did not deserve to end their lives dismembered or dying of hunger and thirst in their forgotten hideouts. I owe it to them, and I owe it to justice.

NATO, USA and Europe are criminals and murderers. The wars of the powers including Russia should be stopped immediately. The working women and men of the world should be united against their wars, against all their wars, and against the oligarchs on both sides. That would be ideal. Ukrainian and Russian workers expropriating the oligarchs and building an environment of mutual support and solidarity.

But we are light years away from that and what matters to me now, is that the people of Donbass will be able to leave their shelters and play in a park with their children, without fear of blowing themselves up, for the first time in 8 years.

Neither War Between Peoples, Nor Peace Between Classes

Ramiro Gómez is a member of the Brigade Ruben Ruiz Ibarruri- Anti-Fascist Caravan of Banda Bassotti.

Interview with Ramiro Gómez, humanitarian activist in Lugansk. 2014

Translation by Internationalist 360°

Ángeles Maestro is a leading figure in Spain when it comes to internationalist and solidarity activism. A former communist deputy, today she is not only highly critical of the positions of that party but also denounces its permanent ideological retreats.

She has denounced with all her might the Psoe-Podemos compromise, and now that the NATO war is endangering the whole world, she has no doubts about where to stand, repudiating imperialism and the interventionist maneuvers of the Atlantic Alliance.

We spoke with Nines Maestro about how she views this confrontation from a country like Spain, which, like the rest of the European Union, is once again on its knees before U.S. arrogance.

U.S. imperialism has been subordinating the European Union in an uninterrupted process since NATO was created in 1949, six years before the existence of the Warsaw Pact.

Indeed, the explicit objective of NATO’s existence was to confront the Soviet Union but also to subordinate the European Union and to prevent the establishment of any kind of alliance, regardless of the ideology of the Soviet Union, with Russia and at that time with its satellite countries. The very existence of this alliance negated the military sovereignty of each and every one of the countries of the European Union.

The Spanish State voted at one time against joining NATO, but then Felipe Gonzalez and his party erased with their elbow what they had written with their hand.

The Spanish State, since 1982, has been part of the military structure of the Alliance, following a referendum in which the conditions were absolutely unfulfilled. I remember that Spain is not only part of the military structure but even a leader of the Psoe itself, as Javier Solana, was secretary general of NATO during the war of destruction and provoked explosion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The other conditions of the referendum such as the Non-installation of nuclear weapons was also discarded by means of bilateral agreements with the United States, by which Spain renounced the right to ask if the ships, the airplanes that cross its skies or the American military bases themselves harbor nuclear weapons or not. On the other hand, as is quite evident, the military presence in U.S. bases on Spanish soil has only increased.

This government, which claims to be the most progressive in history, is playing one of the most undignified roles, competing with the government of (José María) Aznar and the Azores trio (George W. Bush, Tony Blair and the former Spanish president) in the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Spanish State is going even further than other European Union countries in supporting NATO’s offensive against the Russian Federation.

Not only that, but the Psoe government together with United Podemos is preparing for the NATO summit to be held in Madrid at the end of of June of this year and there have been declarations from the leaders, including those of the Communist Party of Spain and its Secretary General Enrique De Santiago, assuring that Spain will fulfill its commitments to NATO and they are collaborating in each and every one of the government’s decisions.

Curiously, after the last congress of the Communist Party approved the exit from NATO and the dismantling of the bases, in a very explicit and clear demonstration of what the congresses of a Communist Party are for, and their leaders trample on all the agreements of those congresses and of course the legitimate interests of the peoples of the Spanish State.

Considering that, as has happened in all previous wars, the American and NATO bases are foreign territory and can be a military objective of the countries that are attacked by NATO. That terrible sensation is the one we communist and left-wing people are experiencing, having governments as unworthy as those of the Psoe or the Popular Party.

It is foreseeable that from the bases of the left that are not sold out to NATO there will be a reaction against the submissive approaches of the leaders.

We must say that platforms and committees are being organized in different towns of the Spanish State and also in Madrid against this NATO summit asking for the immediate exit of Spain from the Alliance and the dismantling of the bases, the non participation of the Spanish army in the attack on any country and denouncing the government that is preparing this NATO summit in which the incorporation of Ukraine to NATO is also expected.

This reminds us of when Bush ordered the attack and invasion of Iraq and a patriotic hysteria arose in the United States that spread around the world, where Saddam Hussein was targeted, he was the “enemy” to be defeated, and NATO was the “good guy in the film” for the West.

This hysteria is now repeating itself and the Olympic Committee decides that no Russian athlete can compete, or FIFA eliminates the Russian soccer team from the World Cup in Qatar, or the censorship of this world dictatorship bans RT and Sputnik.

There is a McCarthyist “wave” as never before seen, accompanied by the media. But in your analysis you have pointed out a very interesting fact which is the regrettable role being played by a certain political left, which includes communist parties, Trotskyists and also bien pensantes intellectuals of “progressivism” who when the time comes to take one side always put themselves in the middle or on the opposite side.

How do you think this will evolve as NATO continues to advance? It is clear that NATO wants and needs to destabilize Russia and then go after China. How do you think the population, which is now mostly chloroformed, will react to these events?

The moment is complicated, what you have said is precisely like that: communist parties, NGOs, and other organizations of the left are as always taking the side of imperialism, what we call here “ninis”, which means, what has happened in any attack on any country, is the demonization of the corresponding leader.

There was talk at one time of “neither Bush nor Saddam”, “neither NATO, nor Milosevic”, “neither NATO nor Qaddafi”, demonizing Bashar Al Assad in the case of Syria, and so on. In reality, it is an attempt to equate the aggressor with the aggressed. Moreover, with the media lies, which are very important to remember: when the invasion of Iraq was justified, it was because they had non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the image of a cormorant full of oil dying on a beach was used to prove that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, or the thousands of images that never existed.

There is the case of the story of what was later shown to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, a teenage girl crying because newborns had been ripped from incubators, and it was clearly a constructed story. Or the bombings attributed to Qaddafi who was said to be bombing his own people.

So all these media lies are constructed, and they encourage the position of some leftist organizations that jump on the “No to war” bandwagon, accusing Russia of the Invasion of Ukraine, in an attempt to whitewash the attacks of imperialism that Ukraine represents in relation to Russia and other countries in the area.

I also wanted to point out when you asked what will be the reaction of the population, that many times I remember that maxim that the dominant ideology is the ideology of the ruling classes, and that the media in power of the multinational oligarchies collaborate to shape those supposed public opinions.

The reality is that with obsequious pro-Yankee positions such as those in Europe, the consequences will soon be felt by the populations of each country.

In Europe, the consequences include the U.S. and the European Union imposing sanctions on Russia, and those who pay for them are the peoples of the EU. In particular, with the ban on exports to Russia many small companies are reacting, seeing their businesses ruined by the impossibility of exporting different agricultural products to Russia, let alone in a situation of bestial crisis like the one we are living through, the cancellation of the purchase of gas from Russia.

This is the most important issue for the United States because the gas pipeline that was supposed to bring Russian gas directly to Germany and the rest of the European Union, was 30% or 40% cheaper than gas bought from the United States, a product of fracking, and also of much higher quality because the U.S. gas is full of impurities.

At this moment I can say that modest families, not only the poorest ones, are no longer able to use electricity for heating or to use electricity when the sun goes down, and when the economic repercussions arrive, we will see that the United States sanctions against Russia are paid for by the peoples of the European Union.

Therefore, at the beginning I pointed out how in the very existence of NATO, beyond the confrontation with the communist Soviet Union, the fundamental objective is to subordinate the European Union to its interests, paying directly the consequences because the geographical relationship of the European Union with Russia is much greater than that of the United States or Great Britain, who are the great instigators of the NATO offensive.

Of course, the aim of Great Britain and now of the U.S.A is to prevent the natural alliance between countries that are very close to each other and therefore tend to establish trade relations for the purchase and sale of their products. I think it is important that the denunciation of U.S. imperialism which is striking Russia on the backs of the peoples of the European Union is very much present.

For example, when the European Union in the previous crisis imposed sanctions on Russia, the farmers of some countries put mountains of peaches or other products that they could not export to Russia, they burned flags of the European Union and they were not leftists or communists but farmers who saw that they were destroying their economic possibilities.

Objectively, all the measures imposed by the pandemic, the digitalization, the end of small and medium enterprises, placed millions of workers in a terrible situation. Without a doubt, the sanctions against Russia will be paid by our peoples and will place many people in very strong contradictions, not ideological but economic and trade possibilities.

Putin has been patient without limits before finally attacking those he considers enemies of Russian security, he tried in the Minsk meetings to reach agreements to avoid what is happening now, before finally recognizing the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, who were the ones who fought for all these years.

Hence, Putin has prioritized several points for which he will withdraw his soldiers from Ukraine. He pointed out two of them at the beginning of the defensive operation: demilitarization and denazification. There are many in the world who are unaware of what is happening in Ukraine when people say that there are Nazis and a government that sponsors them.

Tell us about this issue that Europe should be concerned with instead of very lightly lining up behind NATO.

Actually, the Nazi presence in Ukraine has remained very strong, organized and armed since World War II. They are the same symbols and heirs of the former Nazis. I hope that people who read or listen to us remember the Nazi offensive in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and the nations that formed the bloc of the Soviet Union at that time.

It was a genocide, an extermination in which the massacre was systematic and overwhelming against the peoples, it was not against armed people, they were no armed fights and military confrontations but mass murders, which made up the total balance of the 27 million dead of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, the great majority of them civilian population.

The people of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are well aware of what “Nazi” means. They are serial killers who exterminate entire populations, homosexuals, blacks, gypsies, Jews and who have ethnic cleansing intentions. This included the extermination of the Jews in the Second World War, which leads to the fact that within Israel itself there are demonstrations against Israel’s support to the Ukrainian Nazis.

But of course, this whole process has had at its core the Donbass, Lugansk and Donetsk. It began with a coup d’état fabricated by the European Union and the U.S.A in 2014, a coup d’état that was penetrated to the core by the Nazi organizations that occupy prominent positions in the army and police, in which the Nazi battalions are integrated.

It should be remembered that there was also the massacre of workers, taking advantage of the fact that in the towns of the former Soviet Union and Ukraine the May 1st demonstration is succeeded by a series of activities and celebrations culminating on May 9th, which is the anniversary of the entry of the Red Army into Berlin.

There was a demonstration of workers who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, leaving 50 dead and more than 150 missing. There is a powerful image that gives an idea of the cruelty of these people and there is a paper written by a comrade who was part of the battalion of International brigades in Donbass, entitled, “The Hypocrisy of a Leftist “No to War” that Comes too Late” and it included a terrible image of a young pregnant woman bent over a table, who was strangled with a telephone cable when they entered to burn those who were left alive in the House of Trade Unions.

When the Russian government made the decision to recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, I believe that it did so ultimately upon hearing the statements of the Ukrainian government which was preparing to invade Crimea, calling not only for Ukraine’s entry into NATO but also the installation of nuclear weapons underground and NATO biological warfare laboratories in Odessa.

When the Russian government made the decision to protect the People’s Republics by acceding to their request for help and the denazification of Ukraine, it was simply pre-empting what was undoubtedly underway on the part of the U.S., the European Union and the Ukrainian puppet government.

President Zelensky, who certainly in this whole scenario can hardly be said to be serving the interests of his own people, but rather a Nazi presence that intends to carry out the genocide of the Russian speaking and culturally Russian population along with all the ethnic minorities that stood in the way of the Ukrainian Nazi’s patriotic cleansing. Ukraine is a puppet of the European Union and the U.S.A, and ultimately of NATO.

Do you see prospects that in this situation Russia will lean more towards China and together with other countries, such as Belarus, Iran and perhaps India, will aim to form a block against the aggressive NATO adherents?

China’s rapprochement is a historical tradition in Russia, before, during and after the Revolution. Russia is a Eurasian country and there is a tendency towards alliance or closer cultural and economic ties, etc., with Europe and another inclination that turns fundamentally towards Asia and China.

I believe that the whole process of sanctions and military escalation around all Russia’s borders, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, encircled by NATO, inevitably result, as is happening to Iran and other countries, in the search for alliances against aggressive imperialism that threatens the people. These alliances are commercial and energetic, involving all kinds of commodities.

Now they are intensified by the sanctions themselves, seeking commercial exchanges in their own currencies and progressively abandoning the dollar while establishing military alliances. The declarations of the Chinese government state that in the face of any aggression against Russia, China would respond, although China is also under siege.

The U.S. and NATO encirclement is taking place in the China Sea, and exacerbates China’s own movements and internal conflicts, leading to a coincidence of interests and the formation of blocs that will inevitably confront with a NATO which, given the economic decline, especially in the productive sectors, is becoming more intense, there are those who speak of civil war in the U.S..

The situation of massive poverty in many sectors is unsustainable, and here is some evidence: all the multinationals of digitalization, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc., have been detrimental to the productive structure of the U.S. and other countries, and this is causing internal tensions and leading to the prediction of a loss of the elections by the Democrats.

These supposedly progressive democrats, as history has shown us, are controlled by the great economic powers and by the nuclear military complex, but without a doubt it is the democratic governments that have been the most aggressive in relation to the invasions of countries, coups d’état, blockades, etc.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://www.facebook.com/strugglelalucha/videos/486023916531562

March 8 – Amidst the torrent of anti-Russia war propaganda in the United States, members of the Socialist Unity Party and Youth Against War and Racism went to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to picket and deliver a letter from people’s organizations demanding the immediate release of Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich.

The brothers, leaders of the Leninist Communist Youth Union, were detained March 6 by the notorious Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The action was in response to a call by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) to take action to save the lives of the Kononovich brothers.

The letter states:

“To whom it may concern,

“Our organizations have been alerted by the World Federation of Democratic Youth, an organization started in 1945 to unite youth internationally in efforts to fight fascism, and a non- governmental organization that is recognized by and collaborates with the United Nations:

“‘On March 6th, through the Security Service of Ukraine, the arrest of Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich was reported. Both are accused, without any basis whatsoever, of alleged collaboration with the secret services of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. This constitutes a flagrant violation of their human and political rights – a reality that, unfortunately, is not new and has been happening since the fascist coup of 2014, which was supported by the United States, the European Union, and NATO.’

“This is why we want to express our demand for their immediate release. We would also like to express our concern about their state of health. Any harm to the lives of Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich will be the responsibility of the Government of Ukraine.

“We hope that our demand will be met as soon as possible. 

“Sincerely,

Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Los Angeles
Struggle La Lucha for Socialism, nationwide locations
Socialist Unity Party, nationwide locations
Peoples Power Assembly, Baltimore
Youth Against War & Racism, Baltimore”

Readers are urged to call the Ukrainian Embassy or nearest Ukrainian Consulate to demand the immediate release of the Kononovich brothers. A sample phone script is provided below.

San Francisco: (415) 398-0240
Washington, DC: (202) 349-2920
Chicago: (312) 642-4388
New York: (212) 371-6965

Hello, my name/organization is __________ from _______________

I have been alerted by the World Federation of Democratic Youth that on March 6, the arrest of Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich was reported by the Security Service of Ukraine. Both are accused, without any basis whatsoever, of alleged collaboration with the secret services of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. This constitutes a flagrant violation of their human and political rights. I demand their immediate release. I would also like to express my concern about the state of their health. Any harm to the lives of Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich will be the responsibility of the Government of Ukraine. I hope this demand will be met as soon as possible. Thank you.

Recently, Struggle-La Lucha published an article outlining the historic and current connections between the Ukrainian government and Nazi movements. The article also rejected the imperialist information war that frames Russia as an enemy of the Jewish people. 

Since that article’s publication just a few days ago, several reports have surfaced from Ukraine that we felt were important supplements. 

False allegations of Russian strike on Babi Yar Memorial

On March 2, Western corporate media reported that the Russian military launched a missile strike that damaged the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial in Kiev. Supposedly this memorial was damaged when Russian missiles destroyed a TV tower used by the Ukrainian government to push anti-Russia propaganda. 

While Russia did launch an attack on a Ukrainian TV tower, the Babi Yar memorial was not damaged. Reporters from Ynet News visited the site personally and discovered there wasn’t a dent in any of the structures. Ynet News is the online publication of Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest newspaper in Israel. Photographs clearly show that all statues are intact and the site remains unscathed from the military conflict.

Nonetheless, the corporate media continue to circulate Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky’s false claim that the Russian military targeted the Holocaust memorial. Truth doesn’t matter to the imperialist media. It’s as simple as that. 

Adair Battalion Soldier with Horrifying Tattoo Captured in Donbass

In the first days of March, combined Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic forces launched a successful offensive against the Ukrainian nazi Aidar Battalion. These attacks resulted in the dismantling of Aidar’s high command and the destruction of Aidar headquarters. 

During this offensive, DPR forces captured many Aidar Battalion soldiers. Armenian and Ukrainian independent media were able to take pictures of one soldier. On his neck and back, he had an iron eagle tattoo and the Latin term “Suum Cuique.” That term translated into German is, “Jedem Das Seine.” It roughly means, “To each what he deserves.” 

“Jedem Das Seine” was a common German Nazi slogan and actually donned the gates at Buchenwald concentration camp. Every Jew, Roma person, LGBTQ2S person, communist or anyone else who entered Buchenwald saw that slogan. 

Aidar Battalion’s commander was recently named governor of Odessa by President Zelensky. Odessa is home to one of Ukraine’s largest and most historic Jewish communities. 

These are the types of people the Western media wants the working class to support: Nazi commanders and soldiers donning concentration camp slogan tattoos. 

The war between Russia and Ukraine began much before February 24, 2022—the date provided by the Ukrainian government, NATO and the United States for the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to Dmitry Kovalevich, a journalist and a member of a now-banned communist organization in Ukraine, the war actually started in the spring of 2014 and has never stopped since.

He writes to me from the south of Kyiv/Kiev, Ukraine, and recounts an anecdote: “What’s there at the front line?” asks one person. “Our troops are winning as usual!” comes the response. “Who are our troops?” the first person inquires and is told, “We’ll soon see…” In a war, everything is in dispute, even the name of Ukraine’s capital (Kyiv in Ukrainian, and Kiev in Russian, goes the debate online).

Wars are among the most difficult of reporting assignments for a journalist. These days, especially, with the torrent of social media and the belligerence of network news television channels, matters on the ground are hard to sort out. Basic facts about the events taking place during a war are hard to establish, let alone ensuring the correct interpretation of these facts. Videos of apparent war atrocities that can be found on social media platforms like YouTube are impossible to verify. Often, it becomes clear that much of the content relating to war that can be found on these platforms has either been misidentified or is from other conflicts. Even the BBC, which has taken a very strong pro-Ukrainian and NATO position on this conflict, had to run a story about how so many of the viral claims about Russian atrocities are false. Among these false claims, which have garnered widespread circulation, is a video circulating on TikTok that wrongly alleges to be that of a “Ukrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier,” but is instead a video of the then-11-year-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi confronting an Israeli soldier in 2012; the video continues to circulate on TikTok with the caption, “Little [girls] stand up to Russian soldiers.”

Meanwhile, disputing the date for the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war as February 24, Kovalevich tells me, “The war in Ukraine didn’t start in February 2022. It began in the spring of 2014 in the Donbas and has not stopped for these eight years.” Kovalevich is a member of Borotba (Struggle), a communist organization in Ukraine. Borotba, like other communist and Marxist organizations, was banned by the previous U.S.-backed Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko in 2015 (as part of this ongoing crackdown, two communist youth leaders—Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich—were arrested by Ukrainian security services on March 6).

“Most of our comrades had to migrate to Donetsk and Luhansk,” Kovalevich tells me. These are the two eastern provinces of mainly Russian speakers that broke away from “Ukrainian government control in 2014” and had been under the control of Russian-backed groups. In February, however, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized these “two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent,” making this contentious move the stepping stone for the final military invasion by Russia. Now, Kovalevich says, his comrades “expect to come back from exile and work legally.” This expectation is based on the assumption that the Ukrainian government will be forced to get rid of the existing system, which includes Western-trained-and-funded anti-Russian right-wing vigilante and paramilitary agents in the country, and will have to reverse many of the Poroshenko-era illiberal and anti-minority (including anti-Russian) laws.

‘I Feel Nervous’

“I feel quite nervous,” Kovalevich tells me. “[This war] looks very grim and not so much because of the Russians but because of our [Ukrainian] armed gangs that are looting and robbing [the country].” When the Russians intervened, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy handed out weapons to any citizen who wanted to defend the country. Kovalevich, who lives in central Ukraine just south of the capital, says, “My area was not affected by military actions—only by the terror of [right-wing] nationalist gangs.”

During the first days of the Russian military intervention, Kovalevich took in a Roma family who had fled from the war zone. “My family had a spare room,” Kovalevich tells me. Roma organizations say that there are about 400,000 Roma in Ukraine, most of them living in the western part of Ukraine, in Zakarpatska Oblast (bordering Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). “The Roma people in our country are regularly assaulted by [right-wing] nationalists,” Kovalevich says. “The nationalists used to attack them [Roma] publicly, burning their encampments, calling it ‘cleansing garbage.’ The police didn’t react as our far-right gangs always work in cooperation with either the police or with the security service.” This Roma family, who was being sheltered by Kovalevich and his family, is on the move toward western Ukraine, where most of the Ukrainian-Roma population lives. “But it is very unsafe to move,” Kovalevich tells me. “There are nationalists [manning these] checkpoints [along] all roads [in Ukraine, and they] may shoot [anyone] who may seem suspicious to them or just rob refugees.”

Minsk Agreements

The war in the Donbas region that began in 2014 resulted in two agreements being signed in Belarus in 2014 and 2015, which were named after the capital of Belarus, and were called the Minsk agreements. These agreements were aimed at “[ending] the separatist war by Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.” The second of these agreements was signed by two leading political figures from Ukraine (Leonid Kuchma, the president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005) and from Russia (Mikhail Zurabov, the ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ukraine, 2009-2016), respectively, and was overseen by a Swiss diplomat (Heidi Tagliavini, who chaired the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, 2008-2009). This Minsk II agreement was endorsed by the UN Security Council resolution 2022 on February 17, 2015. If the Minsk agreements had been adhered to, Russia and Ukraine would have secured an arrangement that would have been acceptable in the Donbas.

“Two Ukrainian governments signed the Minsk agreements,” Kovalevich tells me, “but didn’t fulfill it. Recently Zelenskyy’s officials openly mocked the agreement, saying they wouldn’t fulfill it (encouraged by the U.S. and the UK, of course). That was a sheer violation of all rules—you can’t sign [the agreements] and then refuse to fulfill it.” The language of the Minsk agreements was, as Kovalevich says, “liberal enough for the government.” The two republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would have remained a part of Ukraine and they would have been afforded some cultural autonomy (this was in the footnote to Article 11 of the February 12, 2015, Minsk II Agreement). “This was unacceptable to our nationalists and [right-wing nationalists],” Kovalevich says to me. They “would like to organize purges and vengeance there [in Donetsk and Luhansk].” Before the Russian military intervention, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that more than 14,000 people had been killed in the ongoing conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk despite the Minsk agreements. It is this violence that provokes Kovalevich to make his comments about the violence of the ultra-nationalists and the right-wing paramilitary. “The elected authorities are a cover, masking the real rulers of Ukraine,” Kovalevich says. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and his allies in the parliament do not drive the governing process in their country but have “an agenda imposed on them by the far-right armed groups.”

Peace?

Negotiations are ongoing on the Ukraine-Belarus border between the Russians and the Ukrainians. Kovalevich is, however, not optimistic about a positive outcome from these negotiations. Decisions, he says, are not made by the Ukrainian president alone, but by the right-wing ultra-nationalist paramilitary armed groups and the NATO countries. As Kovalevich and I were speaking, the Washington Post published a report about “Plans for a U.S.-backed insurgency in Ukraine”; former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implied an Afghanistan-style guerrilla war in Ukraine, saying, “We have to keep tightening the screws.” “This reveals that they [the U.S.] don’t really care about Ukrainians,” Kovalevich says. “They want to use this as an opportunity to cause some pain to the Russians.”

These comments by Clinton and others suggest to Kovalevich that the United States wants “to organize chaos between Russia and the Europeans.” Peace in Ukraine, he says, “is a matter of reconciliation between NATO and the new global powers, Russia and China.” Till such a reconciliation is possible, and till Europe develops a rational foreign policy, “we will be affected by wars,” says Kovalevich.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

The arrest of Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich, leaders of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine, has been condemned by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and other progressive organizations

On Sunday, March 6, the Ukrainian security services arrested Mikhail Kononovich and his brother Aleksandr Kononovich. Both are from the leadership of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine (LKSMU). The press service of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) stated on Sunday that the Kononovich brothers were arrested from capital Kiev and put in jail. The SBU has accused them of being propagandists with pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views with the goal of destabilizing the internal situation in Ukraine and create the “necessary information picture” for Russian and Belarusian channels. The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) denounced the arrest of the LKSMU leaders in Ukraine and urged progressive youth groups across the world to mobilize to demand for their freedom as their lives are in serious danger in the custody of the security forces.

Following the Euromaidan coup in Ukraine in 2014, leftist groups have been targeted and persecuted by the government, as well as by ultra nationalist and neo-Nazi forces. In 2015, decommunization laws were passed in order to ban communist symbolism and based on that, the election commission barred the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) from participating in elections in 2019. The activities of LKSMU were also threatened by the Ukrainian authorities. Its leadership, including the Kononovich brothers, were targeted by government forces and neo-Nazis on multiple occasions for leading communist politics in the country.

LKSMU is a member organization in the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) and had recently organized a campaign named “Komsomol for Peace!’ in Ukrainian cities calling for Ukraine to sever ties with the NATO alliance and to peacefully resolve the conflict with Russia.

On February 16, the two had participated in LKSMU’s protest in front of the US embassy in Kiev, demanding that the US get out of Ukraine and stop its imperialist pursuit of expansionism that has provoked a military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. They were also active in the Anti-fascist Committee of Ukraine (AFCU). The two were brutally assaulted in Kiev by neo-Nazis from “C14“ and “National Corpus” in February 2018.

Source: Peoples Dispatch

When Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022 the mass media in the United States and the rest of the capitalist countries howled in outrage. President Joseph Biden, in his State of the Union address on March 1, lashed out at Russia and announced the severest economic sanctions against that country.

Is Russia the reckless aggressor as it is portrayed? Actually it is the complete opposite. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are entirely to blame.

From 1922 until 1991 Ukraine was one of the constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), formed following the worker and peasant Revolution of 1917. In 1991 the USSR dissolved and Ukraine (along with 10 other member republics) became independent capitalist nations including Russia, itself.

From 1991 to 2014, a total of 23 years, Russia respected Ukraine’s independence. But inside Ukraine a political struggle went on as to whether Ukraine should have stronger ties to capitalist Europe or with Russia, with which it shares a 1200 mile border. In 2008 NATO announced that Ukraine would be welcomed into the anti-Russia alliance after President George W. Bush pressed NATO members, but no timeframe was given when that would happen.

In 2010 Viktor Yanukovich was elected president of Ukraine promising closer ties to Russia. He dropped the bid to enter NATO. In 2014 protests broke out in Ukraine’s capital with the support and connivance of the CIA and the U.S. government with a healthy $5 billion “donation” to pro-Western groups.  A secret phone call by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, speaking to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the press in February 2014 during the Maidan Square protests.

Nuland and Pyatt discussed the different Ukrainian presidential candidates and how to manipulate them to make sure their favorite would win. The text of the call shows that then Vice-President Biden was involved in this plot. When Pyatt explains that the European Union (E.U. – U.S. “allies”) had a different view of things, with a less anti-Moscow program, Nuland responds “Fuck the EU!”

The 2014 protests escalated with armed ultra-rightwing groups participating. President Yanukovich was illegally ousted, since the Ukrainian Parliament lacked the necessary votes for his impeachment.  He fled for his life. A string of leaders have controlled Ukraine ever since. They all have had a pro-U.S. orientation. This includes their avowed position to have Ukraine join NATO.

What Is NATO?

Following World War II the North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949 by 10 European nations and the U.S. and Canada. It was a collective military agreement clearly and openly aimed at the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist states. That NATO was and is an arm of United States imperialism is shown by the fact that by the 1960s there were 400,000 U.S. troops stationed in various European military bases. Additional countries were admitted to the alliance over the years.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist governments from 1989-91 the U.S. directed NATO to focus on wider imperialist interests. NATO militarily intervened to break up Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1999. Other NATO areas of military operations include Afghanistan, Iraq, east Africa, Libya and Turkey. Actions included enforcing no-fly zones, blockades on the high seas, bombing and providing military supplies and troops.

With the counter-revolutions in the eastern European nations, those countries were incorporated into NATO. In 1999 Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined. In 2004 Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Bulgaria entered NATO. Albania, Croatia (2009) Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020) also became members. With these additions,  NATO military bases, some including U.S. troops and nuclear missiles, were positioned closer and closer to Russia’s borders.

With the advent of the anti-Russian, right-wing coup in Ukraine, Russia reacted to secure its long standing huge naval base in the Crimea region, at Sevastopol. Russia also came to the aid of two small Ukrainian regions on its border who, resisting “ethnic cleansing” attacks by anti-Russian militias and government forces, declared themselves independent “people’s republics.”

In 2021 the Ukrainian government pushed forward with its intention to join NATO, advancing the strategic plans of the U.S. to put military bases and missiles right on the western Russian border. Ukrainian President Zelensky, whose campaign was based on bringing peace with the republics, announced that NATO is the “only solution” to his country’s ethnic problem.

All diplomatic efforts by Russia to get an agreement to keep Ukraine out of NATO and NATO bases/missiles off its border, were refused. The U.S. made an empty claim that it had made every attempt at diplomacy. But it refused to address Russia’s main legitimate demand – a guarantee that Ukraine would remain neutral and never join NATO. There really was no diplomacy conducted by the U.S.

A buildup of Russian military forces on the east and north borders of Ukraine made it clear to all that Russia would never accept this blatant threat to its security. On February 24, 2022 Russian forces moved into Ukraine and fighting has continued since then.

The U.S. and its imperialist allies are perfectly content to let Ukrainian people fight the Russians. Proxy wars are their “tried and true” policy. The U.S. is also eager to impose economic sanctions (an act of war) against Russia which will weaken it economically and politically. Not content with the destruction of the Soviet Union thirty-odd years ago, the U.S. also wants to subjugate a capitalist rival it sees in Russia. Regime change in Russia tops their agenda

It is unfortunate that the people of the Ukraine are suffering as pawns, fighting to subordinate their country to be colonized by the U.S. and other western imperialist powers.

The people of the United States are today drenched to the bone in propaganda from all the mass capitalist media. This flood has also engulfed many who should know better than to believe anything that comes from the Pentagon, State Department or the White House about the situation in Ukraine. Just as in all previous imperialist military operations, the truth will slowly make itself known as economic effects (inflation, etc.) and casualties mount.

It is entirely possible that continued fighting in Ukraine could draw in U.S. military aircraft and troops. Already billions of dollars in military hardware is flowing to the Ukrainians from the U.S. and EU. Thousands of more U.S. troops have been airlifted to neighboring NATO bases near the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Those who rush to blame Russia for this situation ignore, at their peril, the decades-long push by the United States to expand NATO and subjugate more and more territory to Wall Street’s and the Pentagon’s will.

Source: Fighting Words

The first casualty of war is truth.

To that could be added: Propaganda is the first weapon used in war.

The U.S. military-industrial-media complex is working overtime on Ukraine.

Unreported or hidden by the U.S. media, for example, is the fact that civilian casualties in Ukraine are relatively few. The Ukrainian health ministry, after the first week of the Russian “demilitarization and denazification” operation, put the number of civilian deaths at around 200. 

Five days later, as this is being written, the number is now in the range of 300 to 400, according to Michael Brenner, professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

By contrast, when the U.S. launched George Bush’s “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq in 2003, some 7,186 Iraqi civilians were killed in the first weeks of the murderous assault.

Professor Brenner says of Ukraine today: “Russian forces are calculatingly avoiding attacks on urban centers … Moscow has no interest in subjugating the country to its rule. 

“In comparison, the Ukrainian army has been shelling the city centers of Lugansk and Donetsk, producing casualties estimated by a UN agency at more than 1,300 (3 or 4 times what objective observers estimate on the Ukrainian government’s side of the battle lines). Also, the [Lugansk and Donetsk] water system has been destroyed [by Ukraine forces]. Yet, these facts are unreported and unnoticed.”

On March 2, President Biden was asked whether Russian forces are deliberately targeting civilian areas in Ukraine. Biden answered, “It’s clear they are.” Brenner notes that this was an outright lie, picked up and transmitted by the U.S. media without comment.

Readers and viewers of the U.S. media are being fed propaganda that’s meant to whip up an anti-Russia, anti-Putin war frenzy. Like all U.S. war propaganda, there is an underlying white supremacist theme.

“White supremacy is at the heart of U.S. war propaganda,” says Margaret Kimberley, executive editor of Black Agenda Report. “The exhortation to ‘stand with Ukraine’ is no exception to this rule.”

This also means there is no understanding of what is happening, including the actual events now taking place in Ukraine.

Putin is not crazy, Russia is not failing

The British Daily Mail warned in a headline: “Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing.”

Patrick Armstrong, a former analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defense who was in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow in 1993-1996, wrote on March 4: “So far the Russian military operation in Ukraine has been a reconnaissance in force preceded by the destruction of the supplies and headquarters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces …

“At the moment they are readying for the next phase. The long column that so obsessed the ‘experts’ on CNN is the preparation for the next phase. …

“As far as I can see they’ve created three cauldrons (encirclements). Probably the most important one is the one around Mariupol where the main concentration of Azov, the principal nazi force, is. 

“Another is being established around the main concentration of the Ukrainian Armed Forces facing [the Lugansk People’s Republic]. And there appears to be another developing to the east of Kiev. A super cauldron of all three is visible. The nazis will be exterminated; the ordinary Ukrainian soldiers will be allowed to go home. …

“The dilemma for the Russians is city fighting. They do not want to have a Raqqa [Syria] in which every building is destroyed, every person killed and [desolation] is declared to be [peace]. They know that at the end of the day there will still be Ukrainians and they will want them to be friends: Washington can create solitudes [ruins] far away, but Moscow cannot create them nearby.

“This greatly complicates their problem when they try to clear the nazis out of Mariupol, knowing that the nazis are using the city’s people as hostages. The same problem exists, to a lesser degree, in the other cities of [Ukrainian-occupied Donbass and eastern Ukraine]. My guess is they will surround most cities and hope that Zelinsky & Co. come to their senses. But I fear that the Mariupol battle will be horrible.

“I would expect large-scale surrenders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to begin in the next 24/48 hours (Chechen forces already claim one and have an impressive collection of ‘trophies’ to prove it). A significant proportion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is now surrounded and, as is usual (see Sun Tsu’s ‘The Art of War’) the Russians have left them an exit.

“As to Western sanctions against Russia, I think there’s a very simple answer to that: last week 1,000 cubic meters of gas cost $1,000; today it’s over twice that. Next week it certainly won’t be cheaper. Ditto for aluminum, potash, titanium, wheat. …

“What the people in the West do not understand is the ruble is the currency the Russians use inside the country but the price of oil and gas is the Russian currency outside the country. I am astounded at the stupidity: [the U.S. and NATO] are cutting their own throats and destroying their own economies.”