Ukraine - April 2022

Ukraine 2014-2022:
Revolution, counterrevolution and war

by Eliza Funes

2014: The government of Yanukovych sought to apply the IMF plan, of selling out the nation and brutally attacking the Ukrainian working class

In 2014, Ukraine was ruled by Yanukovych, a multimillionaire partner of Putin, both come from the old Stalinist counterrevolutionary nomenklatura who handed over the USSR to imperialism.
The government of Yanukovych applied the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plans of plundering Ukraine and brutally attacking the working class in the fiercest way since 1989. The crisis had already forced the migration of 2 million workers, who escaped from the heinous misery of Ukraine and went to work as second-class workers in the imperialist Europe of Maastricht.

In 1989, when the former soviet republics of Eurasia got their “independence” from Russia, they fell under the claws of the imperialist powers, which took away until the last drop of their wealth and exploitation of their working classes from them, as they do so today. The rising new ruling classes swiftly partnered with the international finance capital as junior partners. These bourgeois countries were born directly as colonies or semi-colonies.
The same happened in Ukraine, who had different bourgeois governments from the Stalinist party. These governments deepened the subjugation of the Ukrainian nation to imperialism. Furthermore, that bourgeoisie had a share of the business deals that the old soviet Ukrainian had with Russia; like in the Donbass region, whose mining industry was articulated with the Russian industrial military apparatus in a division of labour in the eastern border of Ukraine.
The Ukraine who declared itself “independent”, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, ended up being a semi-colonial subjugated nation, a link and road of Russia to Glacis and the imperialist Europe. It is one of the wealthiest nations and one of the most coveted by the imperialist powers since the capitalist restoration in 1989. It is also a key exit point of the huge Russian gas wealth flowing to Europe. Ukraine is a key producer of commodities in the world. It has huge wealth, plundered by imperialism, while it is indebted with the IMF.

So, in 1989 Ukraine rises in bankruptcy, in serious crisis, to which Moscow, first with Yeltsin and later with Putin, threw a large part of the Russian foreign debt with imperialism, so that the “independent Ukraine” be the one to pay for it. The government of Yanukovych, incumbent since 2010 with the support of Moscow, launched an IMF-type of offensive under the IMF command, with which it strangled the nation and trample on all the working class and the poor people’s gains.
A huge crisis burst out. The nation defaulted, with a foreign debt over 80% of its GDP. The social crisis was getting deeper, with workers earning less than 50 Euros a month, hikes in utility prices, economic crash and default. Before the tendency to a mass uprising and the generalized hatred on the government, gaps in the heights were opened, in which the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and imperialism discussed which was the best way to contain the uprisings, to collect the foreign debt and, in order to do that, to apply the IMF plan.

A sector of the so-called “pro-European” bourgeoisie increased the foreign debt in negotiations with the IMF with leonine clauses. Thus, the foreign debt turned into a snowball, which couldn’t be paid, as it happens in the vast majority of the countries of the world.
This sector of the “pro-European” bourgeoisie was the one that led the 2005-2010 government of Viktor Yushenko and Yulia Timoshenko. Based on the finances of Kyiv and in the commissions of the Russia-Europe gas pipelines, this bourgeois gang wanted Ukraine to enter Maastricht in the face of 2014 crisis and default. Being out of the government, they pushed Yanukovych for him to apply the attack on the masses directly, as a “squeezed lemon”, in order to guarantee the payment of the foreign debt. Putin went to recue his friend in the midst of the crisis. He offered himself as a guarantor of the payment to the IMF with 15 billion euros, in exchange of leaving his trust man in Kyiv, i.e. his businesses in Ukraine, undisturbed.

We say these bourgeoisies are “Pro-Russian” or “Pro-European” highlighting the quotation marks because this ruling elite of a bunch of bourgeois has no fatherland. When they claim to be “pro-Russian” or “pro-European” they are only talking about business, and they are always willing to change sides, either with the East or with the West, making agreements with whom works best for them to make huge profits as junior partners of imperialism. Six families of oligarchs are the ruling elite of Ukraine, allied to the different imperialist gangs, associated with the Russian industrial military apparatus through the mining industry, as we said before.
As we denounced in other statements of our current, Rinat Akhmetov, one of the biggest bourgeois in Ukraine, owner of one of the biggest steel factories in Mariupol and part of Donbass mines that export to Russia, has been one of the strongest supporters and followers of Yanukovych until 2014. After his fall, when the waves of strikes of Donbass miners started, refusing to accept the shutdown of mines and layoffs, this oligarch “changed sides” and started supporting Ukraine’s new government, i.e. Poroshenko, the chocolate mogul. This scum of bourgeois parasites come from the same mother, the traitors of Stalinism, which stole all the key branches of production in the former USSR while they keep control of the State apparatus, accumulating huge wealth.

2014: a key year in Ukraine

What happened in 2014 was not a coup, as the jackal Putin and the traitors of Stalinism say worldwide. Back then, they all supported, openly, the IMF plan applied by their government, i.e. Yanukovych’s.

2014 was the year of a huge uprising against the IMF attack, against the government of Yanukovych and the big capitalists. The masses rose up confronting the government they saw as Moscow’s direct agent. This strengthened the “pro European” bourgeois gang which, in order to contain the masses, promised “paradise” in the EU, trying to manipulate them with this deception.
The uprising in Maidan Square was not because the masses supported a coup against Yanukovych but because they were hungry, their wages were miserable and millions of families survived only thanks to the money sent from abroad by their migrant relatives. The struggle took 3; it was a true independent action that broke every contention wall from the different bourgeois gangs, and the workers ranks were unified with the eastern miners of Donbass claiming for the fall of Yanukovych, because he wanted to privatize the mines. The whip of capital united the workers against the government.
In Donbass there is a powerful mining proletariat, almost 100,000 workers, who produce in mines largely obsolete and plundered for decades by the Stalinist bureaucracy, which only stole for its own benefit and did not invest a single cent in technification. The miners of this region were declared enemies of the “pro Maastricht” gang of Kyiv, as they correctly saw that this gang would shut down most of the mines and would impose thousands of layoffs.
But in 2014, the miners of Donbass and the workers of the big steel mills, as the ones in Mariupol, did not come out in defense of the “pro-Russian” Yanukovych, just the opposite. The government of the Moscow friend, applying the IMF plan, imposed an attack on the Donbass workers even bigger than the one promoted from Troika of Maastricht.

The occupation of Maidan Square for months, the struggles of the masses to defend that occupied square, became a reference point for all the exploited in Ukraine. The workers there confronted the bloody crackdown of the government. They organized hundreds of demonstrations all around Kyiv. Day after day, new workers from different cities were joining the struggle, until they paralyzed the entire Ukraine and the Yanukovych government was walking on very thin ice without any support, except that of Putin. His fall was inevitable. But before this, he made a true massacre in Maidan Square, sending his armed police to openly kill the protestors.

Before the tendency of the unity of the Ukrainian working class, and seeing the crisis of the government, the “opposition” bourgeoisie tried to anticipate to a revolutionary crisis and sent their men to Maidan Square, who from the Parliament rejected the IMF plan of Yanukovych but, cynically, they promised to do the same but throughout the entering of Ukraine to the EU. The same ones who sold out Ukraine to the IMF in their 2005-2010 government, together with the popes of the Orthodox Church, wanted now to make the workers believe that if Ukraine became a member of the EU, they would have the same wage as the German or French workers.
For many weeks, their representatives could not enter Maidan Square. For months, they couldn’t even give a speech there without being booed. The masses identified the entire bourgeoisie as the perpetrators of their sufferings.
They were only able to enter the square when the police and the repressive forces drowned this square in a bloodbath. Before the masses reached their arming and defeated the police in the streets, this bourgeois sector sent armed “fascist” groups, i.e. Poroshenko security guard. They were guised as “defenders of the people” against the crackdown, but in reality they were to guarantee the “opposition” bourgeoisie capitalizes and control the masses again in the face of the fall of Yanukovych.
Thus, this bourgeoisie started taking control of the mass uprising with their armed gangs guised as “defenders of the people”. They were able to do so because the entire reformist left and international Stalinism supported the “coup” of the IMF in Ukraine and its government. For this control to be effective, the “opposition” bourgeoisie, being at the head of the uprising, appeared as the one imposing the resignation of the hated Yanukovych, expropriating and diverting the revolutionary push of the masses. The revolutionary crisis was then closed. The ones of the top handed over Yanukovych’s head but kept control of the regime on the exploited.

This was the plan for a way out of the crisis organized by imperialism, which used Yanukovych and the “pro-Russian” governments as “squeezed lemons” to attack the masses, to later divert the mass uprisings and put them down to the feet of the EU. With the Ukrainian church and the “opposition” bourgeoisie, as they did in 2004, they called to set up “democratic fronts” which only worked to abort those mass uprisings.

The traitors of the social-imperialist parties, Stalinist bureaucrats of the European unions, complain about this “pro-bourgeois consciousness” of the Ukrainian working class. But they are responsible of restoring the fiercest dictatorship of capital and the bourgeois governments in the whole territory of the former USSR. Furthermore, they had endlessly claimed that their model is the one of the Chinese “market socialism”, with workers driven to slavery. They are the ones voicing that “socialism doesn’t work anymore”, as they have done so from Havana over the last years.

If the Ukrainian bourgeoisie was able to hijack the uprising in Maidan Square was because the labour aristocracies and bureaucracies of Europe and the leaderships of the so-called “new left” affirmed it was possible to conquer a “social Maastricht”; that it was possible to “ease up the attack” and they shut down the road for the Greek revolution, the uprising of the outraged workers of the Spanish State and the huge fights against the brutal attack of the French Fifth republic that took away the 35 hours weekly working shift to the French workers, who also lost their gains.
The limit the revolutionary uprising of the Ukrainian masses had in 2014 was no other than the huge betrayal of the European working-class leadership. The Ukrainian working class had and has the task of fighting the capitalist restoration and to restore the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary ways to conquer even the slightest of its demands, together with the working class of the former Soviet nations. This is a task they cannot achieve on their own, and must have the support of the working class in Maastricht and the whole European continent.

So, the Ukrainian masses that were fighting for European wages were isolated and their struggle was divided from the one of the workers in the central countries.
For the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, entering the EU meant to boost their business deals with the Maastricht imperialist bandits, so they could complete the plundering of the nation and pay the IMF. For the workers of Ukraine, entering Europe meant, in their consciousness, to earn as much as the workers in Maastricht Europe, namely a € 1500-2000 monthly wage.
In 2009, the workers of Renault in Romania claimed they wanted to earn as much as the Renault workers in France. This road to the unity of the European working class to fight was closed by the labour aristocracies and bureaucracies of the continent. They prevented the workers of the continent any prospect from coming out of their misery as they stopped their unity. And the result for the Eastern and Western Europe workers was terrible.
These betrayals left most of the Ukrainian working class subjected to the “pro Maastricht” bourgeoisie, and so the Ukrainian working class was split, in moments when the miners were rising in Donbass against every attempt of shutting down their mines and losing their jobs. The split of the workers ranks opened the way for the partition of Ukraine. In a semi-colonial country, the working class is the only “national class”.

After the Maidan revolution was aborted, IMF’s attack deepens
The Ukrainian revolution is back on its feet with a workers' uprising in Donbass

After Yanukovych's dismissal, the interim president Turchinov took office, whose task was deepening IMF's attack, which included and was based on the privatization, reconversion and shutdown of steel mills and mines. They, as we said before, are intimately linked to the Russian industry, in eastern Ukrainian, in the region called Donbass.
Then, a workers' uprising began in the east of the country, which was the defense of their lives and their jobs. Clearly, it was a workers’ struggle, mainly miners’. At that time, Putin was occupying the Crimean Peninsula, in February 2014, and moving his troops to the Ukrainian border. But, as we saw, those troops were not there to defend workers’ uprising in the Ukrainian east but to negotiate a bigger cut of their share of the loot. Needless to say, when the Kyiv army attacked the mining areas of Donetsk and Lugansk, the assassin Putin moved his troops away from the border with Ukraine, and only sent his people to the Donbass to shoot the best miner leaders in the back. Putin was as an enemy of the unity of the Ukrainian working class, just as the “fascist forces” in Kyiv.
The same troops that we see today invading Ukraine ran away when Donbass workers were fighting, and the Kyiv government was ready to launch a counter-revolutionary counter-offensive. Putin had already received his payment for the services that he provided and that he was going to provide later in Ukraine.

In April 2014, Kyiv’s government lost control of the Donbass region and eastern Ukraine completely. Widespread occupation of public buildings and police stations had begun. By May 2014, snap elections took place in Ukraine, guaranteed by NATO, which were going to crown Poroshenko as president, in a totally rigged election where the entire Donbass region did not vote. In the east, Putin and the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and oligarchy linked to him promoted the separatist referendums in Donetsk and Lugansk. This is how they wanted to manipulate the legitimate independence sentiment of the Donbass masses who identified Kyiv with IMF’s attack and the shutdown of their workplaces.
The tragedy of the Ukrainian revolution was reduced from the beginning to the desynchronization of the struggles in the east and west of the country and the partition of the nation and its working class. As we have seen, the “pro-European” bourgeoisie anticipated the independent action of the masses and aborted the revolution that was rising in the West, and that is when the exploited rose up in Donbass. This desynchronization and partition of the Ukrainian working class was the basis to prevent the Ukrainian revolution from succeeding. And if this was achieved, it was for one reason only: the crisis of the leadership, which is the overabundance of treacherous leaderships in the Ukraine, Russia and all of Europe.

A class war of extermination against the armed workers in the east of the country who won over the common soldiers of Kyiv who did not want a fratricidal war

By June and August 2014, with Putin's troops far from the Ukrainian border, Kyiv’s government launched a true war of massacre and extermination against the workers of Donbass. Putin paved the way for Kyiv to carry out the massacre.

But when the Ukrainian army wanted to enter the east with its troops, against the workers and especially the miners who were revolting, the rank and file of the Kyiv army was not willing to go to a fratricidal war. Then, true committees of workers and soldiers were set up.
It was then that the Poroshenko government launched the war of extermination and massacre, which was a true class war. Between the months of June and August 2014, 5,000 lives were claimed and more than 10,000 exploited were displaced.
We say that it was a class war clearly because Lugansk, Donetsk, Sloviansk were attacked with aerial bombardments, helicopters, planes and artillery. And on May 9, 2014, the "victory day" in which the crushing of the Nazi troops is celebrated, Kyiv’s army opened fire on an unarmed crowd leaving 40 dead, and later in Odessa the fascists set fire to the house of the unions when the exploited tried to take shelter there, leaving 30 dead. The entire infrastructure of Donbass was destroyed and the dead, just like today, belonged to the working class’s ranks.

But this offensive was not enough to break the strength of the Donbass miners and exploited, who, as we said, were supported by their siblings in Kyiv who refused to join the army to attack Donbass. Then, a policy started, which we had already seen in Homs (Syria): the siege. Cities were depleted, leaving them without water, without electricity in a winter of -30°. Even from the Kyiv government, they imposed a blockade on the sale of coal to the revolted Donbass and Putin, the alleged ally of the peoples and defender of the masses of Donbass, was then the one who supplied Kyiv with coal. Business is business.

The Minsk Agreements: the partition of the nation and the tearing of the working class’s ranks
The plan to defeat the Ukrainian revolution with the actions of fascist Kyiv and Putin's popular front

None of the policies in Kyiv were enough to defeat the uprising in Donbass and then came the Minsk Agreement, the same policy that was previously applied in Syria with the Geneva Conference.
The purpose of the Minsk Agreement was to divide the Ukrainian working class and split the nation, an issue that Putin had already started by seizing and stealing Crimea. With the Minsk Agreement -controlled behind the scenes by the US-, Germany, France, the Kyiv government, the separatist governments of Donetsk and Lugansk and Putin split Ukraine: the west of the country would remain under Kyiv’s control, NATO’s puppet, while a strip of Donbass and the Crimean Peninsula remained in hands of Putin, who was in charge of repressing, keeping at bay and imposing plans for dismissals and shutting down mines in Donbass, an issue that everyone hides today. Under the “pro-Russian” government of Donetsk and Lugansk, half of the miners in the region were laid off.

The policy of fascism in Kyiv with its massacres was combined with disorganization from within, disarmament and massacre imposed in Donbass by Putin and the "pro-Russian" bourgeoisie.
With the Agreement, demilitarized zones were established, and Putin was given the role of disorganizing from within and disarming the workers' and soldiers' committees that were beginning to emerge before the attack of Kyiv’s government. This was the role of the popular front of class collaboration that Stalinism imposed with the bourgeoisie of Donbass and Moscow. We have also seen this acting in Syria and in each of the revolutions. But to play this role, the actions of Stalinism were also necessary sending its "international brigades" from Europe and Russia allegedly to "fight for Donbass", supported by a large part of the renegades of Trotskyism such as the EEK and Antarsya from Greece and the British SWP. In the name of an "Anti-Fascist Front", they established a policy of class collaboration, once again manipulating the national sentiment of the masses and submitting them to Putin and the eastern Ukrainian bourgeoisie.

Fascism and popular front were the two ends of the same rope to strangle the Ukrainian revolution. As yesterday they promised the masses of Maidan that by entering the EU their hardships would end, now they told the masses of Donbass that all their problems would be solved with Putin and the “pro-Russian” bourgeoisie.
So, they invented the fictitious Republic of Novorossia with portions of the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk with the aim of destroying all fighting organisms of the masses, lulling them to sleep and allowing fascism to rear its head. The purpose and aim of the popular front was enforcing the counterrevolutionary Minsk Agreements to the letter. The partition of the territory had to be respected and the Donbass militias had to be disbanded or submitted to the regular army. Those who did not want to do so faced torture, blacklisting and death. The bourgeoisie took control of the revolution and reinstated the bourgeois state that had been overthrown by the masses.
What we saw next was the imposition of the strangulation and the defeat of the Ukrainian revolution. With the actions of the popular front, the only thing that was achieved was for fascism to gain momentum and then the IMF's plans were applied in Kyiv and Donbass.

That is why since 2016 and until now we have seen huge mining strikes taking place, because neither in Kyiv nor in Donbass, workers collect decent wages, it was and is impossible to make ends meet, it is not even possible to get food. Life became a real hell throughout the Ukrainian territory.
With the revolution taken out of the picture, Ukraine became a true protectorate, and today they can advance along the path we are seeing. The alternative in Ukraine was: either a protected colony, or a Soviet, United and Independent Ukraine.
Ukraine thus went from being one of the capitals of the revolution with which the masses responded to the economic crisis opened in 2008 by imperialism, to being a capital of the counterrevolution (as was Syria) where imperialism concentrated its forces to take revolution out of the picture, and that, in the case of Ukraine, to prevent it from spreading like wildfire towards Europe in the West, and towards Russia in the East.

The war of occupation that Putin and the "great" Russia imposed on Ukraine in recent weeks is only possible because the Ukrainian working class has been led, by their leadership, to cruel defeats.
The use of Ukraine by imperialism as a bargaining chip in its offensive towards the east once again puts an iron alternative at the top of the agenda: either Soviet Ukraine, or a colony protected by the Troika of Washington, Maastricht and Moscow.