After four years of trying to conquer Ukraine, Moscow’s forces have recently lost a total of 150 square miles of territory to Kyiv. They have launched a spring offensive but were stopped cold with mounting losses as working people in Ukraine are determined to defend their country against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase their nation’s sovereignty.
Since Washington began its assault on Iran, rifts have deepened between the U.S. rulers and rival imperialist governments in Europe over Moscow’s war.
President Donald Trump’s administration is continuing to push Kyiv to concede significant parts of eastern Ukraine to make a deal with Moscow to end the conflict. Washington seeks to advance its goal of weakening Beijing by pulling Moscow away from the closer ties it has established with the Chinese rulers. Allowing Moscow some control over its “spheres of influence” was part of the White House’s 2025 National Security Strategy document.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says the White House is pressuring his government, by making any U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine conditional on allowing Moscow to take over the rest of the Donbas, the country’s mining and industrial region.
Putin continues to insist on his central war aim of seizing Donbas. He told Kyiv it had two months to cede Donbas or face more deaths. Most Ukrainians are strongly opposed to ceding territory.
Moscow’s forces, despite numerical superiority, have barely advanced in two years with over a million dead or wounded. Countless more would have to be sacrificed on the battlefield for Moscow to try to conquer all of Donbas, which includes cities heavily defended by the Ukrainian military.
In contrast to Washington, the rulers in France, Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe are opposed to any outcome of the war that would strengthen Moscow. They’re concerned much more with their own vulnerability to attacks by Putin’s regime than with Ukraine’s independence and are moving to rebuild their run-down military forces. The German rulers plan to convert several Volkswagen and Rheinmetall car plants to manufacture armaments.
Moscow continues to bombard Ukraine’s cities to try to demoralize working people. Kyiv’s anti-missile protection system is stretched thin but downs hundreds of missiles each night. Some inevitably get through to deadly effect.
Ukraine has begun producing its own long-range missiles and drones, which can now hit military and infrastructure sites deep within Russia. Ukraine’s focus on military targets is in marked contrast to Moscow’s airstrikes which are aimed at maximizing civilian casualties.
Small farmers protest in Siberia
At home, Putin’s regime faces resistance by working people trying to defend their livelihoods. In early March small farmers in the Novosibirsk region in eastern Siberia protested against the arbitrary slaughter of their livestock by local authorities who said they were culling herds infected with an unspecified “animal disease.”
Over 90,000 head of cattle and many pigs and sheep were slaughtered. Farmers from five different regions went to Moscow March 31 to demand that Putin stop the mass culling. Over 31,000 people signed a petition demanding he act.
Villagers were furious not only at the officials’ high handedness, but also over paltry compensation for their livestock, often their sole source of income. They obstructed the vehicles of veterinarians sent to kill their animals. Several farmers were detained for blocking roads and seven were fined.
Svetlana Panina, a farmer from Novoklyuchi, returned home March 14 to find all her 200 animals slaughtered. “We were basically left homeless, without anything, without any means of existence,” she told the press. She demanded an explanation from local authorities but they refused.
Stanislav Sankeyev, head of the People’s Farmer Association, suggested authorities were hiding foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks to protect Russia’s livestock export trade. In February, the government in Kazakhstan banned imports of livestock, meat, and milk from four Siberian regions in Russia, including Novosibirsk. In mid-March, the rulers in Belarus imposed a broader ban.
The herds of large agricultural companies, such as Miratorg, Russia’s largest pork and beef producer, haven’t been culled at all.
The farmers’ fight captured national attention. “What kind of a mess are we being led into?” popular commentator Victoria Bonya said. “We won’t stay silent.” Her call for Russian people to “stand up and rebel” was echoed widely, including among some soldiers.
The Kremlin has a long history of callous disregard for working people on the land, regardless of their nationality.
Every year, Ukrainians commemorate Moscow’s genocidal Holodomor — “extermination by hunger” — carried out by Joseph Stalin’s regime in Moscow. Millions of Ukrainian peasants were deliberately starved to death in 1932-33 while their grain rotted in Soviet warehouses after being requisitioned by the government.
The Ukrainian people’s best ally is working people in Russia who also face assault from Putin’s regime.