Russian President Vladimir Putin is pursuing a murderous war on working people in cities all over Ukraine. At the same time, he willingly sacrifices thousands of Russian toilers in suicidal “meat grinder” attacks on Ukraine positions in the Donetsk region to gain small advances. He is trying to wear down working people in Ukraine who are fighting a larger foe to defend their country’s sovereignty.
After a massive air attack on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, July 31, the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU) issued a statement calling for international solidarity. At least 31 people were killed, including five children, from a barrage of 309 Russian drones and eight cruise missiles that struck the city. While Kyiv’s air defenses shot down many of them, some missiles and drones got through and hit their targets.
“A Russian missile destroyed a nine-story apartment building” in Kyiv, the KVPU said. Homes, schools, kindergartens, hospitals and a university were damaged. The same day another strike targeted a five-story residential building in Kramatorsk. It was half destroyed and three people were killed.
The union called for solidarity as Ukrainian workers “resist and fight for peace in these dark days.”
Strikes on working-class neighborhoods like this have been raining down for months. They are Moscow’s answer to the refusal of Ukrainian toilers to bend their knees to Putin. And its answer to President Donald Trump, who had hoped to turn Moscow into an ally in Washington’s conflicts with Beijing, but now demands Putin agree to a ceasefire by Aug. 8 or face tighter imperialist sanctions.
Dmitry Medvedev, one of Putin’s top lieutenants, called Trump’s ultimatum “a threat and a step towards war.” Trump responded by warning such “highly provocative statements” could “lead to unintended consequences.” The U.S. president sent two nuclear submarines closer to Russia, in “the appropriate regions,” he said, in response.
Washington’s moves are not based on concern for working people in Ukraine, but to defend the U.S. imperialist rulers’ determination to maintain their dominant position worldwide.
Moscow attacks Ukrainian civilians
June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in Ukraine in the over three years of war, a month when Russia launched 10 times as many missiles and munitions attacks compared to June last year. In all 6,754 civilians were killed or injured in the first half of 2025, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The group has documented 13,580 civilian deaths in Ukraine since the war’s beginning.
Despite the butchery of Moscow’s attacks, Ukrainian forces do not target civilian areas in Russia.
A Ukrainian drone hit a major oil depot near the southern Russian resort city of Sochi on the Black Sea Aug. 2, dealing a blow to Moscow’s military.
With total disregard for the heavy losses Russian workers and farmers in uniform are suffering, Putin is doubling down on waging a war of attrition. He believes he can win by wielding Russia’s larger population and greater economic weight.
Putin says his goal is to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation-state. His Great Russian chauvinist regime blames Ukraine’s independence on V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ support for the right of nations oppressed under the rule of the czars to self-determination. This is why, despite the enormous cost of the war, the Kremlin has shown little interest in any peace deal.
As of Aug. 5, the Ukraine military estimates that Moscow’s troops have suffered 1,058,260 casualties.
Inside Russia, the Kremlin has exploited wartime conditions to exile, jail or murder opponents of Putin’s regime and his war, and to shut down any independent media. While this repression has largely stifled opposition for now, disaffection and resistance continues to surface.
Two Russian rappers, Dasha Vladimirovna, 21, and Karina Evgenyevna, 19, were arrested after filming a music video against the backdrop of jet fuel tanks burning after the Ukrainian drone strike near the Sochi airport.