The view from the Donbas

Boris Litvinov, Theo Russell & Andy Brooks

by Theo Russell

Members of the New Communist Party and International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity recently held an online meeting with Boris Litvinov, the Secretary of the Donetsk Region of theCommunist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). The meeting was also joined by Gedrius Gebrauskas, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania, who is currently living in exile in Moscow. We publish here a summary of the main points which were discussed.
Boris Litvinov, the Donetsk communist leader,  said that though recent initiatives have led to talks on the Ukraine conflict the war continues unabated. On the US-Russian peace talks there are currently plenty of delegations meeting in various places, creating the illusion that the Americans want peace. But while Trump says he won’t send troops to Ukraine, he’s happy for the Europeans to pay for weapons to send to Ukraine to continue the war.
The leading European states dream of endlessly prolonging the conflict, with the aim of doing away with Russia. The European media spreads the idea that Russia is preparing to invade Europe, and the EU representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, has made the ridiculous claim that in the past 100 years, Russia has attacked at least 19 countries, “some as many as three or four times”. 
We need to explain that Russia isn’t preparing to attack anyone. But Ukraine is our concern. It was part of the Soviet Union. It is our problem and we need to solve it. Let Europe solve their own problems with the United States!
We hope to convince the European countries to stop sending money and weapons for the war.
We still don’t understand why the European states blew up the Nord Stream pipeline and cut off Russian energy.
On Western claims of about a million Russian casualties let’s be clear. There are victims on both sides in any war. But when we return 1,000 body-bags to Ukraine, Ukraine sends us 80 in return, and this is the normal ratio in such exchanges. War is very complicated, now with modern systems such as drones, and inevitably the war will carry on. 
 Zelensky is a criminal. His latest demand is for 1.5 trillion US dollars to cover Ukraine’s budget for five years. If Europe continues to send money to ther Kiev regime, a global catastrophe, including the possibility of a nuclear conflict, becomes highly likely.
We want to see a just settlement of the Ukraine crisis. We also want conflicts elsewhere in the world to end in Palestine, Iran,  Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan. This is our main concern.
Andy Brooks, the NCP general secretary. said that the primary contradiction in the world today is between United States imperialism and the rest of the world it seeks to control and exploit. President Trump may not want world domination but he does want to divide the world into spheres on influence – with the lion’s share in American hands –  in line with the wishes of the dominant sections in the USA – manufacturing, big oil and the tech giants. As with Biden, the aim is still to control the world market in energy, and to challenge any country which tries to establish genuine economic independence.
Europe believed that Russia would lose quickly in 2022 and that the sanctions against Russia and against Russian oligarchs would create the possibility of a change of leadership in the Kremlin. This they believed would enable British and Franco-German imperialism to exploit Ukraine in partnership with the Americans. This did not happen.
Trump’s 22 point “peace plan” for Ukraine includes total American control of Ukraine’s mineral resources and the current US-Russian talks cover economic projects which completely exclude Europe. 
These talks are secret. Now we oppose secret diplomacy, which was banned by the UN after 1945, and we still don’t know what is happening in the US-Russian talks, which are by-passing the United Nations. What does seem clear is that Trump’s goal is to take 70 per cent of Ukrainia’s assets for himself leaving the 30 per cent of liberated territory for Russia and nothing for the Europeans.
For our part we hope that a future settlement will recognise the legitimate right of the people of the Donbas and southern Ukraine to join the Russian Federation and that the democratic forces in Ukraine will be given complete freedom of expression. 
Boris Litvinov said our mission is to help people to open their eyes. The capitalist part of our state wants to join the US dollar system, but there is another section which is patriotic. This section includes capitalists and left forces. We recognise that we need to protect our country’s national interests , even in alliance with capitalist forces.
Now Trump is hoping to impose a digital currency on the world. When this happens and a new international situation comes about, the European states need to choose what to do. If they decide to ally with Russia, China, India, Brazil and the other BRICS states, then there will be no space left for the Americans and the dollar will collapse.
We feel sorrow for the people of Ukraine. They are being used as cannon fodder to achieve the future aims of the United States. Many Ukrainians have fled to find a better life and there are not many people left to continue fighting. Now the Western countries are talking about sending troops to Ukraine. That means you too will have coffins returning – who will be responsible for this madness?

War and peace - a Ukrainian tragedy

by Alan Stewart

Hubris: The Origins of Russia's War Against Ukraine by Jonathan Haslam, Bloomsbury 

2025. 368 pp RRP: paperback £10.99; hardback £27.99; eBook £8.79.

 

The war in Ukraine started in February 2022 and has been raging for nearly four years.

It is the biggest conflict fought in Europe since World War Two by far. It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives – both civilians and combatants.

Jonathan Haslam is a widely respected history professor. In his latest, highly acclaimed book he attempts to explain what led to the Russian intervention.

He notes that on 9 February 1990 – at the end of the Cold War –  the US Secretary of State, the emollient James Baker, assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO's jurisdiction or forces would "not move one inch eastwards”. Yet in 1999 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic all joined NATO.  It was the first wave of post-Cold War enlargement. NATO itself called it a "historic moment”. And then in 2004 the "big bang" enlargement brought in seven more countries. This included the Baltic states – the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All this further deepened Russia's sense that it was gradually being isolated and encircled.

Then in 2008 NATO made known plans to accelerate entry for two other ex-Soviet states, Georgia and Ukraine. Plus there was evidence of US involvement in Ukraine's "Maidan Uprising" which began in November 2013 and which saw the toppling of the pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych. Allegations persist that it was a CIA engineered coup.

In any case the Kremlin retaliated by annexing the breakaway autonomous Crimean republic that had left Ukraine to join the Russian Federation  and by, as the author says "fomenting a war in the Donbas region of Ukraine".

Which brings us up to the current day. The Russo-Ukrainian war is not exclusively, or even mainly, about Putin's territorial ambitions. Haslam shows that it is much more complicated than this and that the origins lie on the other side of the Atlantic. It is an interesting perspective and a fascinating read.

Ukraine: A Search for Identity and Freedom

October 1944 - Red Army liberates Kiev

 by John Maryon

Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are predominantly from the East Slav sub-group of the Slavic people.  Crimean Tatars form an important ethnic group of the population of Crimea.  The fertile lands of mineral rich Ukraine were for centuries shared between the Poles and the Mongols.  By 1500 the Ottoman empire had expanded and taken over South East Ukraine and Crimea.  In 1654, following years of conflict with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossack leader of Ukraine pledged allegiance to the Czardom of Russia in exchange of protection. Russian influence increased and in 1797 Catherine the Great established the port city of Odessa and the region became an important part of the Russian Empire. 
Today most people have heard of the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.   It was an imperialist conflict for Middle East influence between Russia and an alliance of France, Britain and Turkey.  Russia lost the war and with it influence in the region and now had only a limited access to the Black Sea. However there were two other significant impacts.  One saw the break up of European alliances and the other was that it forced Russia to become modernised. 
Following the 1917 Great October Revolution in Russia Ukraine became a Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian SSR.  A majority of those in Eastern Ukraine spoke Russian while in the western areas the people spoke Ukrainian.  The  Ukrainian language is very similar to Russian and considered by some to be a dialect. In the Crimea, Tatar and other ethnic languages were secured by decree. A devious  Kruschchev was to later cede Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. 
To understand the Ukraine of today it is important to consider some developments during the pre World War 2 period. The Congress of Soviets had proclaimed Soviet Power in 1917 and elected Soviets were established in the towns, villages, work places and military units. The new young republic started on the road to building socialism. But the peaceful life was soon to be shattered.  Counter-revolutionary forces led by former Czarist officers and the feudal lords of Central Asia waged a civil war against the Soviet republic. They were to be supported by forces of intervention. British, French, American and Japanese forces in the Far East invaded the Soviet Union. An undeclared war of intervention was underway and Britain occupied Odessa while Germany took control of a large part of western Ukraine. 
The Soviet forces were united and soon built an alliance with workers and peasants and established the Red Army. A war economy was established. The counter-revolutionary military superiority was short lived as conflicting interests emerged. The White Guards, as the alliance of foreign backed fighters was known, depended upon foreign finance and was essentially a mercenary army.  When the money stopped during the major capitalist economic crisis they fell apart. The imperialist powers however continued to occupy western parts of the country.  The imperialist powers used former Soviet territory to establish a cordon sanitaire from which they could carry out attacks on the young republic. 
Collectivisation of agriculture enabled farms to be modernised. The days of the horse-drawn wooden plough were over and Ukraine started to become an important grain growing area.  The process of change was not an easy one. The years 1932-1934 saw the worst drought in living memory.  A typhoid epidemic ravaged the Caucasus.  Many agriculture experts and cadres sent from Moscow were murdered by fascist gangs.  Some kulaks slaughtered all their animals and invading forces burned crops. Many people died of starvation. However by the late 1930s Ukraine had become the bread-basket of the Soviet Union while the industrial regions of Eastern Ukraine became known as the Soviet Ruhr. 
At 0400 on 22 June 1941 Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Of the 27 million Russians who were killed during the war, five million were from Ukraine plus 1.5 million Jewish people who lived in the region.  Nationalists from the former ruling class in Western Ukraine supported Hitler and the Nazis. The leader of the Halychyn SS Division , Stefan Bandera, was held responsible for many atrocities.  Jews, communists, socialists, the mentally ill and the disabled were slaughtered in the death camps. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin the Soviet Union fought courageously  and was able to smash the Nazi war machine. The battle of Stalingrad is considered to be the turning  point of the Second World War which ended in victory in 1945, But after the war many Ukrainian Nazis were made welcome in the USA and Britain. 
During the post-war era industry quickly developed and agriculture flourished. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union. Oligarchs took over in Russia and Ukraine grabbing the wealth that had been created during people's rule with former officials changing sides to get their noses in the trough. Living standards fell and unemployment reappeared after an absence of 50 years. With the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians were promised that NATO would not expand eastwards.  The gullible Russian leadership believed this but the imperialists saw it as an opportunity to expand their malignant influence, gain access to Russia's rich resources and to threaten China. 
The United States is notorious for its never-ending wars and coups for regime change. The long list includes Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chile.  In February 2014 it was Ukraine's turn. In a coup planned, financed and supported by the USA, the democratically elected government of Yanukovych was overthrown. Opposition parties were banned, politicians arrested and demonstrators murdered in Odessa by being driven into the trade union building which was then set on fire. The new pro-Nato and pro-European Union puppet regime embarked on widespread repressive measures against Russian speakers, including a ban on the Russian language. Strong resistance in Eastern Ukraine led to the establishment of independent states which were recognised by Russia and later along with Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation. Between 2014 and 2022 some 8,000 civilians were killed by shelling from regime held areas.
In 2022 Russia commenced its special military operation to defend those regions under attack, prevent the expansion of Nato eastwards and rid the Ukraine government of supporters of the infamous Nazi collaborator, Stefan Bandera. The civil war became a proxy one as the Americans and their Western allies poured in money and weapons. Negotiations, such as the Minsk agreements to end the conflict have been repeatedly sabotaged by Western leaders. The Western powers are losing their war and Ukraine is tragically being destroyed in scenes similar to those left in Vietnam and Korea. Instead of bringing the tragedy to an end Western leaders, including, Macron of France, Merz of Germany and Starmer of Britain, have become obsessed with keeping the war going. They continue to pour in money to keep the conflict going while their own economies face collapse. 

Donbas communists: our historic mission

by Boris Litvinov

 Boris Litvinov, is the First Secretary of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) District of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF)

Our troops have advanced some 35 to 40 kilometres from Donetsk, which means the capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic is now beyond the reach of Ukrainian artillery and tanks, Now the administrative border of the Donetsk Republic with the Dnepropetrovsk region is just 10 kilometres away from the front. But there are still many problems due to the supply of Western weapons such as missiles and modern drones. So the attacks on Donetsk are still ongoing with weapons supplied to Ukraine from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO countries. But whatever weapons are used against us the decisive factor is the fighting soldier – the infantry. 
Of course, many people are now discussing the forms in which negotiations on ending the war will take place, but the question is, who will participate? And what will the negotiations be about?
At the moment, the DPR is not a participant in the negotiation process, as it was in 2014-2020. Today we are a legitimate region of the Russian Federation, according to the Constitution. Any negotiations on war and peace should be conducted by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Government of our common country. But, in our deep conviction, negotiations with Zelensky should not take place. Zelensky's legitimacy as President of Ukraine ended last May, when new elections were due to take place. He, Zelensky, is nothing to us right now. He can't decide anything. In fact, Zelensky is totally dependent on the United States and he is completely unable to make any independent decisions, so negotiations are possible only between the United States and Russia. But Ukraine will not even be the main subject of these negotiations.
Negotiations can be about areas of interest in the world; about global political and economic reconstruction like after the Second World War. And in such a new configuration of the world, Ukraine will become only part of a global issue.
Well, the main issue should concern all possible guarantees for the establishment of peace between states with different ideas about their future. No one should impose their will on others. Every state should develop independently of the wishes of others. And the peoples living in a particular region of the Earth must decide for themselves who to unite with, which state to be a part of, and which peoples to build their future with. We, the residents of Donetsk, Lugansk, and then Zaporizhia and Kherson, made our choice in a referendum – we will build our future with Russia. And this is the will of the overwhelming majority of the population of our republics and regions.
Now we see that Trump has already identified his areas of interest in Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama. And Russia also has its own post-Soviet areas of interest.
Russia stopped cooperating under the Warsaw Pact in 1991 in the forlorn hope that NATO would end its hostility to Russia. And one of the fundamental problems for Russia and its allies is that the NATO military bloc is moving step by step closer to Russia's borders. 
Nevertheless the time will come when none of the military blocs will threaten the other and there will be no military bases near the borders of Russia or the historical and traditional territories that were under Russian influence. We think that Trump probably understands this, and that the expansion of NATO to the East was a mistake.
European politicians – Macron, Starmer, Scholz and others think that they have a chance to end Russia, and that they should not miss this chance. In fact, European countries have been trying to do this for several centuries. Over the past 200 years, Russia has defeated Napoleon and the Ottomans; Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Fourteen of the Entente countries including the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan who intervened against Soviet Russia in1918 during the civil war that ended in their defeat in 1922. And the Soviet Union defeated the German Nazis and their allies during the Second World War. 
The Western countries tried to unleash a new world war against the USSR in the 60s of the 20th century. And the Cold War, declared by the West against the Soviet Union in 1946, has not stopped to this day, having turned into a hybrid war. 
The Russian people were able to withstand all these difficulties, thinking not so much about their personal well-being, but about preserving their historically formed land, preserving the covenant of their ancestors, strengthening the unity of the Orthodox faith and respect for the faith of the peoples inhabiting Russia, thinking and realizing the dream of humanity about a just society.
The people of Russia demonstrate solidarity in defending their interests, dedication, heroism and confidence in achieving victory over any invaders. It has always been so, and it will be so in the future.  And today, in the struggle for our true sovereignty, in the struggle against neo-fascism, in the new struggle against the West, we see that history repeats itself.
The 19th century Prussian Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, said "Make alliances with anyone, start any wars, but never touch the Russians...the Russians cannot be defeated, we have seen this for hundreds of years. Russians, even if they are dismembered by international treaties, will reconnect with each other as quickly as particles of a cut piece of mercury”. 
We are doing everything necessary to ensure that these warnings reach the minds of those who once again dream of ending Russia.
The Ukrainian state has turned out to be untenable. It can only exist together with Russia, and it has always existed as part of Russia. After the abdication of Czar Nicholas II from the throne in February 1917, the bourgeois rulers in Kiev proclaimed the independence of Ukraine. They held out on bayonets and money from foreign invaders for less than three years. But when they united with Russia and the other Soviet republics into a single socialist state – the USSR, Ukraine turned into a world-class advanced republic with a population of 52 million.
After the temporary cessation of the existence of the USSR, Ukraine again tried to build its independent country – again relying on money, weapons, and an alien Western ideology. And the result: the economy is in decline, the population is impoverished, Ukraine is being robbed by everyone, a war has been waged with its historically fraternal Russian people, and the population has shrunk to less than 30 million. This is the result of independence. Today, wars for the interests of the West are destroying the gene pool of Ukraine. More and more new generations of Ukrainians are being thrown into the fire of war.
We, the residents of Donbas, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and the whole of Russia, understand our historical mission – to live in peace with all peoples, freely manage our own destiny, and build on our land a just society that many peoples of Europe, Asia, America, and the whole Earth have dreamed of for centuries. 
And we, in our desire, will surely come to the victory of reason over the forces of evil. This is what our predecessors did, and we will continue to do so.

Greetings to peace activists of the Netherlands

 

We are publishing the contents of this video message from one of our closest friends, Leonin Ilderkhin, because it gives a brief but excellent description of the situation in Ukraine, and of the demands of all Ukrainian anti-fascist democrats and patriots.

Dear friends, my name is Leonin Ilderkhin, I'm from the Coordination Council of the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine.
We greet with all of our hearts your event in the Netherlands, and the other places where you make your great activities.
I want to speak briefly about the core issue of the present day conflict around and inside of Ukraine.
The roots of this conflict lie in the desire of the capitalist centres, that is the USA and England, to revive their economy and their military industrial complex. Now, by using the present day conflict, they have achieved their goals, partially. They have revived their military industrial complex, and they have raised the prices in the world for weapons.
They have oppressed Western Europe and generally the European Union by greatly increasing the price of natural gas, oil and other necessities. In this they are destroying their competitors in Western Europe, and in this way they want to oppress the Russian Federation.
They don't care about what is happening in Ukraine or what is happening to the population of Ukraine, to the people there. They don't care, they consider the Ukrainian land as a territory where they test their weapons, where they test their military capabilities, in this way they hope to overcome the general crisis of capitalism that started in 2007-8. They are trying to escape from their own internal crisis.
In this situation we want to put forward these slogans: No weapons to the conflict zones, whether it is Ukraine, Palestine or Yemen; No weapons, no military personnel and no mercenaries to these conflict zones - from Western Europe, from the USA, from England or from France.
In this situation we want to oppose all actions which promote the continuation of conflict. The USA and England plan to occupy all the countries of Eastern Europe including the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, etc. We don't want this, we want peace in Europe, we want peace in the world. In this situation we want to give our great support from our hearts to you, dear friends.

Stop arming Ukrainian fascists!

In London...

by Theo Russell

Activists protested last week in London, Glasgow and Dublin, calling on Britain and NATO to stop sending weapons to the illegitimate Banderite junta in Kiev. They demanded “No More British Challengers, Storm Shadows and Depleted Uranium for Ukraine!”, “No More British Weapons for Ukrainian Nazis”, and “Zelensky - Your mandate expired on 29th  March 2024 - Step aside and stop blocking peace talks!” 
The protests on 15th August coincided with the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kursk province, where the British government has given permission to the Kiev junta to use British weapons on Russian territory, including Challenger 2 tanks which use depleted uranium shells. 
These shells don’t pose an immediate radiation threat, but the particles from their use go into the soil and water table, remaining radioactive for 4.5 billion years. They have led to a surge in cancer cases affecting people of all ages in Serbia and Iraq, and no-one knows how the DU can be removed from the environment.
But the biggest controversy concerns permission for Kiev to use its Storm Shadow missiles for long range strikes into Russia. Less than a week after Labour took power, Keir Starmer suggested that Britain would give Zelensky the green light, but the next day Downing Street changed its mind.

...Glasgow

The problem for the fanatical war lobby at the Daily Telegraph and at the top of the British military is that the Storm Shadow is a joint project and its use requires the permission of France, but also from the Americans as they are the dominant force in NATO’s military support for Ukraine.
The UK has repeatedly pressed Washington for permission for long range strikes, but last week a Pentagon spokesman told a briefing that the USA is concerned about the potential for escalation.
The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that such strikes would lead to NATO bases anywhere in the world becoming targets of the Russians and states and armed groups allied to Russia. 
Such NATO strikes would be incredibly reckless and another step towards a possible all out NATO-Russia conflict – and yet Britain continues to push for them!
Former UK ambassador to Moscow Tony Brenton said on BBC Radio last year that "Britain is the most aggressive of all the NATO members in Ukraine” and has “more special forces in Ukraine than any other NATO country”. 
A senior aide to President Putin, Nikolay Patrushev, says that NATO countries – primarily the USA and the UK – had masterminded the Ukrainian foray in Kursk province, which he said was “planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services".
In that operation a video has emerged of Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk wearing Second World War German helmets sporting the emblem of the Waffen SS and taunting a Russian prisoner.
The International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign to expose the countless crimes of the Banderite Nazis in Ukraine – NATO’s proxies whose ancestors created their own fascist ideology in the 1930s – is operating in a very difficult and hostile environment in Britain. 
The murders, torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been totally hidden by the British media, which since the NATO coup in 2014 has reported only from one side of the war which started that year.

and Dublin...

But we know from ten years of protests on the streets, and our experience of working class communities, that very many people in Britain don’t believe the daily lies of the Banderite-London-Washington propaganda network, but they do know that Nazis are running wild in Ukraine. 
At every protest we have held the number of people showing support for our demands has been 20 to 30 higher than those who have attacked us.
At our London protest many people showed their support, some (including one who looked like a senior military officer) were very unhappy. The only person to launch an aggressive verbal attack was a Ukrainian Banderite, who is presumably on an extended holiday in Britain. He was met with an equally strong response and didn’t stick around for long.
Despite the difficulties we face we will continue our solidarity with all those resisting the return of Nazism to Ukraine, defending the rights of all of Ukraine’s national communities, and the millions living in exile.
Since 2014 we have warned that what is happening in Ukraine is “a warning to Europe and the world”. After recent events in Britain, it is now clear to everyone that the fascist threat is growing rapidly in the rich and powerful capitalist states on both sides of the Atlantic.

Britain joins the war in Ukraine

by K Hill

While the US has brought about regime change in Ukraine with the Maidan coup in 2014, installing a thinly disguised neo-Nazi government of Banderites and corrupt politicians to loot its resources, sell its land and saddle it with massive debts thanks to dodgy IMF loans, the UK has been heavily involved in the training of their military – now the second largest European army (after Turkey) in NATO.
The UK involvement has involved everything from bringing Ukrainian commanders for "special training" in the UK, Nazi tattoos on show much to the embarrassment of the British media, to the existence of special advisors, in reality SAS and SBS units, to supervise "on the ground" the attacks on Snake Island and Kerch Bridge.
This is the real reason our British press has been so obsessed with these two "targets" over the past two years, despite their lack of strategic importance, because they are great PR and distract the British public from the grim reality of millions of dead and wounded Ukrainians over the past years.
This is a war Ukraine can't win, never could win, but a war that the UK along with the US said would be worth it because if the Ukrainians "weakened Russia" they would be rewarded with European Union and NATO membership – despite the fact that they didn't qualify, and never would. Now the EU and NATO are so weak, they may well become members simply because both are on their last legs, completely ruined by this unwinnable war along with the rest of Europe and the UK.
When offered more than reasonable terms of peace by Russia, the US sent Boris Johnson to persuade Zelensky to continue the war, while the US funded billions of dollars of "loans" Ukraine can never repay to stay in the war, knowing they would be defeated, but determined they should keep on fighting until Biden is re-elected.
The tragedy is that Ukraine could never win "the war" and the Americans knew that. Russia has more and better weapons than NATO, can produce more and better weapons than NATO can in the future, even if Europe and the UK move to a "war economy". Russia now has a bigger, better trained armed forces than NATO, although it didn't before the Americans provoked this war in 2014. In fact Russia was reducing its armed forces in order to focus more on rebuilding its economy after US sanctions and building up international relationships with other victims of American imperialism.
Sanctions have now bankrupted the West, and BRICS will make US hegemony irrelevant, but the UK's real humiliation has come with Sunak's admission that the UK won't "directly fight Russia", because it exposes the fact that we already have been secretly fighting Russia for a decade, in an unwinnable war that has exposed our complete inability to do anything but start what we cannot finish.

Donbas communists speak

Boris Litvinov with RT's  Steve Sweeney in Moscow

by New Worker correspondent

Boris Litvinov, secretary of the Donetsk district of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, joined a Zoom meeting with members of International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) while on a visit to Moscow in February. This was our first contact with comrade Litvinov for some time as residents in the Donbas are still unable to access many applications including virtual meeting platforms.

It came at a time when the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces have massively stepped up deliberate attacks on places where large numbers of civilians gather with long range weapons. There have been two recent horrific attacks in Donetsk city and the town of Lisichansk in Lugansk in which almost 50 civilians died.

“Every day the situation in Ukraine is becoming more and more unpredictable. Now our forces, those of the Russian Federation and the local militias, are step by step gaining more positions in the fighting,” Litvinov said.

“After all the talk about the Ukrainian counter offensive it is now obvious that it has failed. Now both sides are preparing for offensives in the spring and summer.

“But there is a big difference between the conduct of the war on both sides. French, British and American long-range missiles and shells are being used indiscriminately against Donetsk and other cities in the Donbas. Civilians are being killed every day, and 50 percent of Donetsk city is without power. This has become a big problem.

“The Russian Federation and Ukraine are waiting for the other side’s ammunition to be exhausted, or for the other side to weaken.

“If we look back to the attacks on our country throughout history, in 1918 14 countries of the Entente Powers attacked Russia, and in the Second World War all [the Nazis led] the forces of Western Europe were brought together to fight our country.

“At the moment, you wouldn't believe it, 50 countries are participating in this military operation against Donetsk.

“What Western people can't understand about the Russians is our collective mentality and our internationalism. This is especially difficult for many Anglo-Saxons, for people in Britain and the United States, to understand.

“Yes, sometimes we take time and we don't take action, we are absolutely different from people in Western European countries, but when it comes to a huge threat, sooner or later we ull together, shoulder to shoulder, to resist.

“What is happening now, we are together, we are brothers, we are comrades. This is our country, this is our motherland. Maybe not everyone realises this, but in spite of this the majority of our people realise that when there is a huge threat we can come together to defend ourselves.

“Actually, this is a disaster which is threatening our country, and it is not just Russians by the way, it is also 130 different nationalities living in our country.

“For us this is very emotional for all of us. We can't understand why Europe doesn't resist. There are millions of people in different countries, we do understand that most of the people are brainwashed, but still ordinary people should understand that it is high time to stop sending money to kill people, instead of sending money on healthcare, education and housing.

“But people in the West have very short memories, they should understand never to mess with Russia, never to attack Russia. These people don't learn from history that we know how to fight, and sooner or later this will bring terrible results for many European countries.

“This time we will achieve victory, but at a terrible price. How many lives of young people, how many Russian people, how many Ukrainian people, do we need to lose?

“It's high time to stop it. We don't want to fight, please stop sending money to kill people. What can we do? We have to defend our people.

“Please remind your people, please read the history of Russia. Whenever Russia is attacked it has been rebuffed, and it has been our victory.

“The Ukrainians are Slavonic people, they are our brothers, so please make efforts to pressure your governments to stop sending money to kill people in Ukraine.

“Putin is not Russia, and Russia is not Putin. There are many people in Russia, including ourselves, who are against him. To a very large extent what is happening now is his fault. If he had taken the decision to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk republics he should have done it in 2014.

“He waited eight years, and it is his fault that people are dying today. We in the Communist Party have called on Putin to do this for eight years, and during that time Ukraine acquired huge amounts of armaments and soldiers from abroad. So it is his fault that our guys are dying now in Ukraine, his fault personally and the government which he heads.

"The Communist Party is alive and our comrades now have a faction in the Donetsk parliament, the People's Council, with six people out of 90. They are working hard and actively, and actually more than any other faction in the parliament. There are four communists in Kherson, three communists in Zaporizhia and four communists in the Lugansk parliament”.

Fighting fascism in Europe!

With Tatiana Desyatova and Boris Litvinov of the CPRF  

by Theo Russell

We support the victory not of Russia, but of the world against resurgent fascism in Europe

I represented the NCP and the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign, met comrades and friends at a key-note conference in Moscow on the Ukraine crisis last month.
1 joined campaigners from Holland, France, Austria, Italy, Brazil, the Basque Country and India, who overcame the difficulties in travelling to Russia imposed by the imperialist sanctions regime, to meet in the Russian capital for the 6th annual conference of the Red Square-Molotov Club.
The Moscow conference, which ran from the 23rd to 25th May, included members of Russian parties and Russian experts, Ukrainian political emigrants, and representatives from the Donbas, as well as members of the international peace, communist, socialist and social democratic movements.
The conference was organised by the MART Corp Radio & TV agency, and the main topics were the conflict in Ukraine, political repression in Ukraine and in the NATO countries, and the issue of prisoners of war in Ukraine. But the issue which took up most debate was that of peace talks.
The conference provided an invaluable political and economic analysis of the entire global backdrop to the conflict in Ukraine and agreed on the most urgent priorities for international ant-fascist activists.
Leonid Ilderkhin, the conference organiser and member of the Molotov Club and the Union of Political Emigrants and Political Prisoners of Ukraine (UPEPPU), kicked off proceedings by saying that: “While many are calling for peace talks, this won't happen. The Istanbul 1 and Istanbul 2 talks were both wrecked by Boris Johnson.”
“However,” he continued, “it is still necessary for peace and solidarity organisations to call for an armistice and peace talks to expose the true nature the true nature of the imperialists, and to raise the real dangers of the Ukraine war moving to a more dangerous level, something the more aggressive and hawkish members of NATO would like to see.”
Larissa Shessler, Chair of the UPEPPU, shared this viewpoint, saying: “We do not support the call for the Donbas Republics and Russia to enter into ceasefire talks.” She went on to describe the almost barbaric crimes on an horrific scale committed by the Kiev regime's fascist henchmen in Ukraine since February 2022.
“You cannot imagine the level of fascism in Ukraine, this has never been seen before in Europe since 1945. After the Special Military Operation (SMO) began there has been total repression of any opposition whatsoever in Ukraine.
“All organisations, movements and parties not supporting the regime have been suppressed,” she said. “Organisers of the Immortal Regiment marches [which honour the fallen in the Second World War] in every town in Ukraine have been eliminated, they have disappeared and had no contact with their families. But the European Court of Human Rights will not accept any cases concerning anyone on the left in Ukraine.
“Even very minor people who were active in the past have been ‘removed’, such as a woman who organised the Immortal Regiment march several years ago in Zaporizhia. Thousands of political prisoners have been tortured, had no medical treatment or proper food. Over 100 in the city of Nikolaev alone.
“When Ukrainian forces retook Kherson, hundreds, thousands of people experienced repression. In Kupyansk, anyone believed to have co-operated with Russian forces was massacred. In Snihurivka, even an old woman who had received humanitarian aid was arrested and beaten.
“We can't envisage how the nature of the current regime in Ukraine can ever be changed,” Larissa concluded.
Yuri Moskovsky, an official from the Federal Agency for Management of Special Economic Zones, described the war in Ukraine as “a struggle for people's power, supported by the Russian Federation, against fascists and Nazis who are using ‘democratic’ cover”.
Moskovsky said: “The power structures in Ukraine were supported by world finance capital long before 2014. This support is continuing today in the form of troops, arms, information and Intelligence.
“Attempts to engage in negotiations will not succeed,” he said. “We see that in Ukraine there is no democracy and no space for Russian-speaking people. To agree to an armistice would give the regime hope that they will not be defeated and will only lead to a prolonging of the conflict.
“At this moment, the world is moving increasingly towards nuclear conflict. It is only by achieving the goals of the SMO will we be able to truly bring this conflict to an end.
“The prosecution of political criminals and the rulers in Ukraine must be the same justice as that given to German and Japanese fascists in 1945. However,” he warned, “the infection of fascism will always be a threat, and their example inspires those who share their views around the world.”
Leire Azcargorta, a journalist and interpreter from the Basque Country, told the meeting that in the 1986 Spanish referendum on whether to remain in NATO, the Basque and Catalan regions voted to leave NATO. "This means that if these regions had been independent, they would have left NATO."
In March this year, she said, there was a huge demonstration against NATO in the Basque capital Bilbao.
Andrea Luchitti, an Italian journalist living in the Donbas, spoke about the resurgence of fascism in Italy, with the Brothers of Italy, the descendants of the puppet fascist government under German occupation in the Second World War, now the governing party of Giorgia Meloni, and the president of the Italian senate keeping a statue of Mussolini in his house.
He said that most people in Italy are against sending weapons to the Kiev regime, with opinion polls showing 60 per cent of voters against any Italian involvement in Ukraine.
Darya Mitina of the United Communist Party of Russia (OKP) and a former elected representative in Ukraine, said that: “Today, Ukraine is the principal military entity at the service of the NATO states. Negotiations with the existing regime are not possible, peace negotiations can only take place after the destruction of the present Ukrainian regime.”
“We support the victory not of Russia, but of the world against resurgent fascism in Europe,” she said. “Everybody knows that the war will end only when the west stops sending arms to Ukraine. Hence, the main task is to end the supply of weapons.”
Vasily Koltashov from the New Society Institute, an independent Russian social science body, provided an analysis of the global political and economic contradictions and features that led eventually to the conflict in Ukraine: “The military situation in 2022 was against a backdrop of a financial crisis in the USA and failures in its system of credit. 2022 also saw a great inflation in food and energy prices causing severe economic damage to the economies of the USA and Europe, whilst there was a radical improvement in the Russian economy.
“The main basis of economic development in Russia is the sector of industry that precedes raw material extraction. Previously the European countries were using Russian oil to make diesel and other products, now they are importing diesel from India and Turkey made from Russian oil.
“This not only guarantees Russia's economic development in conditions of sanctions, but many developing countries becoming more developed, whilst de facto the so-called developed market economies are becoming less developed.
“The elites of those developed economies see in the war against Russia the solution to their economic problems. These elites truly believe that all global economic and social reforms must be blocked.
“They want to break Russia economically and militarily, so that they can then take under very strict control Asia and its resources, and then increase the pressure on China.
“This is why in conditions of the bank crisis and the possible default of the US government, in Washington there is no reduction in military or foreign expenditure, while financial support for the fascist regime in Kiev will be stepped up by the European countries and the World Bank.
“I cannot say that the highest circles of Russian bureaucracy were ready for such a sharp conflict with the Western powers. Since 2022 the global political and economic conflict has been growing.
“We must understand the roots of this conflict, which is taking place on the former territory of the Soviet Union. Those roots of this crisis are very, very deep, and lie in the needs of the Anglo-Saxon financial elites to obtain the vast natural resources of Central Asia.
“Sometimes they use economic methods, such as the US interest rate hikes, which provoke the decline of the Western economies and depression in world markets. The aim is to depress raw material prices to damage the Russian economy. And these elites don't care that in doing this they ruin their own economies.
“I'm explaining all this because we need to understand that the idea that an immediate peace in Ukraine will bring an end to the threats to Russia from the West is a Utopian one.
“At first, the fascist regime in Kiev must collapse, and together with this there must be the liberation of European nations from the influence of the USA. Only after this can we imagine that the USA, Canada and Britain can consider some progressive social and economic changes.
"So the conflict is a long one, the conflict is very deep. Most important of all is that the theoretical possibility of the defeat of Russia in this conflict will not bring any good to the European or the world economy, because a new cycle of economic growth must have at its core the economies of the BRICS countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa].
“These are the new, big economies that can develop the industries preceding the exploitation of raw materials, and this requires the development of social welfare states that bring about social consumption, which is the opposite model to that of the neo-liberal capitalism of the West.
“The Western middle classes cannot increase their consumption because this is only possible through more and more credits, which cannot last forever. That is why the new core of the world economy must be the BRICS countries.
“The most important aspect of fascism is that it involves the [members] of the population who are not educated masses, who are involved in nationalist, ultra-right and fascist groups who have a much better life than everybody else. There are two ways to demolish this, physical elimination through war, or long-term stagnation, as we have seen before in history.”
“The elimination of the Kiev regime will pave the way for a much better social life in all the European countries. Their choice is between the physical military elimination of the Kiev regime, or stagnation, decline and fascist regimes in Europe,” Koltashov concluded.
Sonia Van Den Ende, a journalist from the Netherlands who is on the Mitroverets death list and is unable to return home, compared the war In Syria to that in the Donbas. “The West used ISIS and Daesh nazis as proxies, and we saw 4.9 million people die during the Arab Spring movement. We saw the Azov battalion all over Mariupol, and at the Azovstal steel plant I personally saw copies of {Mein Kampf} and Nazi emblems.
“A new fascist system has been created in the West, and we need to confront this. Everyone wants peace, but we can't see how that is possible with the Kiev regime. We need to see a new Nuremberg process in Ukraine.”
Vladimir Sadkov, Chairman of the all-Russian Officers Union, called for “a united international anti-fascist front to co-ordinate international groups and parties, with the purpose of ending arms supplies, ending the violations of human rights in Ukraine, and building support for the Russian SMO”.
He described the situation at the front as “more or less equal, neither side can achieve a military victory”, adding that since the start of the SMO, 4,136 Donbas civilians have died, including 136 children.
Leonid Ilderkhin spoke on the issue of prisoners of war since the Russian intervention, highlighting the shameless attitude of the Ukrainian government and military commanders to their own troops. “Thus,” he said, “the Kiev regime demonstrates a disdainful attitude towards international laws on prisoners of war, in fact, it ignores them while its Western backers remain silent.”
Leonid pointed out that many of the Ukrainian troops at the front have been arrested, poorly trained and sent to fight. “These soldiers have no motivation to fight and thousands have simply surrendered at the first opportunity – they run to the Russian forces and say ‘please take us from the hell of Ukraine’.
“This explains why Ukrainian forces have deliberately shelled POW prisons to kill them as they are seen as ‘enemies’, since the majority of them deserted.
“In talks on the exchange of POWs, the Ukrainians do not want the return of sick or injured soldiers which would cost them to look after, instead giving priority to returning captured neo-Nazis.
“The POWs’ families are cruelly neglected. They receive no information about their loved ones, the Kiev regime says nothing about them, and many are simply reported as killed in action.”
Leonid also pointed out that: “Many Ukrainian emigrants from all over Ukraine – people who left to escape the fascist regime – have joined the Donbas and Russian armed forces. This is,” he concluded, “an inhuman and bestial regime.”
Denis Zomer, from the United Communist Party of Russia, said that in 2014 “the west decided that Banderism was the way forward in Ukraine”, and that now “the fascists’ idea is to fight to the last Ukrainian”.
“The Russian Federation,” she said, “is not fighting Ukraine, but it is fighting NATO, and NATO wants to test new weapons. The aim of this war is to destroy the Russian nation.
“The only choice for anti-fascists in Ukraine and around the world is to help normal Ukrainian people to clean their country from Nazism.”
Alexey Albu, a survivor of the Odessa Trade Union House massacre in 2014, and a leading member of Borotba the Ukrainian anti-fascist movement, commented that “many left organisations around the world are connected to imperialist structures and so-called NGOs, and they in turn Influence other organisations”.
He said that: “The role of the dollar in international trade makes the USA the main accumulator of finance capital in the world, but there are several other poles. At the centre of one pole is Russia.
“In recent years we have seen coups or coup attempts in Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Belarus. All of these have been aimed at encircling and weakening Russia and opening-up the vast resources of the former Soviet Union to Western interests.
“We agree on the need for negotiations, but this is not possible until the West stops sending arms to Zelensky.
“We have the deepest respect for the work of our foreign comrades and their support for the anti-fascist struggle and for a democratic society in Ukraine, and we feel very much and respect this work,” Albu said.
“Those comrades cannot imagine how important their work is for anti-fascists in Ukraine and in exile. We call for this work to continue, and to involve more people and the working class of many countries.”
Elena Veduta, professor at Moscow State University Department of Strategic Planning, said that “we are at the stage of the crisis when the capitalist class seeks a military solution to the crisis”. She quoted Frederick Engels, saying that every successive war resulting from the capitalist cycle was more catastrophic than the last.
“Today we are on the edge of a world war that will draw in China. Henry Kissinger has predicted that in 10 years there will be a war between the USA and China affecting all of mankind.” She described the ruling regime in Ukraine as “savages and animals”.
“The only solution to the crisis is a planned economy with balanced and proper distribution, which produces the products needed by society. Only economic planning can defeat the globalist agenda, and Russia must take the lead in this work.”
Austrian professor Leo Gabriel, a promoter of the World Social Forum and the European Social Forum, spoke about international efforts to mobilise for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
He said there was going to be an International Summit for Peace in Ukraine to draft a Vienna Appeal for Peace, on 10th to 12th June in Vienna, which will include a condemnation of "the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine".
Messages will be received from former Austrian president Heinz Fischer, Noam Chomsky, Colombian Vice-President Francia Márquez, Guatemalan Cardinal Álvaro Leonel Ramazzini, Brazilian president Lula da Silva and former US presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, and speakers including Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Bolivian Vice-President David Choquehuanca. Other participants include Kate Hudson from UK CND and Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, as well as from many other countries.
Leo said: “The intention is to call for an immediate ceasefire. Although we know it won't happen, it is still necessary to expose the true face of NATO and to raise the danger of the conflict spreading.
In its concluding memorandum, the Red Square-Molotov Club adopted the following slogans for immediate international campaign work:
    • “We call for the rapid exchange of prisoners in Ukraine and in other conflict zones!”
    • “We condemn the Western sanctions against Russia and other countries!”
    • “We call on the governments and peoples of the European Union to resist the policy of sanctions initiated by the United States against the Russian Federation! Sanctions bring mutual harm to the EU and Russia!”
    • “We call for an end to the systematic violations by Western countries and Ukraine of the terms of the agreement to provide the world market with grain from Ukraine!”
    • “We demand an end to military assistance from the United States and their allies to the Kyiv regime!”
    • “We support the initiative of Humberto Carvalho (Brazilian Communist Party) to create the World Organisation of Anti-Fascists!”
    • “Stop NATO! Peace to the Nations! Peace to the Peoples!”

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”.

Dublin protesters say No to War!

By Theo Russell

Irish campaigners stood by the people of the Donbas last Saturday in a demonstration outside the British embassy in Dublin to protest against Britain's role in Ukraine.
    They accused the UK government of sabotaging the peace negotiations last year, prolonging the war with massive arms deliveries, the active involvement of British military personnel in the fighting in Ukraine, and years of training and arming Banderite Nazi battalions and covering up their horrific crimes against civilians in the Donbas and other Russian speaking parts of Ukraine.
    The action was organised by the Truth and Neutrality Alliance with support from the Social Democracy movement and a number of Irish republicans, members of Ireland’s Russian community and other anti-war activists including two who had travelled from England in order to take part in the action.
    In a blatant act of political interference, six members of Ireland’s secretive Special Detective Unit demanded the names and addresses of some of those in attendance. Undeterred, the protesters remained outside the Embassy for an hour, highlighting the thousands killed in Kiev’s eight-year war on the Donbas and the western media censorship of the conflict.
    The Truth and Neutrality Alliance, said in a statement: "The war has been going on now for almost a year. The war is the direct and deliberate result of the failure to implement the Minsk agreement and the eastward expansion of NATO.
    "Britain and NATO played a key role in that and has continued to up the ante ever since encouraging greater involvement in the conflict, arming one side in it and sabotaging any efforts at peace negotiations, ratcheting up the tension and risking outright nuclear war which will see us all burn, not just Kiev or Moscow.
    "Ireland is complicit in this. We have called this protest at the British Embassy due to the ongoing escalation of the war in Ukraine and Britain’s role in this as evidenced by the recent decision to send more Challenger tanks to the extreme right-wing regime in Ukraine.
    "Since the start of the war the Irish government has moved us closer to being full members of NATO, imposing sanctions and engaging in the training of troops involved in the war. Irish neutrality was already violated with the use of Shannon Airport by US troops.
    "Now the Irish government wants us to participate in a foreign conflict. As part of its commitment to the war, the government has agreed to take in an unlimited number of Ukrainian refugees. We DO NOT OPPOSE refugees coming to Ireland, but the solution to their plight is peace, not more war. They are not to blame for the war, that lies with all the parties involved in it, which includes Britain, the USA and all the members of NATO.
    "Peace means respecting the people of Ukraine but also respecting the right of the people of Donbas and Crimea to decide their own future. Crimea was only incorporated into Ukraine in the latter half of the 20 th Century.
    "The people of Donbas initially wanted more autonomy and respect for their culture, under the Minsk Agreement. The failure to implement it, the sabotage by Britain and others of the accord alongside 8 years of attacks by Ukrainian forces pushed them towards calls for independence and that must be respected.
    "The push for us to join NATO has been accompanied by an unrelenting campaign in the Irish media, with journalists openly advocating war and even praising the Azov Battalion whilst overlooking all of their crimes. Coverage is one sided and dissenting voices are not given much if any space at all.
    "This occurs at a time when the Irish government is complicit in the blocking of media sources that are critical of their position. Whilst pro-war official media sources from European governments and the Ukrainian government have unfettered access to the airwaves, Russia Today is blocked in most European countries. Other non-governmental critical voices are censored on social media and through the use of algorithms to hide their articles from a wider public.
    "We call for the lifting of real and also de facto censorship in the media. We call upon the Irish government to cease its support for war and instead argue for peace talks now. We call for a clear withdrawal from our involvement in NATO and the war. There are no humanitarian training exercises. All military training is designed for war, even demining.
    "The Irish people are paying a costly price for involvement in the war and the people of Ukraine and Russia pay for that in blood. It is time for peace.
    "No to War, No to NATO!"

• South Front report

What freedom of speech really means…

When the chips are down not much if the latest saga involving George Galloway is anything to go by. The maverick Scottish politician who has been elected to Parliament six times – starting with Labour and then on independent platforms – is known throughout the labour movement for his support of the Cuban and Palestinian people and his defence of Iraq when it was invaded by US-led imperialism.
    A master of the media Galloway was sacked by talkRADIO after sending an allegedly anti-Semitic tweet about Liverpool’s victory over Tottenham in the Champions League final in 2019. But he stayed in the limelight broadcasting on the international services of the Russian and Iranian media, and championing a variety of causes including the party he now leads – the Workers Party of Britain.
Galloway has learned to live with the wrath of the Zionists and Blairites. His politics have fired the anger of cranks and fanatics – he was even attacked in the street during the Gaza war in 2014. But he’s never faced a concerted effort to prevent him from arguing his corner for good or bad on the streets and at public meetings up and down the country. Until now…
    Galloway clearly crossed a Rubicon when he embraced the cause of the people of the Donbas. And when he launched his NO2NATO NO2WARS movement the hidden hand went into action to stop it getting off the ground.
    Speakers included Galloway and former Labour MP Chris Williamson, along with two Irish Members of the European Parliament and a number of other campaigners and journalists. Attempts to hold mass meetings in London have been sabotaged after St Pancras New Church and the Conway Hall cancelled bookings for his new campaign. Conway Hall says it had been subjected to unprecedented harassment – including a barrage of “intimidating emails and social media posts” which meant that “Conway Hall can no longer host your event as we are now unable to ensure the safety of our building and our staff on and offline”.
    Williamson has joined Galloway in denouncing the “anti-democratic cancel culture” that’s being used to silence opposition to Nato. He accused “erstwhile liberals” of being complicit in a state crackdown on anti-Establishment views.
    This is something new. We never saw this when British forces were actually fighting during the Falklands conflict and the Yugoslav, Iraqi and Afghan wars. So why now?
    It’s clearly because the ruling class are afraid of anything that challenges the American narrative on Ukraine.
    Galloway’s party puts it another way. Conjuring up the spirit of Chairman Mao they say “it is good if we are attacked by the warmongers and their online trolls, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. The trolls attack us wildly, threaten the venues and harass staff, they paint us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between them and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.
    “Our slogan, “No to Nato, No to War” is more widely known and understood than before, more people buy tickets and await the announcement of the next venue. Other events purporting to speak against the war are allowed to go ahead in peace, precisely because they do not challenge the imperialist narrative that the Ukraine conflict began just 1 year ago. This is a lie, and one we are exposing”.
    This we would wholeheartedly agree.

Defend the right to strike

As waves of strikes sweep through Britain the Tory government responds in the only way it knows how – repression. The Sunak government is moving anti-union legislation to curb industrial action in key public sectors to ensure that essential public services are maintained during industrial action.
    Rishi Sunak likes to pose as a pragmatist and a liberal conservative, and he was certainly opposed to the sham, empty popularism of Boris Johnson and the crude neo-liberalism of Liz Truss. But while he can rely on their support he’s not a member of the Tory “One Nation” faction in parliament and he clearly doesn’t want to burn all his bridges with the Neanderthal element that is clamouring for more and more anti-union laws to ban industrial action in more and more areas of the public and private sector.
    If this new legislation gets off the ground it could easily be used to crush all independent union action by allowing employers to sack strikers out of hand if they walk out and take unions to court for compensation if they do. Reducing unions to impotent staff associations that existed in some sections of the old, and now long gone, public sector or the “company unions” set up by employers specifically to keep independent unions out of their factories has always been the dream of some in the Tory camp. It is after-all what the “Victorian values” the Tories used to drone on and on about actually means.
    But we’re not going back to the days when workers eked out a miserable existence working round the clock on pittance pay while kids crawled up chimneys for pennies to stave off starvation.
    We get the usual weasel words from Labour’s leaders vowing to repeal any new anti-union legislation. We see the TUC called on its members to come together to agree on a collective response to the new threat to their existence. But what we need is total defiance – enough to kill this proposal stone dead.

On the unity of the movement

It is amusing to note that calls for a new Communist International often come from the most sectarian elements of the world movement. But world-wide contacts between communist parties can only strengthen the communist cause.
    Nevertheless a new international can only succeed, firstly if it includes and has the agreement of the ruling parties of People's China, Cuba, Democratic Korea, Laos and Vietnam. It should be based on Marxism-Leninism and the principle of equality between big parties and small parties. It must recognise the principle of a collective secretariat which reflects the views of the co-operating parties and not that of one big party. And it must recognise that in countries where there is more than one communist party -- the case in most countries these days -- the differences between them are a matter for those parties alone to resolve.
    The New Communist Party has supported many of the efforts taken since the collapse of the Soviet Union to encourage co-operation and the exchange of views between communist and workers parties throughout the world. Though the Brussels May Day festival and seminar programme organised by the Belgian Workers Party (PTB) has been dissolved the annual Solidnet conferences that began in 1998 are still going – but even that forum is now being undermined by sectarians who refuse to recognise the principled stand of the Russian, Donbas and Ukrainian communists and equates the prime mover – US-led imperialism – with the major victims; the Russians and the people of the Donbas.
    Now, more than ever, is the time for a clear call from the world communist movement for an end to the fighting and a just and lasting peace in eastern Europe. This can only come with a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the rights of the Donbas republics and the Crimea to join the Russian Federation and equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.

Odessa Solidarity Campaign Joint Statement

An anti-imperialist position on the crisis in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is raging on with no end in sight. People are suffering, and fears are rising that the conflict could widen and even involve nuclear weapons. Many well-meaning people are calling for a ceasefire and negotiations.
    We all want peace, but it does no good to promote solutions that don’t take into account what led up to the war in the first place. 

    Back in 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the U.S. government promised that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward. But since then, all 14 new NATO members have been former Soviet states or allies. Sweden and Finland are expected to join soon. Both Georgia and Ukraine, which border Russia, have asked to join. That would complete the encirclement of Russia’s western flank. It would be as if Russia were building an anti-U.S. military alliance of all South and Central American countries and was about to admit Mexico. Obviously, the U.S. would see that as an existential threat.
    When Ukraine first became an independent state in 1991, Ukraine and Russia were at peace. But in 2014, the U.S. backed a violent, right-wing coup that brought to power an anti-Russian government that openly embraced neo-Nazi, paramilitary militias hostile to Ukraine’s Russian minority.
    This new situation, which included the massacre on May 2, 2014, of at least 42 anti-coup protesters in Odessa by a fascist-led mob, was seen as gravely threatening by the heavily ethnic-Russian areas of eastern and southern Ukraine. The result was Crimea voting to rejoin Russia, which it had been part of until 1954, and Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbass region declaring themselves independent.
    Then Ukraine, Russia, Donetsk and Luhansk agreed to allow those two entities to become autonomous areas within a united Ukraine. But Ukraine never implemented the terms of those Minsk Agreements, and instead carried out a military campaign to retake the separatitst region, with the loss of some 15,000 lives.
    Meanwhile, since at least 2014, the U.S. and other NATO countries have carried out regular, massive joint military exercises with Ukraine – land, sea and air – right up to Russia’s borders.
In late 2021 and early 2022, President Putin of the Russian Federation offered to hold negotiations with the U.S. and NATO to discuss Russia’s security concerns, but the offer was ignored. This was before Russia recognized the independent republics in the Donbass. Subsequent Russian offers to negotiate also were rejected.
    By February 2022, Ukraine was intensifying its war in the Donbass, leading Russia to intervene, with the stated purpose of defending the people of the Donbass and “demilitarizing” and “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. Whether people agree with that action or not, it was anything but “unprovoked.”
    Since then, as of Sept. 18, the U.S. Department of Defense admits to providing $16.1 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Other estimates have it as high as $40 billion – not counting aid the U.S. says is coming from 50 other allied countries – ensuring that the war will continue indefinitely. What began as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine has become a proxy war by the U.S. and NATO against Russia, with Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
    It isn’t necessary to endorse the Russian intervention in order to see that the real provocations for the war were the relentless eastward expansion of NATO; the U.S. support for the right-wing, anti-Russian coup of 2014; and the continuing and expanding war by Ukraine to retake the Donbass.

This being the case, we call on all peace and antiwar activists around the world to demand:

No to all U.S./NATO support for Ukraine!
No to all U.S./NATO military actions in Ukraine!
No to all U.S./NATO sanctions against Russia!
No to NATO and all U.S. wars and occupations everywhere in the world!

• Eduardo Artés – First Secretary & former presidential candidate, Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), Santiago de Chile, Chile
• Bahman Azad – President, U.S. Peace Council, USA
• Ajamu Baraka – National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace, USA
• Sinia Benigassan – Bureau d’information Alba Granada North Africa, Tunis, Tunisia
• Matyas Benyik – President, ATTAC Hungary Association, Budapest, Hungary
• Prof. Dr. Horst Bischoff – Deputy Chairman, ISOR e.V., Berlin, Germany
• Carl Boggs – Los Angeles, California, USA
• Joachim Bonatz – Deputy Chairman, ISOR e.V.; Vice President, OKV e.V., Berlin, Germany
• Heinrich Buecker – Coop Anti-War Cafe; Member, German Peace Council & World Beyond War, Berlin, Germany
• Melinda Butterfield – Co-Editor, Struggle-La Lucha newspaper, USA
• Jose Capitan – Opcion Obrera (Workers Option), Venezuela
• Dr. Dieter Dehm – Ex-Member, German Parliament; Former Member, German Bundestag; DIE LINKE, Germany
• Rudolf Denner – Spokesman, Presidium, OKV e.V., Berlin, Germany
• Communist Party of Australia
• Georg Ehmke – Lt. Colonel aD, Werder, Germany
• Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos – Maine House of Representatives, Friendship, Maine, USA
• Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice, Canada
• Sara Flounders – Co-Director, International Action Center, USA
• Frente Unido América Latina – Berlin, Germany
• Leo Gabriel – Anthropologist, Journalist & Filmmaker, Austria
• Bruce Gagnon – Anti-imperialist Activist, Maine, USA
• Leonid Ilderkin – Coordinating Council, Union of Political Emigrants & Political Prisoners of Ukraine, Russia
• International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity – UK
• Major General Manfred Jonischkies, Retired – Member, Board of ISOR e.V., Berlin, Germany
• Dr. Sabine Kebir – Publicist, Lecturer, Berlin, Germany
• Ulla Klötzer & Lea Launokari – Coordinators, Women for Peace, Finland
• Gregory Laxer – Author, “Take This War and Shove It! A most unwilling soldier 1967-1971,” Connecticut, USA
• League of Young Communists USA
• Jeff Mackler – National Secretary, Socialist Action, USA
• Stephen Martin – Author at Counterpunch, Edinburgh, Scotland
• Savvas Matsas – Ergatiko Epanastatiko Komma (EEK – Workers Revolutionary Party), Greece
• Dimitris Mizaras – Chairman, Marxist Workers’ League of Finland
• Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO), Canada
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Agneta Norberg – Former Chair, Swedish Peace Council; Women for Peace, Sweden
• Helmut Ortgies – Member, Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime, VVN/BDA, Gß Zimmern, Germany
• Manuel Pardo – Frente Antiimperialista Internacionalista (Internationalist Anti-Imperialist Front), Madrid, Spain
• Party of Communists USA
• Stephen Phiri – Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, Zimbabwe/South Africa
• Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza – Editor, Orinoco Tribune, Caracas, Venezuela
• Sungur Savran – Devrimci İşçi Partisi, (DIP – Revolutionist Workers’ Party), TurkeyJochen Scholz – Lt. Col, Ret., GEAF, Berlin, Germany
• SOS Ukraine Resistent, Italy
• SOS Donbass, Italy
• Prof. Nako Stefanov – Chairman, Bulgarian National Peace Council, Bulgaria
• John Steinbach – Coordinator, Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area, USA
• United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) – USA
• U.S. Friends of the Soviet People
• Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, USA
• Phil Wilayto – Editor, The Virginia Defender
• Workers Voice Socialist Movement – Louisiana, USA

plus 420 individual endorsements from peace campaigners from all over the world