Statement by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Texas, Sept. 21.
The Socialist Workers Party hails the resistance of Ukrainian working people and calls for the defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invading forces. We stand with Russian toilers protesting Moscow’s war after the escalation of war moves and threats by Putin. The defense of Ukraine’s independence is in the interests of working people worldwide.
Putin claims that areas of Ukraine seized by Moscow — parts of Donbas, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — are now integrated into Russia, with a sham referenda to be staged this week. He threatens to use “all weapon systems,” including nuclear weapons, to defend his plunder of Ukrainian territory. This makes it evermore important to get out the truth.
Putin’s assertion that his murderous invasion is a defensive measure to counter Ukrainian aggression and NATO governments is utterly false. A sovereign and independent Ukraine poses no threat to Russia.
SWP candidates present an independent working-class foreign policy, one that starts from the interests of working people at home and abroad, not hypocritical calls to defend “freedom” made by President Joseph Biden and leaders of other imperialist powers. Their only concern is to protect the profits and political interests of the wealthy rulers they serve, who are utilizing the war to expand their militaries for more deadly conflicts. The SWP demands the complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops, as well as its conventional arms and nuclear missile systems from all of Europe.
The SWP opposes sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. and other ruling classes and demands they be lifted immediately. These measures fall overwhelmingly on working people and are an obstacle to building the fraternization and bonds of solidarity between working people in Ukraine, Russia and worldwide that can help force the end to Putin’s war.
For seven months the SWP has campaigned for the defeat of Moscow’s invasion. It will continue to explain the stakes for working people, above all the necessity of building a revolutionary working-class party that can lead millions to take political power into our own hands — as toilers did in Cuba in 1959 by making a socialist revolution — or we will face a future of more social devastation, world war and the threat of nuclear conflagration. Join us!