February 12, 2025

Ukraine: Three years after Moscow's invasion

To end Putin's occupation and prevent colonization
by the US and the IMF

For a Soviet and independent Ukraine!
Without invading troops
or imperialist plunder

Dear comrades of the Social Movement,
We send you our fraternal greetings from here and wish you are well.
The purpose of this note is to send you our comments on the positions you sent us last month on the current situation in Ukraine. In the first place we want to reiterate that your position and the exchange and fraternal debate with you constitutes a very valuable contribution for the international proletariat and is undoubtedly a search for the path to the victory of the Ukrainian nation. Therefore, we have distributed your letter among all our comrades and published it on our website and social networks.

We want to tell you at the outset that there is no doubt that the enemy attacking today with its bombs and artillery, occupying the Ukrainian nation and massacring its people, is the butcher Putin. We are in the opposite trenches of those who claim that Putin is an ally of the oppressed and/or want to paint him as "anti-imperialist".  Therefore, we cannot but agree with you on the need to denounce the massacre of the butcher Putin against the Ukrainian people.
We understand that what you are saying is that at this moment when the time of the negotiating tables is approaching, Zelensky should not be weakened because that would weaken Ukraine. And that is why you refrain from making any statements or criticisms so as not to contribute to the isolation of Ukraine in the face of aggression. This we believe is, in summary, the position you expressed in your letter sent to us on Jan 11. We would like to tell you that although we will raise some differences in the appreciation of  the current situation, we understand what you express and of course we ask you to let us know if there is an error in our interpretation.   

We agree with you that the Ukrainian nation has been subjected not only to Moscow's bombings, invasion, disaster and death, but that this suffering has been worsened by an enormous isolation. In our view, decisive in this isolation was the encirclement imposed on the Ukrainian working class by the leaderships claiming to be of the international working class. Because in the very heart of Europe, the working class has witnessed this mockery of the Ukrainian people without being called upon to stop it, not to embark the weapons that were going to massacre their Ukrainian brothers, or to send supplies, medicines, money and even workers to defend the nation against the occupier as was done during the Spanish civil war in the 30s. On the contrary, it was these leaderships, with Stalinism at their head, who promulgated Putin as the ally of the peoples, who was allegedly "confronting NATO" in Ukraine. With these lies and deceptions they led in particular the European proletariat into inaction in the face of the massacre. We suffered the same in our own flesh in Syria, when they supported the jackal al-Assad and Putin and their massacre against the revolution under imperialist command, with the infamous excuse that the masses fighting in Syria were "terrorists". 

Thus the more Putin massacres and occupies the Ukrainian nation, the more the leaderships of the proletariat paint him as an ally, and vonsequently the more the Ukrainian working class is subjected to its own bourgeoisie and to the illusion that with NATO and the imperialist Maastricht it Could bevable to defeat Putin, save itself and achieve a better future. Then it is these same traitorous leaderships who accuse the Ukrainian masses of going to the feet of imperialism, but what other option and what other path have they left to the masses? What more can be asked of the Ukrainian working class and the poor people who have defended their nation with heroism and having thousands of dead? This is the tragedy of the Ukrainian working class that has been left isolated and encircled, subjected to the massacre of Moscow.

We also agree with you that Ukraine has been devastated, its infrastructure, its health services, its engineering, demolished by Russian bombs. Faced with this situation, far from seeing imperialism providing any help or offering a future and a dignified life for the Ukrainians, we see Trump demanding from the Ukrainian his posession  of their rare earth elements, Zelensky offering fabulous reconstruction deals in Ukraine for the US and the Ukrainian president himself announcing his willingness to end the war by exchanging territories with Putin.

Actually, for the bourgeoisie, war is a fabulous business, the most profitable of this epoch: while it is going on, they fill their pockets with the arms business. As we saw during this time, gas transit was maintained, grain exports were not interrupted, the Donbas oligarchy allied itself with Moscow to continue its business, while in Kiev and western Ukraine, the bourgeoisie continued its business on the super-exploitation of the working class, the non-payment of wages and indemnities, etc. Not to mention the IMF and the international creditors who with fraudulent foreign debts are drowning the nation. Now, with the announcements about the end of the war, those at the top are rubbing their hands together thinking about the reconstruction business and the redoubling of the plundering of the nation, as Trump has expressed with respect to the Ukrainian minerals indispensable for the technological industries that Zelensky was ready to affirm were available.
As we are writing this letter we receive more and more news about it, and about the submission and surrender announced by Zelensky, ready to meet with Trump and his vice-president, expressing all his willingness to accept the plans that they are preparing together with Putin.

That is why we differ with you when you say that in these decisive moments when the negotiating tables are just around the corner, weakening Zelensky is tantamount to weakening the struggle for the interests of the Ukrainian nation. We believe that Zelensky, subjected to imperialism as he is, is ready to surrender the national liberation struggle in negotiated pacts to the voracity not only of Putin but of the imperialist powers that intend to redouble the plunder and colonization of the nation. The Ukrainian bourgeoisie is ready to hand over the minerals to the US imperialists and the Donbas and Crimea to Moscow.
The US imperialists are announcing that they are coming for everything. Even the USA is trying to take over the empty pipelines of NordStream2, the gas pipeline system through which Europe had meant to ensure the direct transport of Russian gas to Maastricht, and which the US imperialists with Biden at the head blew up at the beginning of the Russian invasion.
By surrendering Ukraine to Putin's massacre, the US sought to break the Franco-German axis pact with Russia, preventing them from consolidating their vital space in Europe. The interruption of Nordstream2 meant cutting a decisive thread in the organization of European labor from Portugal to Russia. Today, the United States is also seeking to dominate this fabulous business.

For us, Ukraine was handed over as a pawn for Putin to massacre it, though without ever winning the war, that is why Biden and the "allied" European imperialisms never sent to Ukraine the necessary armament to repel Putin's advance but only to a certain extent, but never enough to defeat him or expel the occupant. Moscow occupied, partitioned and bled the nation so that later, bring strangled and surrendered by the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, and with Putin's boot treading on Donbas, Ukraine is on its way to remain as a tutelary colony. 

After Putin's ferocious massacre, the US is imposing the surrender of the nation and the conditions for the end of the war are being discussed, which include the distribution of business between imperialism and Putin and what spoils will also be left for the Ukrainian oligarchy. That’s because the Ukrainian bourgeoisie is not a national class. Like any bourgeoisie of a semicolonial country, it is a junior partner of imperialism and only as such will it enter into the distribution of the devastated Ukraine.

That is why for us to set up the workers and soldiers committees was the only way to negotiate the end of the war, even in better conditions for Ukraine, if the conditions did not provide for victory, which in war can happen. We understand that this was the best way to denounce Moscow and call the European and American working class to prevent the looting that the imperialist pirates want to impose on the nation, and the plunder of Moscow.
We are on time yet! An appeal to the workers of the U.S. and Europe to prevent imperialist plunder is to create the best conditions to fight against Moscow. War is the midwife of revolutions, provided the proletariat finds the way to fight in it for its interests by attacking the capitalists, defending the oppressed peoples, arming itself and uniting with the international working class.

Therefore we believe that the national liberation struggle is either led by the working class with the program of social reforms, with the nationalization of all natural resources and wealth that everyone wants to dispute, put at the service of the working class and the poor people to defeat the invader and have a decent life, or there is no possible victory for the independence of Ukraine.

The iron alternative for Ukraine today more than ever is for the working class with the program of social reforms to take the destiny of the nation into its own hands, or Ukraine will be transformed into a tutelary colony. In our view, there is not a middle way.
These are our opinions and our views. Of course, you are on the battlefield itself.   Your opinions have made us think, move forward and continue to contribute to the very hard events suffered by the workers in Ukraine. They do not deserve the hell that is being imposed on them: they do not deserve to have their wages and their lives torn apart from them, to have their salaries sank and to be martyred with infernal production rhythms, as the butcher of Moscow does in the areas he occupies and in the very heart of Russia.
We would like to be kept abreast of all developments. Be sure we value all the contributions you send us.

Giovanni Alberotanza of Avanzata Proletaria -Italy
Eliza Funes and Nadia Briante of the Liga Obrera Internacionalista - Fourth International of Argentina and co-authors of the book Ukraine at war.