Japan -June 27, 2022 Overseas Appeal for the 60th International Antiwar Assembly in Japan Working people all over the world, unite to crush Putin's war! Break through the danger of a thermo-nuclear war erupting amid the clash between the US and China-Russia! The Executive Committee for the 60th International Antiwar Assembly in Japan All-Japan Federation of Students' Self-Governing Associations [Zengakuren] Antiwar Youth Committee Japan Revolutionary Communist League (Revolutionary Marxist Faction) [JRCL (RMF)] The war against Ukraine being carried on by the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin is totally a brutal war of aggression with the aim of exterminating the state of Ukraine and incorporating it into 'Great Russia'. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been massacred by the invading army, and more than a million people have been forcibly deported to the Russian Far East, Siberia, and elsewhere. We should never ever tolerate this barbarism of the century perpetrated by Putin, 'today's Hitler'! By hailing shells upon the city of Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast, Putin's army reduced it to ashes and indiscriminately murdered its residents. This is what Putin did to conquer this strategic point for Ukraine. In the face of this atrocious attack, Armed Forces of Ukraine, together with Territorial Defence forces, had waged a life-and-death battle for a month and a half. They completed their mission of evacuating residents, and retreated from the city while preserving their combat power. By rearranging the line of battle, Ukrainian forces have started counteroffensives to recapture the Russian-occupied cities, including Kherson in southern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the rulers of France, Germany, Italy and other states, daunted by Putin's 'counter-sanctions' such as reduction in natural gas supply, have now started applying 'cease-fire' pressures upon the Ukrainian government, which goes on with 'all-out resistance'. While the Zelensky administration is demanding 'large-scale and swift arms aids' to beat back the invading army, those rulers are planning to give only limited aids. Each with its state egoism laid bare, European and American rulers are leaving Ukrainians to their fate! Let us denounce them and fight in firm solidarity with Ukrainian working people and soldiers who are battling unbendingly! We the revolutionary Left in Japan issued an international appeal of the JRCL-RMF to the whole world immediately after the Russian aggression began on February 24th: 'Denounce Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine! Working people all over the world, rise in an antiwar struggle!' Militant students of Zengakuren and workers of the Antiwar Youth Committee successively rose up in protest nationwide, which included a series of protest actions at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo. We have thus been resolutely creating 'Ukraine antiwar struggles' in Japan. We now call on working people all over the world. Let us stir up a storm of antiwar struggle in every corner of the world to crush Putin's war! Don't isolate Ukrainian people battling against invaders! Let us fan the flames of antiwar struggle to besiege Putin the slaughter and drive him away! Here in Asia, Xi Jinping-led neo-Stalinist state of China, which is now openly defending Putin, is repeatedly conducting threatening military actions with an unreserved ambition to 'absorb Taiwan'. In response, US imperialist ruler Joe Biden is intent on drastically strengthening the US-Japan military alliance and building up a multi-national military alliance centring on the former. Directly linked to the Ukrainian situation, the danger of a war is increasing in Asia, too, day by day between the US-Japan and China-Russia. We alert you, comrades all over the world. The world is now faced with the gravest danger of a nuclear war since the Cuban crisis of 1962. We the revolutionary Left in Japan, the country that suffered atomic bombing, call on the world. By all means prevent a nuclear war, a Third World War, from breaking out amid the clash between the US and China-Russia. We are holding the 60th International Antiwar Assembly in Japan on August 7th. Working people fighting all over the world! Let us raise together an earth-shaking 'antiwar' cry! Crush the aggression in Ukraine, the barbarity of the century committed by Putin! The concentrated attacks by Putin's army on Sievierodonetsk were carried out actually in the form of gruesome 'scorched earth' operations, the same as the ones conducted in Mariupol. They are the epitome of the cruelty of Putin's war. The invading army deliberately targeted dwellings, hospitals, schools, shopping centres and other places for 'civilian' life, thus firing missiles and shells into them like hail. They forced residents into underground shelters and then ruthlessly shot those who appeared on the ground. By destroying essential lifelines for water, electric and food supplies, they drove the residents into starvation. Having conquered cities, the Russian army is sending residents of the occupied areas into 'filtration camps', where the army immediately execute those whom it regards as disobedient or, otherwise, forcibly deport them to Siberia, with the exception of those whom it regards as cooperative with Russia. This modus operandi is exactly the same as that used by Stalin in his attempt to exterminate the Ukrainian nation as a whole. In Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and other southern regions that the Russian army has put under its control, invaders are hell-bent on 'Russianizing' the regions. They have destroyed social infrastructures and public facilities so completely as to make residents unable to live without depending rations and supplies from Russians; and then they are distributing Russian passports, obligating the youths to learn the Russian language, and spreading propaganda programs of Russian state-run broadcasters. Despite all these, however, people in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are putting up resistance against invaders in the forms of partisan battle and 'disobedience', by stirring up their fighting spirits and determinations 'Never yield Ukraine to Russia'. Putin narrowed the target of his offensives down to the 'complete control' of Luhansk Oblast and frantically carried out scorched-earth operations. This was because he had to pull through the miserable failures in the 'special military operation' that he had declared four months before. He first launched the operation to capture the capital Kyiv, with an optimistic forecast that he could topple the Zelensky government 'in two or three days'. But it was completely crushed by the strong counteroffensives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces united with grassroots masses. He had to leave heaps of destroyed Russian tanks in the battlefields. He then carried out operations to seize Kharkiv, the second largest industrial city, where he again miserably failed because he was unable to concentrate his forces on account of the unyielding resistance of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol. The Russian death toll surpassed thirty thousand. Although he schemed to declare 'victory in the special military operation' on Victory Day, the scheme was completely blown away. Putin's biggest miscalculation lies in that he did not even imagine that Armed Forces and the toiling masses would be united to fight against the Russian forces so bravely, so strongly, raising their rallying cries, 'Never give in to Russia!' 'Don't return the country to the Russian rule of thirty years ago!' Putin the petty-czar did not give the least thought to their deep resentment that had been kept alive among the Ukrainian masses against Russia as 'the oppressor' (since Stalin), and their strong fighting spirit, so that he dug his own grave. Putin justifies this war of aggression, this act of genocide, with the outrageous pretext that it is 'a battle to liberate Ukraine from neo-Nazis'. But the fact that the battle is taking a heavy toll of lives is now widely known at home, so that the voice 'against war' is rapidly spreading. Unable to suppress this 'No War' voice of the working masses, he has started glorifying Stalin, by saying, 'Remember the Great Patriotic War, which defended Russia against the Nazis!' That is to say, he is shouting to the people that people must not be daunted but be willing to give their lives for the nation no matter how many lives are taken in the war. But, however desperately he may scream so, it is impossible to brainwash Russian toiling people who have come to be aware of the truth of this war. Putin is now faced with a marked increase in war deaths, a serious loss of war potential, a loss of morale of his troops, and the swelling war expenditure. Because of the economic sanctions by the Western states, Russia is no more able to secure supplies of semiconductors and other products, so that Putin is driven into a predicament where his army can hardly update or increase its high-tech weapons. But this petty-czar, frantic to somehow save the appearance of 'victory', is forcibly sending reservists, ethnic minorities and prisoners to the frontlines, only to leave their corpses lying in heaps. The Russian army is now able to do nothing but resort to offensives dependent on sheer 'material superiority', something like in the Soviet-German War, by drawing half-a-century-old tanks and cannons from storehouses. By 'prolonging the war', Machiavellian Putin is pressuring German, French and Italian rulers, who have been dependent on Russian oil and natural gas, to give in. He has dared to reduce Russian gas supply to these countries, as if to say 'I show you what will happen if you ban the import of Russian gas.' This is not all. Putin enforced a naval blockade to prevent the export of grains from Ukraine, the 'breadbasket of the world', thereby deliberately creating a global shortage of foods. By this means, he is pressing the power-holders of countries to 'lift the sanctions'. Because of this, the world has been hit by a food crisis and a terrible rise of food prices. In developing countries such as those in Africa and the Middle East, a disastrous famine is being imposed on the masses. Denounce this inhuman act that imposes a hell upon those people who are suffering from poverty and hunger! The rulers of Germany, France, Italy and other countries, which are suffering from skyrocketing prices of energies and foods caused by Putin's crafty 'counter-sanctions', have started urging Zelensky to move to an 'early cease-fire' by shamelessly saying 'Don't humiliate Russia' (Macron). This is tantamount to saying that Ukraine should give up its territories presently occupied by the Russian army. The more the war is prolonged, the more rulers of the West, including the US president, will probably move to leave Ukrainians in the lurch. Despite difficulties, brave Ukrainian working people are resolutely going on with their battles, with their burning determination to 'fight out to drive away the Russian army', each as a member of the Territorial Defence Forces, partisan units or otherwise. We call on working people all over the world. In solidarity with Ukrainian people waging their unbending fights, let us create a storm of antiwar struggles world-wide to crush Putin's war! Break through the crisis of war erupting in Asia-Pacific! Russian's aggression against Ukraine has also triggered a great upheaval in the east of Eurasia. Xi Jingpin-led China is massively purchasing oil and natural gas from Russia now in a dire plight due to the economic sanctions by the West. It has also foiled every resolution 'to condemn Russia' in the United Nations and other international organizations. China is thus helping Russia in every respect. In the wake of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the clash between the US and China-Russia has become decisive. In the middle of this upheaval, the Xi leadership has found 'a chance' to surpass America, thus intensifying its impulse to 'absorb Taiwan' - while keenly watching disarray among Western powers over anti-Russian sanctions. In order to achieve this aim, Chinese forces are repeatedly conducting threatening military actions in concert with Russian forces by mobilizing warships, bombers and combat planes in the waters ranging from the South China Sea to the whole western Pacific. On top of that, North Korea led by Kim Jong-un, who witnessed the aggression in Ukraine and deepened his belief that 'If only we have nuclear arms, we can defend the nation', is desperate to develop and 'test-fire' nuclear missiles with the support of China and Russia. The Biden-led US administration, driven by its sense of crisis towards these escalated military actions by China and Russia, successively held bilateral summit meetings with Japan and South Korea and the quadripartite Quad meeting with Japan, Australia and India. This imperialist administration is hell-bent on building up a multi-national military alliance against China and Russia, that to be called an Asia-Pacific version of NATO. Thus, the whole of the Japanese archipelago is being turned into a frontline base for US and Japanese forces in jointly carrying out a war on China; in particular, Japan's Southwest Islands as a whole including Okinawa is literally being made to be a military fortress for 'pre-emptive attacks' against China. In league with the Biden administration, the Liberal Democratic Party government of Japan led by Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is intent on a drastic strengthening of the US-Japan military alliance as an offensive and defensive alliance against China and Russia. Using Russia's aggression in Ukraine as a pretext, it has decided to swiftly increase its military budget to the double amount. This increase is to boost Japan up into the third largest military power in the world. Kishida is to attend the summit meeting of NATO as the Japanese Prime Minister for the first time, where he is to pledge that Japan will fulfill a key role in building up a global-wide political and military encirclement against China and Russia in close cooperation with NATO member states. This is not all. Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, a self-proclaimed militarist, publicly advocated 'nuclear sharing between Japan and the US'. PM Kishida flatly refused to attend the first Meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, even in the capacity of an observer. By so doing, they themselves revealed that they are scheming for 'Japan's nuclear armament'. The Japanese government, thus rushing to be a military big power, has started a dash for an ultra-reactionary offensive, that is, the nullification of Article 9 of Japan's Constitution, which stipulates the 'renouncement of the right of belligerency of the state' and 'non-retention of war potential'. In Japan, the labour movement is now controlled and distorted by the labour aristocrats of Rengo [JCTU], who have degraded themselves as menial servants of monopoly capitalists. The Japanese Communist Party, a neo-Stalinist party, has not only abandoned its opposition to the US-Japan military alliance but also proposed even a 'practical use of Self-Defence Forces', i.e. use of imperialist military forces, thus degrading as a complement to the LDP government. We the revolutionary Left is striving to overcome such a degeneration of the labour movement and the peace movement in Japan and resolutely fighting under the banner 'No to the strengthening of the US-Japan military alliance!' and 'Prevent the constitutional revision!' East Asia and the Pacific are now in impending danger of a new war between the US with Japan and China with Russia (plus North Korea) with Taiwan as a flashpoint. We call on comrades all over the world to strive together with us to create a powerful antiwar struggle worldwide to break through the crisis of global warfare amid the intensified clash between the US and China-Russia! Stir up the flame of antiwar struggle all over the world! Comrades! The only power to prevent Putin's war lies in the united struggles of working people in Ukraine, in Russia and all over the world. Nonetheless, what are the so-called leftists of the world doing at this very moment when thousands of Ukrainian people are being sunk into seas of blood! Some say knowingly that both Putin and Zelensky are to blame, for the latter have brought in NATO. They are trying to impose 'surrender' on Ukrainian people now in a life-and-death battle, that is, preaching that they should lay down their arms. Others shamelessly say 'Russia is just making a self-defensive response', thereby degrading themselves to be agents for Putin. Not a single word of denunciation do they utter when the would-be czar Putin is devastating the neighbouring country and massacring people. Those 'leftists' who do not condemn it are unworthy to be called so. We know, of course, that many conscientious leftists denounce Putin's war and are fighting shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainians. However, it is also a fact that not a small number of so-called leftists are showing anti-working class responses as mentioned above. They always say 'We stand by the oppressed'. But they do not have an iota of indignation against Putin, who is indiscriminately killing Ukrainians. Neither do they have the standpoint of 'living together and suffering together' with Ukrainians now exposed to the outrageous gunfire. In a matter-of-fact manner, they recommend abandoning resistance to Ukrainians who are fighting at the peril of their lives. They have revealed here the arrogance and degeneration of the self-styled leftists who are defanged and live in peace in imperialist countries! It goes without saying that Lenin regards it as a 'just war' when the invaded nation wages a war of counterattack against the war of aggression by a 'great power' as an invader. Lenin encouraged the working class of the oppressed nation to resolutely wage a war against invaders in its forefront. Those who look on themselves as leftists must carry through with this revolutionary spirit of Lenin in the middle of today's war of aggression in Ukraine. Many of so-called leftists, who cannot face up to Putin's war, thereby revealing their miserable states, retain the feeling that they should defend Russia, the country that was formerly the 'Soviet Union', in opposition to imperialist powers. This is because they have never carried out a serious confrontation at all with Stalinism. First of all, those degenerate leftists have avoided wrestling with the historic event of the self-destruction of the USSR in 1991 from the standpoint of the proletariat. In 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev dismantled the Stalinist USSR by introducing bourgeois democracy and market economy; he thus finally buried away the Russian revolution of 1917, which ushered in the period of transition to a world proletarian revolution. We the anti-Stalinist revolutionary Left grasped this event, deplorable for the world proletariat, as anti-revolutionary, as the 'grand reversal of the history'; thereafter we have been fighting consistently with our resolve to 're-reverse' the reversal. We have exposed the historic decline of the militarist empire of America as the 'sole superpower', which committed all possible barbarities around the world with extreme arrogance right after the collapse of the USSR. And we have been sounding an alarm to the 'danger of the outbreak of another world war amid the new East-West cold war'. That is to say, we have revealed the fact that Xi-led neo-Stalinist China has launched its political, military challenges against US imperialism to seize world hegemony as the 'centre of the world', and that Putin-led Russia is making a headlong rush to 'recover the territories' by relying on the FSB-based authoritarian rule and the monstrous nuclear capabilities because it has yet to get out of its ruinous situations. We have thus been denouncing China and Russia for emerging as the main culprits that plunge the world working people into the hell of war, famine, poverty and authoritarian rule, in rivalry and competition with imperialist powers. All of the self-styled leftists that failed to squarely face up to the self-collapse of the USSR with proletarian indignation have averted their eyes from anti-proletarian crimes by today's China and Russia, so that they can do nothing but brandish a desiccated proposition 'Imperialism is worse'. This is because they do not reflect upon their own (pro-) Stalinist nature whereby in the past they called the USSR a 'socialist country' or 'workers' state' and overlooked its repeated crimes, thus defending it. The fundamental problem lies in that they have neglected confrontation with Stalinism from first to last. We the revolutionary Left in Japan founded ourselves through our confrontation and wrestle with the Hungarian incident of 1956. Since then, every time the Stalinist USSR has committed an anti-working class crime - the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the aggression in Afghanistan, the suppression of the Polish 'Solidarity' and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster - we have denounced it through and through, thus creating struggles on a mass base to expose the crimes of Stalinism. It is therefore only the anti-Stalinist revolutionary Left in Japan that denounces Putin's war and is striving to create Ukraine antiwar struggles, while criticizing the degeneration of the Japanese neo-Stalinist party, which is chattering about a 'solution through talks in the United Nations'. Comrades all over the world. Let us denounce and break through the degeneration of so-called leftists! Now is the time to resolutely create an international struggle to crush Putin's war! From our heart, we call on Ukrainian working people who are battling against Russia's aggression. Beat back the abominable invading army in the unity among the national forces, territorial defence forces, residents and volunteers with the working class as its core! We call on Russian working people. Despite brutal repression, now is the time to create a struggle with the aim of overthrowing the Putin regime! We call on both Ukrainian and Russian working people to fight in solidarity with each other by reviving the great spirit of the soviet-based revolution in 1917-18, in which the proletariat, peasants and soldiers of both nations joined together. Working people all over the world, envelop Putin the massacrer with the flame of anger! Create antiwar struggles to break through the crisis of a war erupting with Taiwan as a focus! In the autumn of 1961, when the USSR perpetrated its nuclear testing, we fought under the slogan 'Oppose USSR nuclear testing!' in opposition to the degeneration of the Japanese Stalinist party and its controlled Movement against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, which defended the USSR testing. Then in 1963, we launched the first International Antiwar Assembly in the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima under the revolutionary slogan, 'Down with US and USSR nuclear testing!' Today, six decades after that, the world is again verging on a crisis of a Third World War as a thermo-nuclear war amid the bitter rivalry between the US and China with Russia. We call on the world's working people. Let us fight all out to break through the crisis of the outbreak of another world war! Fighting people all over the world, arise together with us!

December 8 2019: Annual political meeting of the JRCL-RMF Tokyo: demonstration of Zengakuren to the Embassy of China in support to the masses of Hong Kong