Ukraine: The Hour of                  the Partisans             

                                           Image of a Ukrainian partisan. ABC newspaper of Spain of May 14, 2022

By La Marx International

"...that is the dialectic of history that reveals the bankruptcy of the capitalist system to many peoples in the form of national oppression... it is to recognize the explosive character of the national popular movement in today's Europe. Regardless of the current consciousness of the movement, objectively, opens the way to the proletarian revolution" ("The national question in Europe" Jean Van Heijenoort, secretary of Leon Trotsky, 1942)

The workers and people of Ukraine are carrying out an armed revolution in their struggle for National Liberation. They seek to throw off the yoke of the boot of the dictatorship of the capitalist oligarchy of Putin. Between March, April and May 2022, this revolutionary process achieved great triumphs by defeating the attempt by Putin's troops to take the main cities of his country. They managed to defend the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and advanced liberating Summy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv, forcing Putin's troops to retreat, and try to consolidate their dominance of the Ukrainian region of Donbas, where they act as an occupation army since the year 2014. From Marx International we are together with the workers and the people of Ukraine!

The news of the last days are the shocking advances, and triumphs of the Ukrainian people. First, the August 9 attack on the airbase of Putin's troops at Saki in occupied Crimea, with nearly 20 fighter planes destroyed, 60 soldiers killed, and 100 wounded. This is the largest single-day loss of military aircraft since World War II.

And that of August 10, 2022, the attack on the Zyabrivka aerodrome in Belarus, a country neighboring Ukraine, in a facility intended for Putin's troops. Both attacks were not carried out by Ukraine's regular army, nor were they the product of "security failures" as Putin's high command claims. These attacks show the most important fact for the Marxists: the action of the partisans. The August 9 attack on the Saki airbase in occupied Crimea was carried out by Ukrainian partisans. And the August 10, 2022 attack on the Zyabrivka airfield in Belarus was carried out by Belarusian partisans.

In English, Spanish and Portuguese letter from the Ukrainian air force to the Belarusian partisans in gratitude for the heroic action carried out on August 10 at Zyabrivka airport, in the Ukrainian magazine Focus

After the defeats suffered by Putin between March, April and May 2022, a second stage of the war began, characterized by armed resistance against the occupation. This war is no longer about rejecting the irruption and invasion of Putin's troops in the main cities of the country, but about the expulsion of an occupying army that has been usurping and attacking Donbas and the occupied areas of Ukraine for 6 years. The revolution carried out by the Ukrainian people for their national liberation has entered a new phase: The Hour of the Partisans.

A wave of attacks, bombings, ambushes, and weaponry organized by the masses

The partisans are guerrillas for freedom: peasants, women, workers, young people who take up arms fighting to liberate their land, and families who take up the European tradition of the French, Italian and Yugoslav partisans against the fascist occupation. Ukrainian partisans organize attacks, ambushes, surveillance, and intelligence, and have turned Melitopol, a city occupied by Putin's troops, into the partisan capital of the country, and a symbol of resistance with thousands of fighters.

Most of them make up the Territorial Defense Forces, around 200,000 combatants. When Putin invaded Donbas and Crimea in 2014, Ukraine had practically no army, and what existed was a junta of commanders that obeyed the Putin oligarchy. It was necessary to begin to build an independence army, and given the extremely poor state of the regular army, units of voluntary organizations were built that were called "Territorial Defense Battalions" (BDT) to which the "Territorial Self -Defense" would soon join .

All this activity of the Ukrainian fighters and partisans allowed great progress in the struggle for the liberation of the country. These advances of the Ukrainian people are carried out at a high cost of thousands of human lives, women, children, millions of displaced persons, and destruction of vital infrastructure, due to the brutal fascist attack of the capitalist oligarchy headed by Putin.

But these triumphs of the Ukrainian people have been possible, because they have the support of a mass mobilization throughout the world, with its epicenter in Europe. Each partisan has millions behind him, friends, relatives, neighbors who equip and provide all kinds of support, which has turned the Ukrainian partisan into a mass resistance organization. This has allowed the acts of sabotage of the Ukrainian resistance to be more and more numerous, with the city and railway junction of Melitopol as the center of the guerrilla action of the Ukrainian partisans. 

Map of partisan activity in Ukraine. It extends to an increasing number of cities, regions and Oblasts in the country

The partisans have extended their area of ​​activity to the cities of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Izyum, etc. For example, in Enerhodar, a city taken over by Putin's troops, collaborator Dimitri Savluchenko, head of the youth, family and sports department of the pro-Russian civil-military administration in Kherson, got into his car and was blown up in a car bomb attack. The partisans attacked other collaborators such as Vitalii Gura killed in Nova Kajovka, or Vladimir Saldo, another Putin collaborator from the city of Kherson. With the attacks, the partisans exacted revenge on the collaborators, and send a message to all Putin's collaborators in Ukraine.

Partisans sow terror in Putin's troops

The partisan attacks have succeeded in creating a sense of continuing insecurity for Putin's troops, a perception that they do not control the territory and that the war is spreading to their rear. The partisan insurgency allows Ukrainian forces to launch deadly attacks in territory controlled by Putin, even in areas where it is dangerous and sometimes impossible to commit troops. This activity is not completely under the control of the Ukrainian army, and it surprises NATO analysts who are often wrong in their estimates of the progress of the war.

The resistance activities did not start with Putin's invasion in February 2022. These acts of sabotage have been active since Putin's occupation of Donbas in 2014. At that time he triumphed over the revolution known as the Euromaoidan, which ended the dictatorship pro Yanukovych's Putin. To defeat this revolution, Putin in retaliation invaded the Donbas, with the excuse that they were territories with a Russian majority, and there began the development of partisan activity. But this whole process changed qualitatively after Putin's invasion in February 2022.

From there, there was an extension, growth, and strengthening of the partisan resistance, which has been strengthened and expanded by the rejection of the invasion by millions, which has allowed the emergence of thousands of combatants who fight against the invader. And to this mass extension of the partisan activity is added the internationalist character of the partisans with combatants from up to 55 different countries, within the so-called International Legion.

The activity of the partisans is concentrated in the supply centers, transport routes, supply nodes, and armament depots of Putin's troops. For example, in the Zaporizhzhia region, between July 23 and 24, they blew up a railway 30 km from Melitopol, which blocked supplies to Putin's troops. The invaders launch proposals for false referendums to determine the annexation of the occupied areas to the Russian Federation. But after the announcement of said referendums, the arms depots burned, the attacks intensified, and the demonstrations in the streets, organized by the partisans supported by the local population, which had to be repressed by the occupying authorities with pepper spray, and shots in the air. 

Maps from the Pentagon-linked Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which keeps a daily account of events in Ukraine. On the left, the map from April 13, 2022 shows no partisan activity. On April 14, 2022, it records partisan, guerrilla activity for the first time, marked in blue in the Melitopol area, under the description it says "Reported Ukranian Partisan Warfare" ( " Informed Warfare Partisan Activity ")

In these places the partisans put up posters asking for the heads of Putin's collaborators, accompanied by a wave of car bomb attacks, which devastate not only the occupied territories but also sabotage within Russia, and Belarus, with fires, explosions in military installations , and supply chains from border provinces.

The imperialist governments, and the Zelensky government against the Ukrainian people

The actions of the partisan resistance demoralize the occupation troops, but also open a crisis among the capitalist governments about how far the war should go. While Putin's troops were at the gates of kyiv, and there was a risk that Putin would occupy Ukraine, the imperialist governments of the US and Europe agreed to prevent Putin from taking control of the country.

The counterrevolution acted under the pressure of the repudiation of the masses in their countries in the face of the massacre perpetrated by Putin, a few kilometers from the great European capitals. NATO tolerated the Ukrainian resistance by providing limited weapons to the Ukrainian army, in order to relatively balance the forces, and prevent the fall of kyiv. But as soon as the immediate danger of the occupation of Kiev was removed, the imperialist governments began to fear that the advance of the Ukrainian troops would cause a defeat that would destabilize the regime of Putin's capitalist oligarchy.

No capitalist government is in favor of the fall of Putin. The imperialist governments of NATO did nothing during the years when Putin was invading Donbas, attacking Ukraine, and causing millions of displaced people. Rather, they were accomplices in Putin's aggression against Ukraine, convening useless agreements and peace summits with Putin, who never respected any agreement, something that the imperialist governments already know by heart.

But the NATO governments are horrified by the process of popular arming that is taking place in the Ukraine, and is spreading to Finland, Georgia, Belarus, and other republics in the area, where the people fear Putin's aggression. No capitalist government is in favor of armament and popular training, nor of the armed self-organization of the masses. The development of these processes inevitably implies the emergence and development of dual power, in which the bourgeois state begins to face an organization of the masses that it cannot control, and that even imposes its own power in its areas of action. , and in aspects of the country's politics. 

This is the reason why the evolution and development of the partisan movement in Ukraine is viewed with mistrust by the capitalist government of Ukraine headed by Zelensky, and by the European imperialist governments. And it is also the reason that led the capitalist government of Zelensky to introduce martial law in the country, workers and unions cannot, by law, organize protest marches. Zelensky's bourgeois government acts by taking away from the masses the right to mass protest mobilization, a measure that has just been extended for 90 days.

But worse still, the bourgeois government of Zelensky promoted the approval by the Ukrainian Parliament on July 19 of bills that attack the labor rights of Ukrainian workers. Zelensky promoted the approval of Law 5161, which introduces "zero hour" contracts, and Law 5371, which imposes the effective abolition of important labor rights and protections that safeguard workers against the arbitrary actions of employers. All this offensive of the capitalist government of Ukraine against the masses takes place right in the middle of a war, when these cases of boss abuse become more frequent.

Prior to Putin's invasion, a wave of strikes prevented the Zelensky government from approving this anti-worker legislative package, but now in the midst of calls for "National Unity" Zelensky takes the opportunity to place these "simplified regime" laws that mean arbitrary dismissals , overtime for spurious reasons, or ignoring collective agreements regarding the payment of wages. He will also jeopardize the chances of organizing, and defending their rights through the unions.

The attack by the Zelensky government is so serious that it violates even the minimum social provisions of the European Association Agreement, nor does it comply with the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO). It does not meet a series of minimum standards enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, nor the European Social Charter, and other regulations of the European Union.

And it also violates the norms stipulated by the ILO Conventions No. 132, No. 135, No. 158, and even the founding Convention No. 1 (1919), on the limitation of the working day in industrial companies to 8 hours a day and 48 hours weekly. Although all this legislation is sanctioned by capitalist institutions that in no way we Marxists defend, it is important to denounce that they are workers' conquests achieved with the struggle of millions of European workers. Not even Zelensky's provisions are located within the framework of a European Union, which he says he wants to join.

In other words, while the Ukrainian people defend Ukraine's independence in the streets and on the battlefield, their government has dedicated itself to attacking their most basic rights. In parallel, the imperialist governments, especially Macron and Scholz, presidents of the governments of France, and Germany, after the defeat suffered by Putin between the months of March, April, and May 2022, began to propose that it was necessary to give end the war, and solve everything through diplomatic channels.

During the months of May and June they pressed for an armistice, and the end of hostilities. On May 4 from the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Macron chose this framework to state that an agreement must be reached through diplomatic channels and "Russia must not be humiliated". The line "Do not humiliate Russia." it implies a diplomatic settlement which means that Ukraine gives up the Donbas, in exchange for which Russia ceases its attacks on Ukraine. An "agreement" to give Putin a minimal victory that would allow him an elegant way out of the military swamp in which his regime of capitalist oligarchs is immersed. 

Above: The Guardian publishes Macron's remarks "Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine." Below: In English, Portuguese and Spanish, the Pope poses on Twitter "We are all guilty" with the hashtag: "Peace for Ukraine"

Along with the line of the imperialist governments, the Vatican added the slogan "We are all guilty" with the aim of clearing the Putin dictatorship of its war crimes. But the line of "Do not humiliate Russia" is unacceptable for the Ukrainian people, who after so many deaths, destruction and suffering, will in no way agree to hand over to the negotiating table what they have achieved with so much struggle and effort.

It is also impossible for Zelensky to accept that agreement, knowing that the people are going to reject them in the midst of growing discontent towards his government, and those of NATO due to the lack of weapons, the curtailment of conquests, and freedoms. In line with this policy of pressing for a peace agreement, during the months of May and June, NATO stopped supplying weapons to Ukraine. But this could not prevent the Ukrainian troops from completing their advance and taking Kharkiv, the 2nd city of Ukraine on May 13, a resounding triumph.

Partisan counteroffensive strengthens

After the defeats of March, April, and May, Putin's forces were greatly destroyed and weakened without the ability to hold all the occupied territory, which means a long line of thousands of kilometers. Put in concentrated his forces in the Ukrainian Donbas which comprises two provinces or states, the Donetsk Oblast, and the Luhansk Oblast. There Putin's high command concentrated regular troops, the mercenaries of the militias of the "self-proclaimed republics" of Donetsk and Lugansk, the Chechen mercenaries and the Wagner Group mercenaries who launched brutal attacks against the bastions of resistance.

Putin concentrated the bulk of his troops in Donbas, leaving rear units in the south and north, without the weapons and skill of elite battalions. But his troops were left in such a weak position that he could only take the Luhansk Oblast. Donetsk Oblast is still an objective that he could not achieve, and while Putin concentrated troops in the Donbas, the Ukrainian resistance took advantage of Putin's lack of troops in the south, and the north to surround and launch the counteroffensive in those regions.

Despite the NATO arms boycott, the resistance grew larger and more active. Played to their fate, and without resources in their hands, the Ukrainian combatants went out to defend with the means at their disposal. In May from the strategic railway town of Melitopol which is a land bridge to Crimea, there was an attack on a destroyed armored train and grenade attacks on a command post on May 18; the attack on the train tracks and a radar station blown up on May 22; a pro-Ukrainian rally on May 29, and the blowing up of a collaborator's house on May 30.

In June, the "Partisan Luhansk" project was launched to strengthen resistance to the occupiers' attempts to consolidate control of Luhansk Oblast. In the southern part of the country, Ukrainian troops liberated Snake Island in June 2022, and are already at the gates of Kherson, the only large city still in the hands of Putin's troops, threatening to liberate the entire southern zone of Ukraine .

THE SITUATION OF THE WAR IN AUGUST 2022 

In color the territories occupied by Putin, who attacks Donestk and Luhansk, but until today only controls Luhansk. Ukraine's counter-offensives threaten to liberate the north after taking Kharkiv (Kharkiv), and threaten to liberate the south, at the gates of Kherson (Kherson)

The partisans, due to lack of weapons, had to sharpen their inventiveness. They had to resort to all kinds of alternative solutions, and improvisation of weapons of all kinds, assembling parts of material captured from the invading army, combining parts, appealing to creativity of all kinds. They advanced in creating systems, supported by the capacity of a disciplined, trained, and high-level working class that finds engineers, technicians, and computer specialists in its ranks. From the first and primitive Molotov cocktails, the partisan resistance carried out all kinds of clandestine installations, and attacks with projectiles.

The scout outposts began to animate more and more behind enemy lines, the attack on Putin's troops in Chkalove occurred near an area of ​​active combat in southern Ukraine, and also in the south, the so-called Berdyansk Partisan Army , launched an extensive propaganda campaign on Telegram, with messages to the struggle, advice on forms of resistance, names and addresses of collaborators, with messages like this: "The Russian occupiers and their collaborators, do you think they have established control over Berdyansk? They have no idea what a mousetrap they've walked into. We, the Berdyansk Partisan Army, are already building up our forces."

Putin calls the partisan attacks "acts of terrorism". But neither the persecutions in the occupied towns nor the accusations launched in the mass media controlled by Putin intimidate the Ukrainian fighters. In the explosion that occurred near the office of Yevgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol, pro-Kremlin authorities in the city explicitly blamed Ukrainian partisans and Russia's Investigative Committee, the FBI's equivalent, blamed to the "Ukrainian wreckers".

Ukrainian partisans are targeting Russian occupation officials and Ukrainian collaborators. On June 24, the partisans liquidated the author of the book "They are not there", Senior Lieutenant Ilya Mazayev, a "Wagner" mercenary, who participated in military operations in Syria and Libya. On August 3, collaborator Olga "Korsa" Kachura, who directed the bombings in Donbas, was liquidated. And on August 10 they carried out a high-precision attack with the help of artillery on the Donetsk militants' meeting place, among whom was a criminal authority, "former DNR deputy" and the owner of the entertainment center " Bermuda" Yury Krykulenko,

In English, Portuguese and Spanish, the "Partisan" a missile launcher built by the partisans with pieces extracted from material captured from the invaders from Syria, assembled in a civilian truck. Below: The "Partisan" in action, images from Ukraine Weapons Trucker 's Twitter

For some time now, Putin's troops have not been able to advance far to the west. In the northern area, Ukrainian troops began to dangerously approach the border with Belgorod, in Russia, and already surround Izium, which has been key on the eastern front as an arms depot, command center and resting place for troops. of Putin. Losing Izium or having to defend it is a tremendous inconvenience for Putin, who would lose a very important nucleus in the area and would suffer an immediate cut in communications and supply transport.

The advance of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south forced the invading high command to transfer troops from the Donbas front to the Kherson front. The Ukrainian counteroffensive is threatening to liberate Crimea, and Odessa with access to the Black Sea. In Kherson, the attacks on the Antonovski Bridge and the blowing up of all the access bridges have made it possible to completely isolate Putin's troops, who are running out of supplies.

What was going to be a military parade has turned into a nightmare for Putin's high command, which counts a military disaster with 35,000 dead soldiers and another 100,000 wounded. But this military disaster worsens day by day, to the extent that the activity of sabotage, attacks, and bombings multiplies and intensifies in the occupied zones. The last and most shocking, the complete destruction of the headquarters of the Wagner mercenaries, Putin's private company on August 15 in Luhansk.

The peoples of Ukraine and Belarus return to the European revolutionary tradition

When the partisans of Ukraine go out to confront the occupying army with weapons in hand, they return to a European tradition of 80 years ago. When the Nazi and fascist armies occupied Europe, the Yugoslav, French, Italian and Russian partisans carried out all kinds of actions to defeat Hitler's war machine. The heritage of the European partisans in their fight against the Nazis is being carried forward today by the Ukrainian partisans, who are taking up the European revolutionary tradition.

When the partisans carry out the attacks on the railways, they are inspired by the teachings of Tengiz Shavgulidze, the creator of the "Shavgulidze wedge" invented by a Georgian partisan in 1942. A simple device that is placed on one of the rails of the train to derail it. Upon reaching the wedge, the front wheel of the convoy rolls down the incline and out of the tracks. 

Above: The Partisans in France, Yugoslavia, and Italy

It is such a simple and effective mechanism that no explosives are needed. So useful that it was used by the Ukrainian resistance against an invaders' train in Melitopol. And it was the weapon used by the Belarusian railway partisans who stopped the supply of the columns of Putin's High Command, when he tried to take Kyiv in February 2022. Tengiz was able to supply with his "wedge" the lack of dynamite, and materials necessary to to carry out the resistance, in the same way as the partisans today in the Ukraine resort to all kinds of inventions and techniques to make up for the lack of weapons and materials.

In short, the Ukrainian partisans do not spring from nowhere, they arise as an expression of a long European tradition as explained by La Marx México in the work "Putin's War can be defeated" :

"The partisan phenomenon, understood as a guerrilla that faces an invading army or an illegitimate government, emerged in the heat of World War II, had many expressions, from the maquis in France, the anti-Francoist guerrillas in Spain, as well as in Albania who fought against the Italian occupation between 1939 and 1943, the partisans in Yugoslavia fighting the Axis Powers in the Balkans, the Italian partisans fighting Benito Mussolini, the German partisans fighting Hitler, where they ranged from trade unionists, to Jews persecuted by the Nazis, not to mention the Red Army, which played a decisive role in the defeat of fascism in Germany"

NATO re-delivers weapons to Ukraine

By the end of June 2022, the European masses' repudiation of Putin's genocidal attacks, Zelensky's entreaties, and the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, coupled with the growth of partisan resistance, forced NATO leaders to change their policy. After almost 2 months of pushing for the"peace agreement", and the "Do Not Humiliate" Putin policy , they changed their policy to re-arm Ukraine.    

the policy of imperialism to stop supplying Ukraine with weapons for practically 2 months gave Putin a partial respite from his genocidal and fascist attacks. Fascists and genocides like Putin cannot be given even a minute of time, because it is time that he will use to destroy lives and families. NATO's policy in the months of May and June shows that the imperialist governments are the main danger of the Ukrainian people. It shows that Zelensky's capitalist government is lying when he says that NATO is the main friend of the people.

NATO is not against Putin, it supported him for decades, and has always supported them. But the pressure of the masses of the European countries, the growth of the partisans in the Ukraine, and the extension of this phenomenon to the countries of the East, is the only reason why NATO supplies Ukraine with a dropper of weapons. The policy change of the imperialist governments has to do essentially with the objective of controlling the actions in the theater of war, and that the development of the same is under the decisions of the imperialist governments, not of the masses.

Finally, in the first days of July 2022, the United States sent HIMARS teams to launch missiles. Although its range is limited, only 80 km, having this technology allowed the Ukrainian army troops to start demolishing warehouses, supply centers, and all kinds of invaders' facilities. Weapons also arrived from the other NATO countries, and in many cases they did business selling them, making money at the mercy of the poor ruined economy of Ukraine. 

The map shows the wave of destruction of warehouses and military installations by Putin's troops in July 2022, once the Ukrainian army received NATO weapons. An important part of this wave is also partisan attacks

A mass of attacks rained down on the installations of Putin's high command, once they received the weapons from NATO. On the other hand, several of the offensives that Putin's troops attempted in Donetsk were sterilized by the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Putin's desperate dispatch of troops from the Donbas to Kherson, to prevent the city from falling into the hands of Ukraine, ended in a real nightmare for Putin's troops.

Now they are completely isolated, and cornered on the banks of the Dnieper River, with the possibility of thousands of soldiers being trapped, with no way out, and abandoned to their fate. But as it happened between the months of May and June 2022, the policy of imperialism did not produce the effect they were looking for. The limited supply of arms to the Ukraine did not end partisan activity. On the contrary, it exploded to an unprecedented level.

The wave of attacks, car bombs, explosions, is now bigger and more violent than in the months of May and June. Putin's troops are now suffering a wave of attacks bigger and more powerful than the one they suffered in all the previous months. The Zelensky government itself acknowledges the wave of attacks by urging Ukrainians residing in territory occupied by Russia not to approach Russian military installations or ammunition depots with these statements: "I ask all our people in Crimea, in other regions in the south of the country, in the occupied areas of Donbas and in the Kharkiv region to be very careful. Please do not approach the military installations of the Russian army and all those places where they store ammunition and equipment, where they have their barracks"Zelensky said in his usual late-night address on August 16. But the Ukrainian partisans, ignoring their president, approach Putin's barracks and depots every day, to blow them to pieces.

For the world left, partisans do not exist

99% of the world left does not talk about the partisans. For the leaders of the world's leftist groups, partisans do not exist. For the leaders of the world left, what is happening in Ukraine is a war between NATO and Putin. Any publication, from any leftist group that you choose to read about Ukraine, will say the same thing, with some variations, will repeat the same quackery, gibberish, gibberish, and gibberish that world "public opinion" repeats .

For 99% of the world left, the war in Ukraine is summed up as a game of intrigue between the ruling classes , competing "imperialisms" , "geopolitical" interests , a table where Putin, Macron, Biden and Scholz sit. The masses, their struggles, and sufferings, are of no importance . His publications abound in pseudo-analyses with grandiose phrases that end up repeating the same nonsense that the capitalist press says announcing the march towards World War III. 

Above Left: The street sign reads "Collaborators, in Kherson we Partisans see everything" Right: Molotov cocktail preparations