Tag Archives: Sotsialnyi Rukh

What does “Don’t betray Ukraine” mean? (2 of 3)

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In a Democracy Now programme, US professor John Mearsheimer told the Ukrainian ‘democratic socialist’ Denys Pilash  that “the best outcome would be to settle this war now” since it will otherwise  be “settled on the battlefield.’  Pilash could only respond that there were still measures such as sanctions that could be taken by the West to pressure Russia into a ceasefire.  This is not a proposal to end the war but to allow Ukraine to regroup and the West to put itself in a better position to support it when it is recommenced.  Ukraine has not tried to disguise this intention and has not modified its maximal objectives.

The British and French have threatened to put their own troops into Ukraine and want the US to protect them under the formula of ‘security guarantees’.  They hope that this would dissuade Russia from taking the offensive again following any ceasefire, at least to the point that Ukraine thinks itself in a position to take the initiative.  It is not a solution but a transparent attempt to achieve the goals of Ukraine and the West later since they cannot be achieved now.  It promises not the end of the war but its resumption.  This is the position of the Ukrainian state, western imperialism and the ‘democratic socialist’ of Sotsialnyi Rukh interviewed by Democracy Now.

Trump has already moved to enact what Pilash proposed by raising tariffs on India for its purchase of Russian oil, although it has failed to do so on China.  This is a sign of weakness while India has signalled that it will continue buying from Russia.  So this proposal hasn’t worked, just as all the previous sanctions and previous financing, weapons, logistics, intelligence, planning and Western ‘volunteers’ haven’t delivered on their hopes.

Thus, the Sotsialnyi Rukh programme has already failed and promises only to prolong the war with its attendant death and destruction.  The objective for socialists should be to end it as quickly as possible while the policy of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and that of Sotsialnyi Rukh is to continue it to victory, apparently regardless of the cost.

Millions of Ukrainians have voted with their feet and have left the country while Trump is trying to send them back, which would only result in the men being conscripted, sent to the front and then killed.  A lot of Ukrainian soldiers have already voted with their feet and deserted, while those seeking to avoid conscription are voting with their feet by running away from recruitment press-gangs or attempting to escape the country.

Sotsialnyi Rukh could give a political voice to this instinctive opposition, born out of healthy suspicion and distrust of many Ukrainians for their state, but this is a road they will not take.  Instead, it champions a war its own state played a major role in creating, and a political and military alliance that subordinates the country to imperialism.  Its view of the war means it can do nothing other than tail-end a corrupt and ethno-nationalist state, its alliance with imperialism and a political regime that is responsible for both.

In Pilash’s fabricated reality Trump is supporting Putin; a view which requires ignoring the sanctions against Russia and the continuation of US military support.  Such a stupid statement so at odds with reality only confirms the reactionary character of the whole Sotsialnyi Rukh programme.

NATO is not the issue, says Pilash, but did he think repeated Russian warnings about Ukrainian membership were so much hot air?  Does its huge role in the war today not tell him something about its centrality to its origin and purpose, and does his enthusiasm for Western ‘security guarantees’ not confirm it?

Pilash thinks that Putin himself is the cause of the expansion of NATO – to Finland and Sweden – and look Russia hasn’t invaded them!  The problem, of course, is that he must assume the importance of NATO expansion for the argument to matter, while pretending that Russian warnings about Ukrainian membership are empty, even while his country is in the process of being devastated because of it.

His support for ‘security guarantees’, which means willingness to go to war against Russia, shows that the purported irrelevance of NATO is absurd, and his attempt to cover his ass by calling on the ‘global south’ to join western powers as guarantors is political camouflage.

Not even all the European NATO powers are prepared to put their troops into Ukraine, or at least to admit to it, including those in Eastern Europe; why would the ‘global south’?  And what, anyway, is the ‘global south’?  Does he want China, India, Brazil or South Africa to put troops into Ukraine?  Would they do it without Russian agreement, and would they want to be made hostage to the good intentions and behaviour of a Ukraine determined to get all its 1991 territory back?

The proposal for a ceasefire is thus not a promise to end the war, and not a resolution to it, but to put into Ukraine the exact forces that Russia invaded to keep out.  It is an incentive to Russia to continue hostilities in order to prevent it happening, and is a statement by the West that any end or even pause to the war will, absent an overall agreement, entail a NATO win. The cries for a ceasefire and peace are thus the habitual imperialist lies now trumpeted by some on the ‘left’.

Pilash states that Washington is about dividing the world into spheres of influence, as if this is something invented by Trump, and will not be the case in the form of the ‘security guarantees’ that he seeks.  Occupation of Ukraine by Western troops would be a fitting end to the claim to be fighting imperialism, colonialism and for independence.  And that’s if WWIII is avoided in the process.

He claims that there is a new axis of authoritarian regimes being created that includes Russia and calls for all the oppressed to unite against all the oppressors, mentioning Palestine as an example.  Who does he think was sitting in the White House with Trump while they discussed the possibility of guarantees; the prime candidates for providing and enforcing them?

Ursula Von der Leyen, who gave Israel a blank cheque to do what it wanted after October 7.  Keir Stamer, who announced on radio that Israel had the right to commit war crimes?  And Donald Trump the main provider of weapons and financing for the genocide.  Where does that leave his notion of uniting the ‘democratic’ countries against the authoritarian regimes in a fight against oppression?

The US, British and French states have a blood-soaked history of imperialist war and the German variety an unrivalled reputation for barbarity.  Their foreign expeditions have never stopped.   Today these states parade their democratic credentials while their foreign policy reverberates at home with threats of an approaching war with Russia and repression of domestic dissent.  

The christening of Ukraine as a beacon of democracy while its regime enforces martial law, refuses new elections, celebrates its fascist history and closes opposition media and political parties is testament to what Western states consider is democratic. 

The pro-war left always advises opponents of the war to follow the lead of the Ukrainian ‘socialists’ but these ‘socialists’ approve and flatter the actions of the imperialist states and encourage their aggression.  In following their lead their Western friends encourage the bellicosity of their own states and their movement to a war against Russia. It leads to them holding up as a beacon of democracy a state renowned as one of the most corrupt in Europe that the Ukrainian people themselves have made repeated attempts to change. 

The policy of supporting their own imperialism through its de facto military alliance with Ukraine is summed up in a few words – “Don’t Betray Ukraine”.

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Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (2 of 2)

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As I noted at the start of the previous post, various leftists in the West have said that we should listen to the voices of Ukrainian socialists and follow their lead, except, as we have seen, they are following the lead of the Zelenskyy regime.  His ‘victory plan’, the part that is not a secret to the Ukrainian people and known only in Western imperialist capitals, is that Ukrainian resources should be made available to the corporations of these imperialist states; that Ukraine should be able to join their military alliance NATO, and that it fulfil this role by its troops being stationed in other European countries. No doubt these Ukrainian troops would include its far right and fascist units, which would allow the concentration of existing NATO troops against other targets.

These Ukrainian socialists excuse this policy of integration into Western imperialism as the appearance of a “sober approach”, regretting that it feels “humiliating” for it to be “turned down almost immediately”.  They presumably deny that the moves towards NATO membership were crucial to precipitating the Russian invasion and entertain the idea that the cause of the war can be its solution.

This position stems partly from material weakness – “there is no left-wing political force in Ukraine that would voice the issues inherent to working people” – but this can only begin to be rectified by developing an independent political programme that stands upon the interests of working people.  Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) is a social movement because it is not a socialist one.  It floats in Ukrainian society and reflects, through its liberal conscience, the reactionary nationalism of Ukrainian society and its state. It cannot therefore articulate a position separate from the ruling regime.

It notes that the regime is “singling out new internal enemies: Russian speakers, “victims of colonial thinking”, followers of Moscow priests, collaborators, Kremlin agents”; with “manifestations of linguistic chauvinism, justification of hostility towards national minorities . . . and fostering ideological uniformity”; but it doesn’t decisively break from the ideological dominance of Ukrainian nationalism and makes the same ultimatist demands in relation to the pro-Russian East as the most rabid fascist – “recognition of the annexation of occupied territories is obviously out of the question”.  Yet where is the attempt to reconcile this demand with claimed opposition to the view that the people of these regions are “internal enemies”?  It can only dribble that this “will complicate the reintegration of occupied territories.”

Calls for “uniting as many people as possible around ideas of justice, freedom, and solidarity” are only so much sanctimonious sermons without a relevant political programme, and without outright opposition to those opposed to anything meaningful these words might entail, which includes the Ukrainian state and its imperialist sponsors, on whom it is now totally reliant.  Where on earth is Western imperialism a force for “justice, freedom, and solidarity”?  This Social Movement declares its “support for victims of far-right violence” but has nothing to say about this far-right being an integral and leading component of the Ukrainian armed forces that it supports.

Sotsialnyi Rukh states that “people should have a stake in the country’s future and respect for human dignity must be at the core of a society that asks its members to risk their lives for it” – a disregarded acknowledgement that this is precisely what does not exist, and which renders its whole approach inadmissible.  The correct response, enunciated by Marx in similar circumstances in which it was claimed that a reactionary state can be of assistance – and promoted now as resulting from “a sincere dialogue from the government” – is to state that “the working class is revolutionary, or it is nothing.”  What does this mean for Ukrainian workers today?

It starts by discarding illusions in the Ukrainian state and that the purpose of “a political movement” is that it “ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power.”  The corridors of power are staffed by reactionaries beholden to Western imperialism, seeking a new mobilisation of Ukrainian workers for the cause of membership of its imperialist alliance – a blood sacrifice on behalf of those whose plan to is enrich themselves on Ukraine after the war.

Opposition to the Russian invasion does not require support for NATO or membership of it, and the Sotsialnyi Rukh view that without “security guarantees” from the West Ukraine faces “an open invitation for renewed aggression” ignores that Ukraine thereby becomes hostage to Western imperialism’s aggression and any Russian response.  “Security guarantees” will require assurances of “predatory exploitation” by “foreign investors” with all the “inequality, alienation and disenfranchisement” that will result.  The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The unity of the workers of Ukraine and with their opposite number in Russia requires opposition to national chauvinism, with its hostility to national minorities, and only on this basis can a peaceful reconciliation of any kind be proposed as an earnest and sincere promise of unity without oppression.  Sotsialnyi Rukh cannot promise this by condemning such things as the Israeli oppression of Palestinians while seeking support and alliance with the same US imperialism that is the sponsor and accomplice of this oppression.  It is not possible to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds’ as the old saying goes.

Sotsialnyi Rukh demands “the restoration of electoral rights, the right to peaceful assembly and workers’ strikes, and the abolition of all restrictions on labor and social rights” but proposes that a “sincere dialogue” with the government that took them away is the way to achieve them.  Only by relying on the strength of the working class movement itself can the prerogatives of the working class be defended and advanced.  If it is too weak to assert them itself, it will never gain the strength to do so by relying on those who took them away.

Spontaneous resistance has arisen in opposition to the street kidnapping of workers so that they can be sent to their deaths at the front.  This resistance should be organised with the demand that summary arrest be ended; corruption in mobilisation exposed; that all conscripts receive proper training; that they have the right to organise trade unions and the right to protect themselves, including from suicidal orders from the rear. None of this is possible through “demand(ing) full state control over the protection of lives and the well-being of workers.”

The Ukrainian state has declared, even in the words of Sotsialnyi Rukh, that it “owes nothing to its citizens” and that its appeals are “hollow”.  By refusing to break from it, Sotsialnyi Rukh demonstrates the same for itself.

The Ukrainian state has no theory of victory that does not involve massive escalation of direct NATO intervention; to endorse it or give it a left gloss does not alter this in any way.  For workers in the West, it would mean following a road to escalation with all the risks of a world war that this involves.  To do so would see them dragged towards the same subordination to their own state and ruling class – where its left pro-war supporters have already gone – and politically unarmed to prevent world war.

The last thing workers in the West should do is take their lead from such a ‘social movement’.  For both, the slogan ‘the main enemy is at home’ remains the road to victory.

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Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (1 of 2)

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At the start of the war in Ukraine various leftists in the West said that we should listen to the voices of Ukrainian socialists, which might have made some sense were these people socialist. Except they are not.  Two recent statements by them confirm their reactionary character and have value only to illuminate their political bankruptcy and, by extension, those in the West who follow them and have called for others to do so.

The statements address what is necessary for Ukrainian victory and the tasks of the left in achieving it.  It is supposed to be a left alternative to Zelenskyy’s much trumpeted ‘victory plan’– touted round the various capitals of western imperialism – but reveals itself to be a plea for succour to the regime that has sought it itself from imperialism and failed.

It is not an alternative to it but a pathetic reflection of it.  It is useless even for its own purposes and worse than worthless as a guide for a working class alternative course out of the war.  It can be summed up by one sentence within it that shows that it pretends to no alternative to the current state, and therefore no possibility of an alternative way out of the catastrophe inflicted on the country.  It states that “We will demand full state control over the protection of lives and the well-being of workers . . .”  The same state that colluded in precipitating the disaster – that has delivered its people into a needless war that has wrought such death and destruction – is to be the protector of the lives of its workers.  This is both absurd and treacherous.

The statements themselves can’t help but note the current misdeeds of this state, its “corruption, censorship, and other abuses by officials”, and the reaction of Ukrainian workers – “civilians no longer queue at draft stations but actively evade mobilisation. Reported cases of draft dodging have tripled since 2023, and polls consistently show that nearly half of respondents view this as reasonable.”  They note “nearly 30,000 cases of AWOL have been registered in the first six months of 2024” and “the brutality and impunity of draft officers, who press-gang men off the streets . . . In the meantime, reports from the battlefield describe how unmotivated, untrained, and even unfit recruits endanger the rest, making the result of increasing coercion questionable.”   Questionable?, is that all it is?  Medically unfit men kidnapped off the street and sent to the front  – poorly trained and armed – to die in a war against a much more powerful enemy?

The result is that “after 970 days of war, 10,000s dead, 100,000s wounded, and millions displaced, the toll is immense. Few families remain untouched by this devastation.”  Yet it refuses to denounce the ridiculous tally of dead and injured quoted in the Western media, fed to them by the Ukrainian state and the Zelenskyy regime. Its statement is unwilling to challenge these lies about the devastating consequences of the war, while saying that they have “taken our people for granted”, yet refusing to acknowledge the human cost that repeats this.

“Under the realities of oligarchic capitalism, restrictions on freedoms often serve the interests of the elites”, one statement declares, in admission of the rotten nature of the society and state that commits these crimes.  It notes the statement of the minister of social policy Oksana Zholnovich, that  “we need to break everything that is social today and simply reformat from scratch the new social contract about social policy in our state.”

It sums up the hypocrisy and real policy of the state by saying that “appeals to civic duty ring hollow when the state openly declares that it owes nothing to its citizens”, yet its proposals are that “the government should start a dialogue with the people about the achievable goals of the war.”  It simply wants “to cooperate with other forces to build a political movement that ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power.  “Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) demands a sincere dialogue from the government with society on how we arrived here and what we can realistically expect.” A “sincere dialogue” with a regime that promised peace and an end to corruption that has instead walked its people into war with new opportunities for massively increased graft through it.

It would be possible to feel a little sorry for this movement were it not for its own hypocrisy and war policy.  It accuses the Zelenskyy regime of presiding over “a caricature of a war economy” that “makes it possible to prolong the war at the cost of significant human losses and constant mobilization.”  Yet its own policy is simply an extension of this through a state “subordinated to the priorities of defense . . . mobilising all resources for defence”, while simultaneously promising that it “defends the rights of conscripts and servicemen to dignified treatment” when many of these workers do not want to be conscripts at all.

Zelenskyy’s plan is criticised for “its disproportionate reliance on the West’, while acknowledging that “to fight against Russian aggression . . ., we need support from the global community, including humanitarian and military assistance.” It laments this reliance but then states that “this might appear to be a sober approach”, with the further complaint that it feels “more humiliating” to be “turned down almost immediately”.

It canvasses what would be an acceptable peace but includes proposals that shows it has no idea “how we arrived here”, i.e. why the war began, never mind how realistically it might end: “The only deal with a chance of being supported, by a slight margin, includes de-occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, combined with NATO and EU memberships. . . . Therefore, the greatest mistake would be to pit diplomatic efforts against military support. Without meaningful solidarity, Ukraine and its people will fall — if not now, then later.”

It complains of “a quite remarkable shift from the earlier emotional appeals for solidarity to luring support with access to natural resources and promises of outsourcing Ukrainian troops for the European Union’s security”, but its own dependence on what it euphemistically calls “the global community”, and peace involving NATO membership, shows that its alternative to Zelenskyy is no alternative at all. It doesn’t even ask the question: why it is only now – after over two and a half years – that a purported plan for victory has been drafted? Or did all the others fail too?

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