Statement by John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director, issued Oct. 26. Studer made three reporting trips to Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.
Socialist Workers Party candidates present an independent working-class foreign policy that starts from the common class interests of working people worldwide against those of the bosses and their governments.
We unconditionally back the Ukrainian people’s courageous fight to defend their country’s independence. We demand an immediate end to Moscow’s inhuman bombardment of Ukraine’s cities and total withdrawal now! Russian President Vladimir Putin’s KGB police-state regime is intent on crushing the Ukrainian people, eradicating their country and reimposing the prison house of nations that existed under the czars, with him on top.
But as Moscow’s battlefield defeats mount, Russian soldiers are becoming increasingly demoralized and disillusioned, and opponents of Putin’s war inside Russia are becoming more outspoken. In the face of repression, their determination is inspiring. The fraternization and unity of working people in Russia and Ukraine will be crucial to defeating the invasion.
But Washington’s biting sanctions are an obstacle to building solidarity between working people in Russia and Ukraine, hitting above all on Russian working people and aggravating the crisis they already face.
Workers and farmers in Ukraine are at the center of resistance to Moscow’s invasion. But they also face President Volodymyr Zelensky’s capitalist government. It is using martial law to ban strikes, protests and political parties, tear up union contracts and aid the bosses’ drive to profit at workers’ expense.
Under the banner of protecting “democracy” and “freedom,” Democrats and Republicans wield Washington’s power to defend the interests of the U.S. capitalists. The deployment of Washington’s military worldwide serves those class interests. Their foreign policy everywhere is an extension of capitalists’ assaults on jobs, wages, unions and living conditions at home, and of their attacks on constitutional freedoms. We demand the U.S. rulers get all their troops and nuclear weaponry out of Europe.
The consequences for workers of Moscow’s launch of the first full-scale war in Europe in decades are enormous. Capitalist rulers everywhere are scurrying to reassess their alliances and how best to protect their national interests, spurring a new arms race. They show that capitalism inevitably means more wars in which our class will be used as cannon fodder. Above all, it shines a spotlight on the necessity of working people taking political power out of their hands.
That is what the Cuban Revolution shows is possible. In their millions working people overthrew the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship and replaced capitalist rule with a workers and farmers government, forging a communist leadership in the process. Socialist revolution in the U.S. is the road to advancing a future for all humanity.