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| 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!”
