Ukraine - 08/04/2020 Brutal attack on Donbass workers: miserable wages, months without pay, job insecurity, 50% of the sacked miners and a ban on the right to strike... What the Kiev fascist government could not impose on the Donbass, with the invasion and its bayonets, has been accomplished by Putin's partner the pro-Russian oligarchy, supported by Stalinism With strikes and pits' take-overs, the miners return to combat against the oligarchs of Donbass and Moscow DOWN WITH THE MINSK COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY DEAL ...between Trump and Putin who divide Ukraine and plunder the nation!   In 2014 the working class and the exploited masses unified their struggle across Ukraine, from Donbass to Kiev, to get rid of Yanukovich, IMF lackey supported by the United States and by Putin's bayonets; a ferocious regime of a multibillion-dollar oligarch hated by the masses. This enormous struggle was expropriated and diverted in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, by imperialism. The bourgeois trap was based on demagoguery that promised better living conditions for the exploited. A third of the population was unemployed and another third had already migrated to imperialist Europe as "second class workers". The salary of workers in Ukraine did not exceed 150 euros... Supported by the middle classes and the hatred of the masses against the Yanukovych dictatorship, the bourgeoisie deflected the fight, manipulated it, deceived the masses and then, by force of clubs and shots, disciplined them. In eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass area, not a single worker came out in support of the corrupt and super-millionaire Yanukovych, whom Putin was trying to show as "ally of the people", since he was hated by the masses both in the Ukrainian East as in its West. It was a government of "national unity" that guaranteed manu-militari to apply the thefts of the IMF. Imperialism and its agents from Poroshenko's European Solidarity Party, which took over the Ukrainian government in 2014 at the fall of Yanukovich, diverted the fight with false "democratizing" and "joining the European Union" promises to crush, after controlling the masses, the rebelled working class. Kiev workers sought to break out of the grip of Yanukovych and Putin's exploitation. They saw that Ukraine's accession to the European Union could mean the possibility of progress for them. That was a new deception. Even thousands of Ukrainian migrant workers were already standing alongside black, Latino, African and Middle Eastern workers doing the worst jobs in imperialist Europe to get out of their nation's hell. The bourgeoisie manipulated the just aspiration of the Ukrainian masses to have jobs and "European wages". As in the '89 with the capitalist restoration, as we already said, today they promised again the supermarket shelves full of goods as in Europe, but there they only found hunger, misery and exploitation again. In today's Ukraine, workers no longer even earn their former miserable wages. Meanwhile, also in 2014, the great bourgeoisie and the oligarchs of Donetsk and Lugansk, owners and associate owners of Russia, from its borders, where the great coal mines of the region are, occupied the Donbass. There, the mining workers dug in and began a very hard fight, first in the face of the attempt by the IMF and Yanukovich, and then facing the Kiev government, which sought to impose the privatization of the mines and thousands of lay-offs. This combat left the entire regime of domination in the region in crisis, including that pro-Russian bourgeoisie that supported the hated Yanukovych government. Ukraine was thus at war. On the one hand, in the Donbass the masses were controlled by a policy of class collaboration of Stalinism with the local pro-Moscow oligarchies; on the other side, with the fascist forces of Kiev that threatened to leave the Donbass as scorched earth. The Ukrainian working class was divided between the "siren songs" of the popular front, which disorganized and disarmed the revolutionary masses of the Donbass, and the fascism of Kiev that sought to settle throughout the territory. First, it was then the fascist force of Kiev in charge of marching to crush the masses of the Donbass, while the oligarchy of that region sought to ride on the mass action to try to manipulate and deflect this enormous uprising. From Kiev, the bourgeoisie and imperialism raged, with fierce bombardments, against the masses, union locals and workers' organizations (just as those who until yesterday presented themselves as "allies of the Donbass masses" do today). But they could not prevail. As we said, a fierce resistance from the masses, which raised up its workers and soldiers' militias, shocked the region because it was fighting in defense of labor and against the privatization plan that imperialism continued to demand. Moreover, the rank and file workers of Kiev refused to go to repress their Donbass mining brothers. The masses imposed their stamp. The Donetsk oligarchy, meanwhile, was desperately conspiring with Putin and imperialism to control the escalation of the miners' struggle on the border with Russia. Putin and his counterrevolutionary forces allied to all the gangs of the Ukrainian oligarchy, a high bourgeoisie from the nomenclature of the old CP, threatened with the "mother of all battles" and ended up fleeing beyond the borders of Ukraine with their 120,000 men. Actually, the rank and file soldiers of Russia threatened to go over to the side of their Donbass brothers to fight. Putin received from the hands of US imperialism, which seized control of Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula, for the services rendered and those that he had to render as executioner of the masses in Syria, Ukraine and throughout Eurasia. And to make sure this would be as agreed, Wall Street and US imperialism seized all the accounts of Russian tycoons and oligarchs abroad. Meanwhile, the American companies were left with the largest gas company in Ukraine, along which gaslines gas transits from the Russian steppes to Germany. The Minsk Agreements: The US-Putin Counter-Revolutionary Plan to Divert and Crush the Heroic 2014 Mass Uprising Ukraine was split. Putin along with the pro-Russian oligarchy of the Don fictitiously developed a nation called “Novorossiya” that broke the unity of the Ukrainian working class. Hundreds of militants from the CPs of Europe and Russia went to support by iron and fire, just like a fifth column, that invented nation of “Novorossia” and the perfidious policy of subjecting the working class to its executioners in Moscow and the great owners of the Donbass mines. Thus the Ukrainian working class was divided and the oppressed nation split. In the Donbass this sinister policy of subjecting the rebelled working class to the bourgeoisie went very far. Under the cover of "internationalism" and the "anti-fascist struggle", hundreds of Stalinist cadres were sent by Moscow and by the Communist Parties of Western Europe to the Donbass, as we have already said. They took military control of the workers' defense in the face of attacks by Kiev fascism, headed all the brigades of privates and miners, and murdered all the leaders who opposed their policy of class collaboration in the region. What the Kiev army could not do was done by Stalinism, under the command of the great bourgeoisie and the oligarchy of Donbass and Moscow, recalling the worst times of its counterrevolutionary policy in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. This policy ended up weakening and dividing the working class in the whole of Ukraine. It was what allowed the settlement of fascism in Kiev and for the US imperialists to keep gas companies from all over Ukraine, as Biden's son did, while the Great Russian bourgeoisie had coal for their military apparatus. Far away were Putin and the eastern and western Ukrainian upper bourgeoisie from breaking with imperialism, of which they are its small partners. The thing went very bad for the working class in western Ukraine, which was under the boot of fascism and very far from earning the “European wages” that it yearned to achieve with its uprising in 2014. And the Donbass working class did very badly as this is demonstrated by the maladies suffer by miners today under the class collaboration government of the Lugansk and Donetsk oligarchy and their Stalinist friends. Today, the mines have been all privatized as the IMF demanded in 2014 and tens of thousands of miners were laid off. The salary does not exceed 150 euros a month and inflation is rampant. Moreover, for months this infamous oligarchy has not paid the wages of the workers of "Novorossiya", just as Putin does in Russia. From the ranks of that front of Stalinists and oligarchs, a government in the Donbass has emerged so much counter-revolutionary and anti-worker as that in Kiev. Ultimately, the split Ukraine was a detour to enforce imperialist plunder plans there. The sinister policy of class collaboration of Stalinism that weakened the Ukrainian working class as a whole and removed it from the scene in Kiev, has allowed today the pro-Russian oligarchy to apply the IMF plan of hunger, misery and dismissals, with Putin's bayonet. In Lugansk, the miners died confronting the fascist forces organized by NATO, and later suffered, from the hand of the fictitious government "Republic of Novorossiya", the plans of hunger and looting that they wanted to impose. This policy was drawn up and monitored and was enforced with the Minsk counter-revolutionary agreements between the US imperialists and Putin. There it was established that Moscow should be in charge of crushing the masses of the so-called "Republic of Novorossiya", while imperialism established a semi-fascist government in Kiev, as its direct agent. Thus, an infamous regime of partition and colonization of Ukraine was established with twin governments that in the east and west implemented the imperialist plans to plunder and a brutal attack against the masses, with hunger wages (which are not even paid), dismissals, persecution, jail and death. US imperialism had an offensive and aggressive policy in Ukraine. It trampled that nation. NATO troops were displayed on the border with Russia. US imperialism established its puppet Poroshenko government in Kiev. It took over the very rich Ukrainian gas company, while leaving Putin to implement the "reconversion" plan of the Donbass mines with hunger, layoffs and closure of the most unproductive ones. With his white troops and the collaboration of his mercenaries, he surrounded the mining movement in a fictional "Republic of Novorossiya". But to impose this plan, the rebel workers' movement in eastern Ukraine had to be defeated. It had to be separated from the rest of the Ukrainian working class. It had to be disarmed. It was necessary to get out of their head their greatest aspiration, which they shouted aloud in the streets: "May the USSR return!" It was out of that same longing that Stalinism played its full role, not to "bring the USSR back", but to defeat that rebel focus of the Ukrainian working class. These counter-revolutionary deals like the one in Minsk had begun to be written at the table of the Geneva Conferences. They were written with the letter D of death and the B of blood of the exploited rebels. In the Geneva Agreement under imperialist command, Putin and his murderous troops were sent to support the fascist al-Assad and to massacre the Syrian revolution. A sinister pact of partition of that nation, where the dog Bashar did the “dirty work” together with Moscow of massacring the masses, on behalf of all the imperialist powers. Like Ukraine, today Syria is split, with al-Assad and Putin's bayonets in Damascus and with Turkey controlling the north and the rebel masses of Idlib, while the US pumps all Syrian oil from Raqa and Deir Ez Zor with its oil companies carrying out a blatant robbery of the nation that would even make the old pirates of the Caribbean blush. The rascals of the Biden family, the Democratic Party presidential candidate, who took possession of the most succulent business in Ukraine: their gas company, do nothing different from Kiev. This sinister policy was designed in the Pentagon, after the US had to leave Iraq because the American people no longer accompanied any military adventure of direct intervention by the Wall Street pirates. Putin played the role of hitman in the rear in Ukraine and on the offensive in Syria, in support of Bashar the dog. Counter-revolutionary deals, fascism, deceit, betrayals and a policy of class collaboration are the tools that imperialism used to concentrate its forces and crush the two most advanced revolutionary foci that the mass response to the 2008 crash gave: Syria and Ukraine. The crisis of leadership of the working class, that is, the overabundance of treacherous leaderships, is what has allowed and still allows imperialism and its hitman Putin to impose these counter-revolutionary deals with lies, deceit and iron and fire. But the Ukrainian working class has not yet surrendered and, as in Syria, it resists in the last trenches and in this case, in the mine pits. A heroic fight by the Donbass miners, yesterday against Yanukovich's monetarist-fund plans, and today against the Ukrainian oligarchy allied to Putin Against hunger and layoffs, the Lugansk working class is rising up The Antratsit miners in the self-styled "Lugansk People's Republic" (under the control of the pro-Russian oligarchy of eastern Ukraine and Stalinism), occupied the mine underground on June 5, 2020 and on June 11 declared themselves in hunger strike in protest of unpaid wages from December to April. The Komsomolskaya mine was blocked by the police and the military. The bourgeoisie cut off the mine's telephone signal, electricity, water and ventilation and even declared a “medical quarantine” with the excuse of the coronavirus, imposing the curfew to isolate the 123 miners who were supporting the strike and occupation. The enormous solidarity that this struggle aroused made the bourgeoisie tremble because it raised the possibility that the working ranks of Ukraine would reunite, opening the revolution and threatening, as in 2014, with burning Russia and Europe. For this reason, to terrorize the exploited, dozens of relatives and activists who brought food to the striking workers and organized protests and occupations in other mines were detained and many of them are still taken hostage in the regime's prisons. Evgeny Mikhailichenko, Igor and Vitaly Yefanov (leaders of the strike) are still detained in Lugansk, accused of "repeated violation of the established order, organization or holding of assemblies, meetings, demonstrations, marches or pickets", and may receive sentences of up to five years in prison. In these "independent republics" the workers cannot even strike without being imprisoned in the dungeons of the oligarchy! Immediate and unconditional freedom for the miners, relatives and activists detained in Lugansk! It is the same policy of Putin in Russia, where the workers who have been spending months without payment are starting to rise, while a high bourgeoisie fills its pockets with businesses centralized by the bourgeois state. The bankruptcy of the world economy and the fall in the price of oil are beginning to bring Russia, like all of Europe, closer to recession and an open capitalist crisis. Butcher Putin has already plebiscited constitutional reforms that will keep him in power until 2034, appointing himself a quasi-Tsar for life. The Ukrainian working class must be re-united as a decisive link to unite the proletariat of Eastern and Western Europe Miserable wages, months working without pay, a brutal job insecurity with more than 50% (60 thousand) of miners being sacked and a persecution in all the line to the workers with the prohibition of the right to strike. They fill their pockets thanks to the sweat of the miners, because they have kept the richest mines (incorporated into a company of the Russian security services) and guarantee the businesses of imperialism! Meanwhile, in the zone controlled by the government of Kiev, now with Zelenski at the helm, the attack on workers dictated by the IMF is deepening: layoffs, increased fees, devaluation, poverty wages and brutal labor flexibilization with a “slavery law”, as the Ukrainian workers denounce. Even in the first weeks of July, a caravan of miners from Kiev-controlled areas came to the seat of parliament to demand payment of wages in arrears and to protest the closure of mines. This is why the current struggle of the eastern Ukraine miners is watched sympathetically by the working class across Ukraine, because in both eastern and western Ukraine, workers suffer the same dire conditions of exploitation and face the same enemy: the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchy, and imperialism. As demonstratedabove only by the working class joining their ranks from Donbass to Kiev would the Ukrainian nation be saved from barbarism: one class, one fight against the same enemy! For a unified Committee of Workers' Struggle across Ukraine for the revolution to stand up and succeed from the Donbass to Kiev, sweeping away the eastern and western Ukrainian oligarchy, and breaking with imperialism! We need to get the mining workers' militias back on their feet, uniting with the rank and file soldiers of Kiev who in 2014/2015 refused to go to a fratricidal war and fought to go to fight alongside their brothers from the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk! We want to earn the same as the best-paid workers in imperialist Europe! 2000 euros of basic salary for all, and distribution of working hours without salary reduction, so that the thousands of workers forced to emigrate from hunger and misery can return, seeking a decent life! Down with the Minsk pact of partition of the Ukrainian nation among Putin, Germany and France, which was signed with Obama behind the scenes! Out with Trump, Merkel, Putin, Macron, the EU, the UN and NATO from Ukraine! Crimea, today under the boot of the minion Putin and the Russian bourgeoisie as a corsair's booty for the services rendered, is also Ukraine! Out of the Crimean Peninsula the Russian military base! Out with the IMF! No to the repayment of the external debt that the oligarchs and the gangs of the old Stalinist bureaucracy contracted! Immediate seizure of the assets of the parasitic Ukrainian oligarchy, leaders of the Stalinist clique of the Communist Party in '89, who stole the assets and wealth of the people From East to West we face the same enemy and we have the same demands: living wages, work and bread! Expropriation without compensation and under workers control of the gas pipelines that pass through Ukraine, carry Russian gas at a bike price to Europe, expropriation of the mines, steelworks and factories of Ukraine! Expropriation without compensation and under workers control of all the productive lands that were stolen by the Cargill and Monsanto that bought them for a dime! Renationalization without compensation and under workers' control of Gazprom! Expropriation without compensation of banks, replacing them by a single state bank under workers' control! For a workers emergency plan! Investment plan to modernize the mining industry and to reset to produce mines closed or devastated by the bombings! NOW: public works plan to rebuild homes, schools and hospitals, roads and water and energy infrastructure! A single class, a single fight against the bankers, the IS imperialists and imperialist Maastricht! Only in this way can the miners' war cry become reality: We want the USSR to return! That of the councils of workers, peasants and soldiers; this time without the traitors of Stalinism, sellouts of the October 1917 revolution and the international socialist revolution! And only then will Ukrainian workers be able to conquer their demands and establish themselves again as a stronghold of the European revolution, from Portugal to the Russian steppes. Ukraine will be united, free and independent Soviet and a bastion of the European and world revolution ... or it will be like today, a colony protected by imperialism, torn and looted by the IMF and the EU! The true allies of the Ukrainian working class The struggle of the Ukrainian working class has its great allies in the young and exploited that in the United States rise up and shakes the regime at the heart of the imperialist beast. As in the revolution in 2014, today in resistance, this struggle of the Donbass miners stands up at a time when the European working class rises again against the imperialist Maastricht:their struggle is a sister to the struggle of the Black Vests in France, of the Spanish and English workers. Today the Russian workers, crushed under the boot of Putin’s terror regime, the murderer of the former KGB whom Stalinism and its ex-Trotskyist fools want to pass as a "friend" of the exploited of the world, and who is nothing but a gendarme and assassin in the pay of imperialism, as it was demonstrated before in the Caucasus and now in Ukraine and Syria that at gunpoint guards the businesses of transnational corporations in the region. The Russian workers must stand up again and, together with their brothers and sisters from Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe, fight for the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms in the former USSR and Eastern Europe. From Portugal to the Russian steppes, a single working class, the same revolution. For the Socialist United States of Europe!   Nadia Briante

On the permanence of Stalinist betrayals to the Eastern European working class Who revived Lazarus? See more Igor and Vitaly Yefanov, leaders of the miners’ strike of Antrastit, detained in Lugansk 2014, Maidan 2014, Maidan 2014: miners’ militias in Donbass Women of the miners in the occupation of Antratsit 2020, Rally in Antrastit in solidarity with the miners Protest of the miners in Krasnolimanska