IWL-FI Statement | Putin, USA, NATO, and the European Union Out of Ukraine Now!

For a unified Ukraine free from Russian oppression!

1. Putin has just signed a decree recognizing the “self-styled republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states, outside Ukraine. At the same time, under the cover of “friendship treaties” signed with the puppet authorities of these territories, he has sent troops to the area with the cynical excuse of “safeguarding peace”.
2. The recognition of these puppet “republics,” supported by paramilitary gangs controlled by Moscow, with the support of the Russian army, is a frontal aggression against the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. This Russian aggression is a continuation of the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
3. Putin’s recognition of these fake independent republics blows up the Minsk Agreement, signed in 2015 to stop the military escalation. This agreement, imposed on Ukraine under cover of Russian military superiority, maintained the status quo favorable to Russia and recognized the “autonomy” of these Donbas territories. However, even so, these territories were formally recognized as part of Ukraine. The Agreement also included the withdrawal of pro-Russian paramilitary groups from the area and the regaining of control of the borders by the Ukrainian government. But the paramilitary groups never left. Instead they were reinforced, and Ukraine did not regain control of its eastern borders. Now Putin no longer recognizes these territories as part of Ukraine and sends his army to secure them.
4. Recognition poses the direct risk of an aggression against the rest of the Donbas territories, of which the puppet republics of Donetsk and Lugansk occupy only one third, although they claim the whole of that territory in their “constitutions.” This would trigger a war with thousands of deaths, devastation, and unforeseeable consequences.
5. The recognition of the independence of these “republics” and the dispatch of Russian troops was accompanied by a highly significant televised speech by Putin in which, besides justifying his actions with surrealistic accusations of an alleged “genocide” of the Russian population in the Eastern territories or of the “Nazi” character of the Ukrainian regime, he exposed the imperial aspirations of Russian capitalism. A weak capitalism, financially dependent and reduced to the role of energy supplier, but at the same time, a military superpower inherited from the USSR. Its aspirations rest, in the first place, on the subjugation of the former Soviet republics that belonged to the USSR.
6. Putin, a friend of the entire European ultra-right, who admires his ultra-nationalist and authoritarian regime, has been very clear in saying that Ukraine was “a creation of the Bolsheviks” when it is no more than an integral part of Russia. He has viciously attacked Lenin’s principles on nationalities: “We gave them the right to leave the USSR without terms and conditions. This is madness.” Instead, he extolled Stalin, who repressed in blood all national aspirations of the Soviet peoples and imposed a fierce oppression of Great-Russian nationalism, in direct continuity with the tsarist policy that Lenin fought head-on.
7. For Putin, the collapse of the former USSR, which allowed the national freedom of the peoples subjected to Great-Russian nationalism, was “the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century” that must be reversed. And since it cannot do it in any other way, it makes use of military force. In addition to Ukraine, this is the case of the support to Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime in Belarus in the face of the popular uprising. Or the recent intervention of Russian troops in Kazakhstan (blessed on this occasion by the US, the EU and China), aimed at crushing the popular uprising against the regime in that country, which was carried out under the umbrella of the CSTO military alliance (formed by the Russian government and those of the former Soviet republics).
8. One of the arguments Putin has been using to justify his policy towards Ukraine is the military encirclement to which Russia is indeed subjected by NATO. But to really defend itself against this encirclement, the Russian government should call for a mobilization of the Ukrainian and European, American, and Russian peoples against the increased military presence and threats and demand, likewise, radical measures of mutual disarmament. But Putin and the Russian oligarchs whom he represents are more afraid of the popular masses than of imperialism and are not willing to weaken Great-Russian militarism, their great trump card vis-à-vis the Russian people and the peoples of their periphery, their only strong point on which to base their aspirations vis-à-vis the great powers. Thus, Putin’s “defense” against NATO is a brutal aggression against the Ukrainian nation. In doing so, he is merely providing arguments for the US, NATO, and the EU to appear as the protectors of Ukraine, to turn it into a military semi-colony of NATO and to increase their military presence in Eastern Europe.

Take the US, NATO, and European talons out of Ukraine!

9. But the actions of the US, the EU and NATO have nothing to do with the defense of Ukrainian sovereignty, cynically manipulated in the interests of two counterrevolutionary sides: Putin’s Russia on the one hand and, on the other, US imperialism and its NATO and European partners. Both sides are using the Ukrainian conflict to defend their positions, to strengthen militarism in Europe and in the world and to push forward an arms race.
10. The Ukrainian conflict is also a theater of operations in which the US seeks to assert its authority in relation to the European Union, in particular Germany, at the expense of the latter’s relations with Russia, its major energy supplier. Ultimately, the US wants to rigidly discipline Germany in its great dispute with China.

Over 150,000 Russian soldiers have encroached on Ukraine since November 2021
Russia has no right over Ukraine. Russian troops and paramilitaries out of the Donbas. Withdrawal of Russian troops and military equipment from the eastern border and Belarus. Return of Crimea.
Dissolution of NATO. Withdrawal of American troops and bases from Western European and Eastern European countries.
Dissolution of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) military alliance of the Russian state with the former Soviet republics, used to send troops to crush popular uprisings and prop up submissive oligarchs, as in Kazakhstan.
For a unified Ukraine free from Russian oppression, out of the clutches of the United States, NATO, and the European Union.
Against the oppressive policy of the “Great Russian” nationalism of Stalin and Putin, we vindicate the Leninist policy of the right to national self-determination of the peoples.
Stop militarization and the arms race. Drastic reduction of military budgets. Destruction of nuclear arsenals and weapons of mass destruction.
 
Originally published in Spanish here
Translated by Dolores Underwood