Donbas communists speak out!

Boris Litvinov with Theo Russell

By Theo Russell

“The immediate aim is the demilitarisation of Ukraine, and the removal of the current leadership of Ukraine by any means” - Boris Litvinov

On 28th  May 2023 I met with Boris Litvinov, secretary of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) District of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), in Moscow. His comments are reported below.
“We have spent eight years fighting for the Donetsk People's Republic with volunteer detachments against the Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF).
        “The Minsk and Normandy negotiations were cynically used by the Western Powers to buy time for Ukraine to build up its armed forces, and in 2021 Zelensky declared his intention to reoccupy the Donbas.
“After 17 February 2022 shelling of the Donbas by the UAF greatly increased, and on 18 February the mass evacuation of children from the war zone to the RussianFederation began.
“The UAF launched an attack with 60,000 troops, and the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s militias had to defend along a border of 476 kilometres with a force of 27,000.
“We realised that we had to defend our self-determination and independence with our lives. Faced with this situation, the Donbas republics appealed to the vice president of the Russian Federation for military assistance.
“The Kiev regime still controlled 35% of the DPR. We forget that for the UAF reoccupying all of the DPR was symbolic, as this is where the ‘Antimaidan’ movement began in 2014.
“The DPR is 96 per cent urbanised, it has a strong community spirit, and strong ties with Russia. We feel that it is a part of Russia.
“Before 1860 there was no industry in Donetsk. The Welsh engineer John Hughes was invited by the Czarist government and founded the city of Donetsk in 1870. Some of the factories he built there are still operating today.
“There is no history of conflict between the Christian, Russian Orthodox, Jewish or Buddhist communities in Donetsk, and there has always been a strong sense of unity among the population.
“During 20 years of Nazification Russophobia has spread to the whole of Ukrainian
society, from primary school education onwards, while Russophobia
“Only this month (May 2023), Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, at a meeting with Zelensky in Kiev, publicly praised the death of Russians in the current conflict, saying US support for the war in Ukraine was ‘the best money we’ve ever spent...and the Russians are dying’.
“It will take at least fifteen years for this anti-Russian mentality in Ukraine to change, requiring a complete transformation of education and the media.
        “In our view the immediate aim in the current war is the demilitarisation of Ukraine, and the removal of the current leadership of Ukraine, by any means.
“On May Day this year an exhibition was held in a park in Donetsk City on international solidarity with the Donbas republics, with photos from the UK, US, Ireland, Italy, Germany and other countries.
“At the Havana Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties in November 2022, general secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Pyotr Simonenko stated that the current war is not a Ukrainian war, but a world war about the shape of the global order, and said that our noble task is to preserve the Russian nation.
“The plan for Western imperialism is to solve the so-called ‘Russian problem’. If Russia is eliminated, the imperialists plan to replace it with multiple states governed by fascist regimes. This is the only way in which imperialism would be able to control such a vast country.
“Today many socialists and communists around the world are together with Russia, but in future they may move in different directions, so there is a necessity for a left turn in Russia. We believe that only socialism can provide the opportunity to restructure and rebuild such a large country.
“For several years the CPRF has upheld the slogan ‘save the Russian world’ - ‘the Russian Mir’.
“At the CPRF central committee on 27th May 2023, it was decided that it was necessary to fight for a Soviet world in Russia, as well as for all other national groups of the former Soviet Union. This was the first time such a goal was stated at a CPRF CC meeting”.