‘NATO won’t intervene because it doesn’t want a new world war. However, the Ukrainians have the right to take weapons from wherever they can get them in a fight to the death with the invaders.  Let them have anti-aircraft weapons instead of petrol bombs. ‘

‘There’s a difference between calling for that and saying that Ukraine shouldn’t ask for/accept such help. Which it won’t get. Meantime the government is handing out guns and calling on people to make Molotov cocktails to throw on invading Russian troops.’ 

The two comments above were made by two supporters of Ukraine over three years ago in a Facebook discussion just after the Russian invasion in 2022.  Besides the puerile notion that one of the largest armies in Europe would be fighting with Molotov cocktails, the idea that NATO would not be involved was even more ridiculous.  The predictions obviously haven’t aged well, but the point is that they were nonsensical even at the time.

The prediction that there would be no NATO involvement could only be made through ignorance (or rather ignoring) that it was already involved.  This facilitates the equally spurious notion that the war was ‘unprovoked’, the staple claim of the western media and political class.  From the US sponsorship of regime change in 2014 (following years of interference) to the training of it army, military exercises and provision of weapons; to the new Ukrainian regime putting the goal of NATO membership into the constitution. All these were steps towards war when Russia had said repeatedly that NATO membership was unacceptable.

In a third Facebook contribution, another supporter of Ukraine said that the right to self-determination meant the right to join NATO if that is what a country wanted.  Given the difficulty of arguing that supporting membership of an imperialist alliance was a ‘right’, and therefore something socialists should support, the majority of left supporters of Ukraine decided that it would ignore the logic of its support for Ukrainian self-determination and pretend membership of NATO was not the issue.

Hence all the previous history of NATO enlargement and repeated Russian objections could be ignored, along with all the other western imperialist involvement just mentioned.  Opposition to imperialism now meant opposition to Russian imperialism, no more and no less.

The problem was that it was very hard to claim that NATO membership was irrelevant.  Even in western media there were enough newspaper columns pointing out the Russian attitude to NATO expansion to make it clear that pushing Ukraine to join NATO, either from the inside or from outside, was ‘crossing the brightest of Russian red lines’, as the US ambassador, and later CIA Director, put it around the time of the 2008 NATO summit.

In this summit NATO declared it wanted Ukraine as a member, which was subsequently enshrined into Ukraine’s constitution in 2019.  Supporters of Ukraine are keen to quote Putin in claims that he does not recognise Ukraine as a separate country but ignore statements that make its membership of NATO central to Russian policy.  Equally, statements by leading western figures have demonstrated the importance of NATO membership; NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated in 2023 that Putin “went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders….” 

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Davyd Arakhamia, at the peace talks just after the Russian invasion, stated that Ukrainian neutrality was the main Russian condition for a peace deal and that the war could have ended in spring of 2022 if Ukraine had agreed to neutrality:“Russia’s goal was to put pressure on us so that we would accept neutrality.  This was the main thing for them: they were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality, like Finland once did. And we would give an obligation that we would not join NATO. This is the main thing…”

But the main thing wasn’t done and the war continued as the US and British promised to provide more support to Ukraine, whereupon once again the left supporters of Ukraine denied the role of these imperialist states in perpetuating the war, and continued supporting it themselves.  Zelenskyy has claimed that he was told by Biden and other NATO leaders before the invasion that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO but that publicly, “the doors will remain open.”

If this is untrue, then it can be assumed that the public position of future Ukrainian membership was a real possibility.  If it is true, and Biden had no intention of permitting NATO membership, perhaps because of the risk of more or less immediate war with Russia, it means that the invasion was provoked without the perceived threat to Russia being an immediate possibility.

It also means that Biden and others were content for the war to happen, not to ensure NATO membership for Ukraine, but with the objective of pursuing the project of crippling Russia through war and sanctions – turning the ‘Ruble into rubble’ .  It also means Zelenskyy was happy to engage in the war because this is what Ukrainian policy already involved – recovery of Crimea and Russian occupied areas of Donbas. There was no attempt to prevent it by signalling agreement to neutrality. Now, however, it is Ukraine and its economy that is being turned into rubble.

In any case, the war was the result of inter-imperialist rivalry that the supporters of Ukraine have determined is of no consequence to its cause or nature, so that the only issue that matters is self-determination for a country and state that is already independent but whose political leadership colluded with western imperialism to subject its people to war.  In effect, the war ensured that Ukraine became an even greater vassal of Western imperialism, although this has not prevented these self-declared ‘anti-imperialists’ supporting its imperialist alliance.

The striking thing is not only the stupidity of pretending that NATO ‘won’t intervene’ and that Ukraine will seek weapons ‘which it won’t get’ but that the vassalage of Ukraine to Western imperialism was not denied right at the start! Ukraine, it was claimed, ‘wishes its vassalization in the belief that it is the only guarantee of its freedom. We must, of course, also oppose its vassalization, but for the time being, the most urgent need must be addressed . . .’

Vassalage is the position of a person granted the use of land, in return for rendering homage, allegiance, and usually military service or its equivalent to a lord or other superior.  A perfect description of Ukraine – a subordinate instrument of Western imperialism that the left supports while claiming it is fighting an anti-imperialist war!

The duty of socialists is not to support the subordination of a working class to the results of vassalage by imperialism, through its bourgeois class and state, on the spurious grounds that ‘it is the only guarantee of its freedom’. Vassalage is not freedom.  The ‘urgent need’ of the Ukrainian working class before the invasion was to prevent its bourgeois leadership from taking it into war on behalf of western imperialism. The urgent need thereafter has been to bring it to an end; against the efforts of Western imperialism and the Ukrainian state to keep it going.

Forward to part 2