A Year of War in Ukraine: When Putin's Defeat Is Changing the World
La Marx International 4/3/2023
One year after the start of the War in Ukraine, the result is that the plans of the Putin regime have been defeated. There is not the slightest possibility that Putin can reverse this situation, the losses of Putin's armies are enormous, both his regular forces and the mercenary forces of the Wagner Group. A political crisis of the regime of the invaders has opened with public disputes between the high commands of the army, while the people of Russia have turned their backs on the recruitments called by Putin, and the Russian Federation is slowly sinking into an economic crisis. social, and military, in the midst of global political isolation.
Meanwhile, the peoples that were under Putin's boot begin to rise up and organize resistance in numerous republics, following the Ukrainian example. Putin is today the most hated war criminal in the world.
Putin's defeat is changing the world. The oligarchs of the Russian Federation have received a true military and political beating, which triggered a third global revolutionary wave against capitalism with its epicenter in Europe. Today that revolutionary wave is headed by the enormous struggle of the people of France against Macron in Europe, but other important revolutions are also taking place, such as the enormous mass mobilization in Iran against the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs that is leading the 2nd Arab Spring. Meanwhile, the partisan phenomenon spreads through the countries of the East, and the attacks of the Ukrainian resistance multiply in the territory of Belarus, and the Russian Federation.
The regime of the capitalist oligarchs who rule the Russian Federation has begun a slow agony. Putin's defeat has opened the perspective of the dismemberment of the Russian Federation in a process similar to what happened with Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when the Milosevick regime was defeated. Imperialism, NATO, the US governments, and the imperialist governments of Europe pretend to support Ukraine so as not to lose popular support, while their real concern is to establish a peace plan to save Putin, who has made great contributions to support of capitalism in the last 20 years.
In turn, Putin's defeat has opened a new chapter in the crisis of the world left. 99% of the world's Stalinist, campist, social democrat and evasionist left turned its back on the people of Ukraine, and openly, or veiledly supported Putin. Today the world left pays dearly for having positioned itself as the caboose of the Vatican, and world imperialism with its functional pacifism towards Putin, and his slogans for the "end of the war" and " Peace". The politics of the world left collided with the determination of the Ukrainian people to drive out the invaders and put an end to Putin.
In turn, that determination is fed by the defeats suffered by the invaders that showed the people that they can win, and get rid of one of the most sinister regimes in the world. The Ukrainian revolution plunges the campist left into a deep crisis, and a growing political isolation from the masses of the world who massively support the Ukrainian people.
The Ukrainian revolution destroys the Putin regime
One year after Putin's invasion, all kinds of charlatanism, predictions, predictions, unfulfilled prophecies, and conspiracy theories of supposed "geopolitical experts" from the media, and capitalist analysts can be read every day as "World War III is imminent" , "China intervenes in favor of Russia", "Putin's imperial ambitions", "nuclear attack is imminent", "NATO arms Ukraine" and all kinds of nonsense that charlatans expose shamelessly, without None of these things are valid, nor do they happen in reality.
What actually exists is a global misunderstanding about Ukraine. The "geopolitical experts" have not hit a single prediction, none of their forecasts came true, but they spend rivers of ink to deceive the general public about what is really happening. Displaying their complete ignorance, political illiteracy, or simply seeking to deceive the people, the so-called "experts" predicted a " Putin victory", that the Ukrainian people "could not resist", that NATO would attack, that a "would be coming " world war" etc. None of the predictions were fulfilled, and on the contrary,It became clear that in reality imperialism, Putin, the G7, NATO, the oligarchs of the East improvise all the time on the march of events whose developments they do not control, nor can they prevent.
What is happening in the Ukraine is a revolution. The people of Ukraine are waging a revolutionary war of National Liberation against the interests of a group of capitalist oligarchs who control the Russian Federation. This group of oligarchs became a millionaire by privatizing and handing over the wealth of the nations of the former Soviet Union to imperialist companies and large global corporations. Putin's fortune is estimated to be over 130 billion dollars. But in February 2014, the people of Ukraine, fed up with hunger, poverty, and inequality in capitalist Ukraine, kicked out dictator Viktor Yanukovych, Putin's proxy in Ukraine in the revolution known as the "EuroMaidan," which ended with his 20-year oligarchic dictatorship.
The "EuroMaidan" was part of the first global revolutionary wave that included events such as the "Arab Spring", Occupy Wall Street in the US, "Indignados" in Spain, the general strikes in Greece, etc. Putin responded to EuroMaidá a month later by occupying areas of Ukraine in the Donbass region, and the Crimean peninsula, arguing that the inhabitants in those areas wanted to "independence" from Ukraine, which was totally false.But in reality, he occupied the areas by combining regular troops with mercenary corps from the Wagner Group (Wagner Group), a veritable private army of Putin's mercenaries equipped with state-of-the-art military weapons to defend the business and interests of the capitalist oligarchy that dominates Russia. , which also operates in Syria, and Africa.
However, the invasion of those regions of Ukraine did not succeed in making the Ukrainian people retreat, on the contrary, they redoubled their struggle, which from then on became heroic, and produced a contagious effect that spread to other republics: In 2020, the "Sneaker Revolution"against the government of Aleksander Lukashenko, another representative of the oligarchy who was seeking his sixth term. In 2021 the mobilizations began in Russia against Putin, and in January 2022 the uprising of the people of Kazakhstan began against the government of Kassym Jomart Tokayev, representative of the Putin oligarchy, and Nazarbáyev. Putin had to send troops to silence the protests, which began in the main factories, working-class neighborhoods, and cities of Kazakhstan. The development of these revolutionary processes is what explains why Belarus and Kazakhstan did not enter the war in favor of Putin as Putin expected, the entry of troops from those countries into Ukraine could cause a new explosion of the people against those dictatorships.
The battle for kyiv killed Putin
After the uprising in Kazakhstan, the oligarchy headed by Putin decided that it was time to put an end to the "Axis of Evil" that is Ukraine. On February 24, Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, first heading towards the Kiev region where a series of battles took place in Hostómel, Bucha, Irpín, Brovary, Chernobyl, Ivankiv, Slavútych, Vasylkiv, which culminated between February 19 and 20. March 2022, with the defeat of Putin and the victory of the Ukrainian troops. After suffering enormous casualties, destruction, and a large loss of material, the Russian General Staff announced the withdrawal of the troops from Kiev on March 25, 2022, saying that "They had achieved their objectives" and now they were withdrawing to fight to control the Donbass.
With this "change of objectives" towards the Donbass, Putin sought to hide his defeat from the eyes of the world and the Russian people and his reorientation towards the Donbass, he sought to avoid showing the triumph of the workers and the people of Ukraine. After the withdrawal, Ukrainian troops recaptured more than 30 cities in the Kiev region, taking control of Demydiv, Dymer, Lytvynivka, Havrylivka, Kozarovychi, Zhovtneve, Hlubivka, Yasnohorodka, Talakun, Sukholuchchya, Lypivka, Havronshchyna, Makovyshche, Mykolayivka and Khmilna. In the Chernihiv region, Ukrainian troops regained control of Rudnya, Shevchenkove, Bobryk, Stara Basan, Nova Basan, Makiyivka, Pohreby, Bazhanivka, Volodymyrivka, Shnyakivka, Salne, Sofiyivka, and Havrylivka.
Putin's army lost thousands of soldiers killed, wounded and captured. The towns of Irpin, Bucha, Gostomel and the entire Kiev region were liberated and Ukrainian forces retook control of the villages of Sloboda and Lukashivka, which lie south of Chernihiv and located along one of the main transport routes. supply between that city and Kiev. After the withdrawal of Putin's troops, horror ensued: In Bucha, the city from which the invaders withdrew on March 31, the horror was exposed in the streets when dozens of civilian corpses were found, executed, tied up, buried in graves common, and with signs of torture, a clear demonstration of the criminal nature of the Putin dictatorship.
The Hour of the Partisans
After the defeats suffered by Putin between March, April and May 2022, a second stage of the war began in which it was no longer a matter of repelling the invasion, but of expelling the occupying army. When Putin invaded the Donbas and Crimea in 2014, Ukraine had practically no army, and what existed was a junta of commanders that obeyed Putin's oligarchy, with which they began to build a pro-independence army with units of voluntary organizations that were assigned to them. whereupon he called "Territorial Defense Battalions" (BDT) to which the "Territorial Self-Defense" would soon be added.
When Putin invaded in 2022 he put the capitalist government of Zelensky against the wall. He handed over weapons to the civilian population, which in fact legalized popular arming and the people's revolution entered a new phase: The Hour of the Partisans. Starting in May and June 2022, a wave of attacks, bombings, ambushes, and organized weapons began to demolish the invaders. The partisans are ordinary armed citizen guerrillas, peasants, women, workers, young people who take up arms fighting to liberate their land, who take up the European tradition of French, Italian and Yugoslav partisans against the fascist occupation.
They organize attacks, ambushes, surveillance, and intelligence, concentrated in the supply centers, where transport routes, supply nodes, airports, and warehouses of the invader are blown up. The Partisans have the support of the masses because they have millions behind them, friends, relatives, neighbors who equip and provide all kinds of support, which has turned the Ukrainian partisan into a mass resistance organization. It allows Ukrainian forces to launch deadly attacks even in areas where it is dangerous and sometimes impossible to commit troops.
Added to the mass spread of partisan activity is the internationalist character with fighters from up to 55 different countries who carried out actions such as the blowing up of Putin's military air base in the Pskov region, the attack on the invasion fleet in Sevastopol, the sinking of the missile cruiser Moskva (Moscow) flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the blowing up of railway tracks 30 km from Melitopol, the blowing up of the air base of Putin's troops in Saki in the Crimea where 20 fighter jets, leaving 60 soldiers dead, and 100 wounded.
On August 10, 2022, Belarusian Partisans attacked the Zyabrivka airfield in Belarus, and Ukrainian Partisans flew from the Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia on October 14. The attacks eliminated generals, officers, and soldiers of the occupying army, and also sowed terror by assassinating collaborators of the occupation, governors, mayors, and other authorities placed by Putin in the occupied territories.On October 1 Putin's army collapsed in Kharkiv Oblast, and Ukrainian forces took Lyman, entered Donestk and Lugansk Oblasts where they captured Hrekivka and Makiivka, advanced and took Izyum, then took Lysyschansk, advanced from the river Siversky then seized the approaches to Slovyansk, liberating thousands of square kilometers of territory occupied by the invader.
Putin's troops began a desperate and massive flight, leaving behind dozens of tanks, weapons and ammunition, and fleeing from locations of great strategic importance. After the triumphs of Kiev, Summy, the wave of attacks by the Ukrainian resistance, and the fall of Kharkiv, the victory of Kherson came on November 12, 2022, which involved the recovery of hundreds of urban centers, and thousands of square kilometers of land. territory, which puts Putin's troops in a defensive situation in the southern part of the country, which is key to economic development because it is cultivated areas and access to the Black Sea ports.
The Ukrainian Revolution is an Urban Guerrilla War
Product of the triumphs achieved in 2014 with the Euromaidan and in 2022 against Putin's invasion, Ukraine is today an independent country of NATO, the European Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Organization of the Treaty of Collective Security (OTSC). He does not belong to any of those political and military blocks, a particular status of independence that he achieved thanks to the struggle, the blood, the death of thousands of combatants of his people.
Why did Putin, having an infinitely superior army in resources and soldiers, lose the battles? The capitalist media give all kinds of crazy explanations claiming that the Ukrainian troops won as a result of NATO's provision of weapons, or as a result of the ineptitude of Putin's troops, or the use of new technologies, or other absurd theories. . The truth is that Putin did not lose the battles over technology, nor NATO, nor the ineptitude of his troops, although these elements, to a lesser or greater extent, have existed. The explanation of why Putin lost the battles is the mass mobilization of an entire people, and the support of the world mass mobilization for his struggle.
No matter how many weapons there are, they are useless if there are not enough combatants willing to wield them, they will be useless no matter how technologically modern they are. Putin's army had been winning all the wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and other parts of the world, because it had never before faced anything even similar to what he is facing now in Ukraine.
Putin ran into an urban guerrilla war, sustained by the masses who collaborated with the defenders and were not afraid to pay with their lives for the confrontation with the invader as happened in Bucha, they preferred to die rather than surrender to Putin's army. This phenomenon of urban guerrilla warfare is the same one we saw in Iraq when the NATO invasion was stopped and defeated in Baghdad, Musol, Kirkak, or Basra, the cities organized to resist vastly superior invading troops. Urban guerrilla warfare and urban armed self-organization are typical phenomena of 21st century revolutions, unlike the guerrilla warfare that characterized 20th century revolutions, which took place fundamentally in the countryside, as in the revolutions of China, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Nicaragua.
As Jesús Valdez explains in his work "Putin's War can be defeated": "During the war of occupation by North American imperialism against Iraq , a new type of guerrilla war was inaugurated, with its epicenter in the cities, which managed to win US imperialism This new type of "revolutionary war" with its epicenter in urban centers is exactly what we are seeing in Ukraine, which, unlike the typical "prolonged people's war" with its epicenter in the countryside, is blowing up thousands of to pieces to a professional army in less than three weeks. Thus Putin's troops suffered a slow and systematic destruction of their entire operational logistics supply system."
In urban guerrilla warfare, the proletariat is more important than in guerrilla warfare in the countryside, based mainly on the peasantry. Examples of urban self-organization are the violent mobilizations of the First Line in Chile, a process that was later repeated in the National Strike in Colombia that demolished the Uribista regime. Also in mobilizations of Black Lives Matter when the murder of George Floyd, and the armed self-organization in several cities against the repression of Donald Trump in the US. A similar process was that of the Yellow Vests in France, and also the guerrilla of guerrillas urban that characterizes the fight in Rojava of the Kurdish guerrillas who defeated Isis in the battle of Kobane, the capital of the self-organized Kurdish communes.
Ukraine is a poor country, but located in the heart of Europe, with a strong working class, twinned and rooted in the European proletariat, with a great tradition. In turn, although there is a regular bourgeois army in Ukraine formed since 2014, the existence of the Territorial Defense Units with thousands of workers and armed peasants causes a different location for the most oppressed sectors of the population . Women, young people, the poorest, play important roles in the popular armies that they do not play in the regular armies of any capitalist state.
Every revolution generates organizations of double power, which expresses the struggle of the oppressed, the exploited, and the direct democracy of those who make the decisions for the revolution to triumph. The Ukrainian revolution has spawned Partisan corps, who prefer to handle the control, exchange, and allocation of weapons directly themselves. " Direct democracy" is exercised here, with the combatants themselves deciding the fate of the weapons that pass through their hands. The existence of self-organized armed groups of workers, youth, and women, who manage a large part of the existing weapons.This means that the Ukrainian capitalist state does not have a monopoly on weapons, and much of the development of the war front is carried out by self-organized sections of the masses.
This means that Putin's troops can never stabilize, and when they think they have a firm footing, the attacks take place behind their backs, disconcerting the invaders. In turn, partisan activity, and fear of Putin's attacks, has led to the spread of the phenomenon to other countries such as Georgia, Finland , and Belarus, where Belarusian Partisans destroyed the invaders' A-50U aircraft that serves as a command and control platform, and conducts intelligence, at the Belarusian military airfield. The Partisans of Ukraine and Russia began to test drones in Moscow and several Russian cities without reaching any objective, only to detect Putin's control and capacity of anti-aircraft systems, which has begun to sow the alarm of the oligarchy. which banned Putin from making public appearances. Revolutionary terror began to knock on the doors of the oligarchs in Moscow.
The partisan attacks blew up the Russian military airfield of Yeysk, as well as one of the most important refineries in Tuapse. The Congress of Free Nations declared in Istanbul the formation of the Committee for the Independence of Ingushetia, while the Bashkir Partisans fighting in Ukraine have formed brigades for the struggle for the Independence of the Republic of Bashkortostan, which if it became independent, would leave Siberia cut off from Moscow. The Chechen contingents have begun to reorganize to liberate Chechnya and avenge the defeat suffered at the hands of Putin, a process that no one talks about in the imperialist media, but the leaders of world imperialism are well aware of.
The irruption of the masses up in arms in defense of their interests in the national liberation war is the explanation of why Putin lost the battles. The bourgeoisie, its capitalist governments, analysts, intellectuals, charlatans, and opinion experts will hide this from the eyes of the masses of the world, because they are terrified to see peoples up in arms fighting against capitalist oligarchs, shaking off oppression, with brigades led by women, youth, workers, peasants and the poorest, which constitutes a real threat to the ruling classes of Europe and the world.We Marxists are, without a doubt, on the side of the partisans, regardless of the current state of their consciousness, because in their action of arming themselves and defending themselves against the occupation, they open the way for the workers' revolution. Our center is to defend them, support them and present our program and policy on the basis of defending the rights and claims of the armed Ukrainian workers.
The Sinister Role of NATO, US, British, German, and French Imperialism: Dropper Support and Crocodile Tears
On February 21, 2023, Joe Biden, President of the United States, gave a speech in Poland one year after the war in Ukraine, where he stated: "I am proud to be together with the "freedom-loving people" and I insist that the support of The West to Ukraine "will not give up. But Biden's entire speech is a complete lie. Now that the Putin regime is collapsing irreversibly, "opponents" are showing upto Putin, but in reality these same imperialist governments were the creators of Putin, they have always supported his horrible regime, and behind the scenes they do everything possible to reach a peace agreement to avoid the fall of Putin, and the dismemberment of the Federation Russian. All the imperialist governments, and NATO have played a sinister role in Putin's invasion, and before it.
The truth is that the victories of the Ukrainian people have occurred despite NATO, and not thanks to NATO, as imperialist governments like Biden's would like to have you believe. When Putin began indiscriminately bombarding the civilian population in April 2022, Ukraine asked NATO for a ballistic shield, and NATO refused to provide it. That shield would have saved thousands of lives, and the NATO decision sentenced thousands of Ukrainians to death. Another lie is the alleged "NATO arms supply" that the campers use as an argument not to support the people of Ukraine, but which is also false because when it provided weapons, NATO did so in a limited way, refusing to deliver strategic weapons. . If he had, the war would have already ended.
As we previously reported, 80% of the weapons used by Ukrainian soldiers and partisans are weapons stolen from Putin's troops, like in the Kharkiv battle where they were made from important military material. The dropper weapons delivered by NATO were only a product of the pressure of the masses in the United States and Europe who refuse to accept a genocide in the heart of Europe. But even during critical periods of Putin's invasion like June , July and August 2022, NATO suspended arms deliveries, allowing Putin to win battles like Severodonetsk and kill thousands of Ukrainians.
While claiming to "support Ukraine" , Biden and NATO are financing Putin. Revenues from oil and gas projects backed by European and US companies have financed Vladimir Putin's regime by nearly $100 billion since 2014, money Putin uses to arm and kill Ukrainians. T he European and American corporations have spearheaded large oil and gas projects that filled Putin's coffers, only the companies British Petroleum (BP), Shell, Wintershall Dea, ExxonMobil, Total, Equinor, OMV and Trafigura, all under the responsibility of governments of NATO, have been responsible for more than US$95 billion to the Putin government.
BP alone was responsible for 80% of this total. In other words, all the imperialist politicians in Great Britain who appear to support Ukraine are hypocrites and liars who are financing Putin. The explanation is simple: The Ukraine war is big business for the imperialist Corporations because of the increase in energy prices that generates huge profits, as Global Witness assesses the 2022 annual profits of five of the largest oil and gas companies. such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Total add up to $195 billion, up 120% from the previous year, and the highest level in industry history.
The pressure of the masses of the European countries and of the whole world who massively support Ukraine, added to the growth of the partisans in Ukraine, and the extension of this phenomenon to the countries of the East, is the only reason why NATO supplies Ukraine with drops of arms. The hypocritical imperialist bosses lie just like the campers with all declarations of commitment to look good before the masses, and also seek to slow down and control the revolutionary process with the limited delivery of weapons , in the urgent need that the imperialist countries have to prevent the development and deepening of the Ukrainian revolution with the aim of politically stabilizing Europe and the world situation.
Ukraine acts as the power plant that feeds the development of all existing national liberation movements, which today have the struggle of the Ukrainian people as their inescapable reference. The struggle of the Palestinian people, of Ireland, of Catalonia, the Kurdish people, the people of Syria, of the Russian Federation, in short, all the oppressed peoples and nationalities of the world look at themselves in the Ukrainian mirror. This is the reason why the provision of arms to Ukraine is more directly linked to a permanent blackmail to the capitalist government of Zelensky to impose a "negotiated exit" and a "Peace Agreement " than a real victory for Ukraine.None of the European imperialist governments are interested in having a victorious national liberation war with thousands of armed workers in the heart of Europe, who are destroying the army of one of the most important dictatorships in the world.
The president of the imperialist government of France, Emanuel Macron, has also insisted since June 2022 on promoting the "Peace Agreement" , like theimperialist government of Germany, which expressed its position in favor of a"negotiated exit",while its chancellor Olaf Scholz, blocked the delivery of heavy equipment by the German arms manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) to Ukraine. But also, prior to the start of Putin's invasion, the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements, sponsored by the imperialist governments ofFrance and Germany, allowed Putin to militarily attack the Ukrainian people, steal territories, and murder 13,000 Ukrainians.
The capitalist and imperialist governments want the Ukrainian masses to lose at the negotiating table what they have won on the battlefield at the cost of the people's blood. The campist, evasionist, and Stalinist left that is "For Peace" joins hands with the imperialist governments, and they act as servants of their politics. Today more than ever, we must consider any call for peace as a betrayal of the Ukrainian people and, at the same time, a capitulation to US imperialism, EU imperialism, Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchy. We Marxists reject all these hypocritical calls for negotiation, we reject all these "Peace Accords", and we call on all the popular democratic organizations, the partisans to redouble the offensive to expel Putin from Ukraine, end his horrible regime, without negotiating even an inch of the rights to national liberation, self-determination, land recovery usurped, and stolen by the invaders.
The Russian Federation is not an imperialist country
Among the charlatanism that we must listen to all the time to hide the existence of a revolution in Ukraine, there is that of analysts, political scientists, and charlatans in the pay of capitalism, who explain Putin's aggression against Ukraine by appealing to the analysis of "imperial ambitions" . " of Putin, or define the Russian Federation as an "imperialist" country. So the invasion did not occur to stop or defeat the Ukrainian people's revolution, but because the Russian Federation is an imperialist country that seeks to advance its domination, and confront the hegemony of the United States, a whole argument that is true nonsense without no hold on reality.
There is no factual data that indicates that Russia is an imperialist country. Understanding by imperialist countries those nations whose companies dominate the world capitalist economy, the situation of Russia with the data of reality is rather the opposite: a state with a primary economy founded by imperialist capital, developed by imperialist capital, and dependent on the imperialist capital.Russia is a country that oppresses other small nations, like Milosevicc's Yugoslavia was, Serbia is today, India is from smaller nations in South Asia, or countries like Israel or Saudi Arabia are from the nations of the Middle East, the list of oppressive nations that oppress smaller nations is endless, but no one would think of defining Serbia, Israel, or India as imperialist countries.
Those who call Russia "imperialist" do not even know the figures of the world economy. The data of the world capitalist economy are categorical to make it clear that the Russian Federation is a second or third order nation, whose Global Gross Product is similar to that of countries like Brazil or Mexico. The companies of the Russian Federation like Gazprom would only last a few days if the big companies and imperialist governments, especially Germany, stopped buying natural gas from them. The same would happen with the Lukoil oil company, the 2nd company in the country associated with US imperialism through its headquarters in East Meadow, New York. The next company, the Rosneft oil company, is associated with Britain's BP in the Arctic, and US ExxonMobil in the Black Sea.
The graph shows Russia's GDP the size of Mexico or Brazil
The next largest company, X5 Retail Group, which runs the Pyaterochka supermarket brands, and the Perekrestok online marketplace, have their global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), from where they provide imperialist capital for their operation. , just like the Internet company Yandex which has the parent company of the shareholding registered in the Netherlands and its shares are listed on Wall Street, from where it obtains imperialist capital. That is to say, all the important companies in Russia are associated with imperialist capital, and are deeply dependent on imperialist investments in order to function.
The economy of the Russian Federation is a primary economy, that is, based on the export of raw materials, mainly gas and oil, the same structure that any nation considered to be of second order, and in the process of development in the capitalist world, has. The current economic structure of the economy led by Vladimir Putin was designed together with the government of Bill Clinton in the 90's to the extent that the wealth and assets of the former Soviet Union were privatized and handed over, in a plan designed together with Robert Rubin , from the Goldman Sachs Corporation and Lawrence Summers, both US Secretaries of the Treasury. Without US support, Putin could not have emerged, developed his political career, or come to power.
Since Putin came to power, the Russian Federation has consolidated itself as a sub-metropolis of imperialist capital, which outsources investments, because it receives a strong wave of imperialist capital that it redistributes in the region, to the extent that it guarantees the profits of imperialist corporations. The so-called BRIC'S on Wall Street (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are sub-metropolises of imperialist capital, which financial analysts believed would come to dominate the world economy when the sharp peak of the global crisis of capitalism occurred in the years 2008-2009, and Global Corporations went bankrupt in unison, with Lehman Brothers topping the list of bankruptcies.
China and the BRICs "outsource" the flow of imperialist capital and expand it, a whole business model that the bourgeois economy calls " outsourcing". The gigantic masses of capital seeking profits go to countries that offer themselves as platforms, whose governments defend imperialist investments by offering high rates of profit that imperialist capital cannot obtain in the metropolis. That imperialist capital that enters the sub-metropolis allows the development of a strongly oligarchic local bourgeoisie, associated with imperialist capital, which in turn sets out to do business, oppress and plunder smaller economies. That is why they began to speak of them as the "new imperialisms"that they were going to dominate the world economy, and that they would dispute the "hegemony of the United States" as affirmed by the "Decoupling Theory" created on Wall Street .
However the opposite happened, slowly as the global crisis of capitalism deepened, the BRIC's began to sink following the path of the Global Corporations. Wall Street was able to survive thanks to the Bailouts, and China had to bail out its real estate giants when the Evergrande Crisis broke out in 2020, but the Chinese Bailouts have wreaked havoc and created the world's biggest "real estate bubble" around of US$30 trillion, which if it were to go off would hit the global economy like a bomb equivalent to several times Lehman Brothers. This is the reason why The PC of China approved that the US is now the one who is going to supervise all Chinese companies and corporations that want to list on Wall Street, reducing the role of China to an increasingly semi-colonial role.
China entered a depression with a growth of 3%, and there is not the slightest possibility that it will come to dominate the world economy, on the contrary, it is increasingly dependent on Wall Street. In India, the crisis of the Adami Group, the largest Corporation in Southeast Asia, has just erupted, striking at the heart of the Modi political regime supported by the Adami Group, one of the largest Corporations in the world. Russia is in recession, and is on its way to depression, a prospect that Putin could only avoid thanks to the purchases of raw materials made by the imperialist countries of their gas and oil. All the sub-metropolises are, in historical terms, in a blind alley dragged by the crisis of world capitalism.
Those who predicted the end of the dollar receive the slap in the face that nobody is interested in rupees, yuan, or rubles, and 80% of the world's transactions are made in dollars, starting with Japan as the largest buyer and holder of dollars via US Treasuries is China itself. China finances the US deficit, in exchange for which the US guarantees the massive entry of its products into the US market.
This society is the one that sustains global capitalism, which is why imperialism is aware that it cannot let go of Putin, Xi Jinping, Modi, their allies who, beyond occasional friction, strategically defend world capitalism. Putin, like Xi Jinping in China, have acted as neighborhood thugs, defenders in their region of imperialist capital investments, which have allowed and defended not only " outsourcing" investment, but also money laundering, arms trafficking, of narcotics, human trafficking, and all imaginable illicit acts that the Chinese and Russian mafias do to sustain capitalist businesses.
As we have seen, Leninist theory has served us as a guide to understand reality in the light of revolutionary theory, beyond what opinionologists and paid charlatans can say. Imperialism is the stage in which the companies that control finance capital dominate: " Imperialism is capitalism in the stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has been established... Finance capital is such a considerable force, can be said to be so decisive, in all economic and international relations, that it is capable of subduing, and really does subjugate, even States". Lenin, Imperialism).The companies that have control of financial capital are Global Corporations such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, or BNP Paribas. These companies are under the dominance of the US, France, Germany, England, and Japan. Neither China, nor Russia, nor any of the BRIC'S, have Global Corporations, the companies that dominate the world economy.
The Russian army suffers a real military disaster
Another element that makes it clear that Russia is not an imperialist country is the situation of its army. The so-called "Second Army of the world" is in a situation of collapse to the extent that its defeat deepens. The first 15 days of war, the Russian troops lost 4 times more soldiers than all of NATO in 20 years of invasion of Afghanistan, we are talking about 3,609 casualties against 12,000. However, the Kremlin only recognized 800 of these twelve thousand casualties. In the last report on the subject (September 2022), Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recognized that the total number of Russian soldiers killed on the front amounts to 5,937 casualties, this figure is 1.6 times higher than that recognized by NATO in the aforementioned invasion of Afghanistan.
For his part, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Valeriy Zaluzhniy, declared in August 2022 that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in combat amounted to 9,000 casualties. Until then, the Ukrainian government, like the Russian one, avoided giving a realistic figure on the number of casualties, but given the pressure of the media and public opinion, both had to go out and give numbers that are very, very far away. of reality. A very different estimate from the ones cited above is that of General Mark Milley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, who calculates that close to 100,000 Russian soldiers and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died or been wounded in the invasion. .
These figures correspond to November 2022. In August of the same year, the Undersecretary of Defense for Pentagon Policies, Colin Kahl, stated that the number of casualties for the Russian army ranges between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties. Milley's report also includes the murder of 40,000 civilians, while the United Nations registered, until November 2022, more than 7.8 million Ukrainian refugees throughout Europe, not counting internally displaced persons who have fled their homes to other countries. places within the Ukrainian territory. We are facing one of the greatest horrors, and atrocities committed by invading troops in recent times, Putin's degree of cruelty against the civilian population knows no limits, already in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, the Wagner Group also suffered a heavy defeat in Donbass with huge losses, which has discredited the head of the Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin among the oligarchs. Vladimir Putin's offensive has encountered one of the most heroic resistances in recent times, and now Putin's army is experiencing a real beating with thousands of deaths, and the average number of deaths in the first months of 2023 similar to that suffered in the first months of the invasion during the violent defeat suffered by Putin in the battle of Kiev.
The lying "decolonial", "plurinational", " critical race" and "decoupling" bourgeois theories
Putin's counterrevolutionary character is the product of being a thug at the service of imperialism, a defender of big companies and businesses, who does not hesitate to act with mafia methods to defend the profits of capitalist corporations, and their partnership with them. Putin has not intervened in Syria because of his "colonial ambitions" but to defeat the revolution started by the "Arab Spring", anddefend the dictatorships necessary to sustain capitalism in the region. But now, Putin's defeat puts the continuity of the Russian Federation at risk, a territory that he has been able to efficiently oppress. And without a doubt, if Putin falls, the next one will be Xi Jinping, a perspective that terrifies world imperialism, and has achieved that, like Dracula, Henry Kissinger has come out of his sarcophagus, to pose in mid-December 2022: " ... the dissolution of Russia or the destruction of its capacity for strategic politics could turn its territory spanning 11 time zones into a contested void Its competing societies could decide to settle their disputes through violence Other countries could seek to expand their claims for the force..."
Kissinger calls Putin's sinister regime "Russia" , which imposes itself with blood and fire on the Russian people. All the defenders of the world capitalist-imperialist system understood with horror that the Ukrainian revolution, if successful, could lead to the end of the Putin regime. And with it, millions of the world's oppressed in the "11 time zones" that the Putin regime oppresses, may rise up in an Intifada of the oppressed, or a second Arab Spring a thousand times deeper than the one we are now witnessing. All the charlatanism of those who explain the invasion of Ukraine by Putin's "psychological traits", or define the Russian Federation as an "imperialist" country, since there is no element of reality that supports that, they have no choice but to cling to appealing to bourgeois and postmodern ideologies such as the "Decolonial Theory", or similar quackery.
The " Decolonial Theory", like the "Decoupling Theory," "The Theory of the Plurinational State," the " Critical Race Theory (CRT) ," or "Bourgeois Feminism" are a string of precarious charlatanries, of a complete lack of seriousness, which affirm that oppressions such as women, oppressed nations, races, sexuals, or original peoples have nothing to do with capitalism, but can be reversed within capitalism, or from the state itself capitalist, achieving a "less colonial", "less racist", "less sexist" capitalism. It is the typical reformist ideology.
The " Decolonial Theory" affirms that the colonial question is a psychological and ideological question, apart from capitalism. These ideologies are very fashionable among the ruling classes, the Global Corporations, the capitalist and imperialist parties, which promote changes such as the promotion of women, indigenous people, black, gay or lesbian people to public positions in capitalist governments, as officials of large companies, banks, or imperialist organizations such as the UN, the World Bank, or the IMF, promoting the use of inclusive language, changes in customs, and " new concepts" such as "intersectionality."and similar quackery since the arrival of Barak Obama to power with the Democratic Party in 2009 in the US.
The problem with these bourgeois ideologies is that the more women there are in public office, the more women are murdered, and trafficked every day. The more black people there are on the boards of corporations or governments, the more blacks are killed, and marginalized throughout the world. The original peoples are brutally tortured, persecuted, and murdered in all countries by the corporations and capitalist armies in order to carry out the mega-projects that destroy nature and the environment, despite the fact that every day there are more indigenous people who come to the presidency, and they are legislators. Imperialism, and the situation of poor countries and semi-colonies is increasingly serious, as a result of the frightful dominance of Corporations over the world capitalist economy.
Believing that capitalism can be "decolonial", "inclusive", "feminist", or "ecological" is like believing in the Three Wise Men, Santa Clauss, or Snow White. We Marxists don't give a damn about being "politically correct" . Paraphrasing Bill Clinton's collaborator who said: "It's the economy, stupid" we respond to the "decolonial" ideologues and charlatans: "It's capitalism, stupid!". Racism, national oppression, race, gender, are typical of capitalism and inherent in class society, and private ownership of the means of production. To abolish oppression based on race, gender, sex, and nationality, capitalism must be abolished. For Marxists, blacks, women, indigenous peoples, and oppressed nations must rise by building a revolutionary organization to abolish capitalism, not hold office in capitalist states and regimes to try to "reform" it .
And this is precisely what the Ukrainian masses are doing when they ruthlessly destroy Putin's army. They are not simply liberating their nation, even though they think that is all they are doing. They are dealing a devastating blow to the structure that has sustained the world capitalist-imperialist system for the last 20 years. Hence the desperation of Henry Kissinger who, at 99 years old, had to jump out of his sarcophagus, as well as the desperate attempts of all the heads of world imperialism to try to stop the Ukrainian revolution. As an acid irony, the promoters of the "Decolonial Theory", in their political illiteracy, are unaware that the authors of this theory are a group of charlatans Latin American chavista university professors who support Putin.
Sotsialny Rukh and Razem: The Ukrainian and Eastern European "Syriza"
Social-democratic groups claiming to be "left" have emerged, such as Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement) and Razem (Together) in Poland, openly calling for Ukraine to join the European Union, as Sotsialny Rukh leader Olena Slobodian explains: "...We are basically positive about Ukraine's entry into the EU. However, it is important to us that the process of European integration benefits mainly the Ukrainian people and workers and not the oligarchs or other economic and political elites. ..." Sotsialny Rukh from Ukraine as well as Razem from Poland vindicate the party model like that of Syriza in Greece, or Podemos in Spain.
Another promoter of a social democratic "left" in favor of joining the EU and NATO is the British journalist Paul Mason. Mason has worked for the BBC, Channel 4, and The Guardian, and is a supporter of imperialist Keir Starmer within the Labor Party. These new pro-EU or pro-NATO social democrats encountered a contradiction: The Progressive International organization to which they should belong together with Syriza, and Podemos, adopted a campist, pro-Putin stance, as expressed by Jeremy Corbyn, the leadership of the DSA from the US, Janis Varoufakis, from Syriza, or Podemos from Spain. Die Linke in Germany has openly opposed the delivery of arms to Ukraine in the German Parliament.
Since the main social democratic grouping in the world aligned with Putin, Razem and Sotsialny Rukh along with members of Brazil's PSOL are beginning to push for something like a " Second Progressive International", in this case pro-EU, and pro-NATO.
It is of principle to make unity of action with all the militants, and Ukrainian political forces, and the world that face Putin's invasion. We Marxists stand unconditionally alongside Mason, Razem and Sotsialny Rukh in the fight against the invader. But there our unity with them ends. Because from there, the project of Razem and Sotsialny Rukh to build a "NATOized left", or pro-EU, is contrary to the interests of the working people of Ukraine. Just when as a result of the struggle Ukraine has gained virtual national independence from all political blocs, Razem and Sotsialny Rukh's program means a setback for the status of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people.
Sotsialny Rukh representative Olena Slobodian puts it this way: "...We are aware that the EU is following a neoliberal course, which is difficult for a peripheral country like Ukraine to change. But we want to use the advantages that membership brings to fight against this neoliberalism ... It is also worth mentioning the role of the European Central Bank in promoting fiscal conservatism and its consequences for the welfare of the population, which we have seen in the example of Greece.We want the impact of such policies in Ukraine in its path to the EU is minimal. The EU should admit Ukraine on terms that guarantee the possibility of social and equal reconstruction..."
Can a "social and egalitarian" Ukraine be built , under the aegis of the European Central Bank (ECB)? Can you build a Ukraine that "benefits the workers and the people" while being within the European Union? The leaders of Razem and Sotsialny Rukh when they state this, they are lying. It is enough to see the hell that the brother nations of the Ukrainian people are living in France, England, Spain, Greece, Italy, under the rule of the so-called "Troika", European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Is it perhaps Christine Lagarde president of the ECB, an expert in destroying various nations, or Kristalina Georgieva president of the IMF who squeezes every last bit Hungry drops from the poor nations of the world will have mercy on Ukraine? Will Razem and Sotsialny Rukh manage to "humanize" bankers and Corporations?
The social democrats will answer us: "You are sectarians. You do not understand the step forward that getting out of Putin's tyranny would mean, even though the EU is "neoliberal", it has more progressive laws than those of the oligarchs." We Marxists answer: "It is not a question of exchanging one tyranny for another. The Ukrainian people do not lose thousands of lives to get out of the tyranny of Putin, to the tyranny of the 1% of the EU." The EU is not an asexual or impartial space, the Euro is the implacable domination of the imperialist Corporations of Germany, Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank, KFW, Commerzbank, of France, with BNP Paribas, or Credit Agricole, of Belgium with ING Belgium. Will the bankers of the EU be "humanitarian" with the peasants, workers,
To which the Social Democrats will tell us: "But the majority of the Ukrainian people want to join the EU!", to which we will reply: "The people are being deceived by Zelensky, and European stowaways like Biden, Macron, and Scholtz, let's expose those liars, let's tell the people the truth, even though we are a minority, the people are not stupid and as soon as they do experience they will prove us right. A left cannot be built by lying, or by demagogy to "public opinion" imposed by the imperialist media "
The limitations of these reformist groups are the demonstration of the crisis of the world left, the social democracy, and the Stalinists. Their limitations are the product of the fact that they do not represent the interests of the most exploited and oppressed layers of the population, but of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sectors educated in the expensive European Imperialist Universities such as the London Economic School, or directly officials of imperialist institutions such as the UN. The maximum that his program can go is to represent the interests of either Putin's oligarchs or the EU's oligarchs, whose interests are also deeply intertwined because they have long been oligarchs doing business together.
Mandelism, a current that claims to be "Trotskyist" or "Marxist", enthusiastically embraces this type of proposal and promotes it. Gilbert Achcar, representative of this current, proposed that the UN put troops in Ukraine. Now the attitude of these currents is to "perceive themselves" as a "left", "Marxist", or "revolutionary", but to participate in capitalist governments as Podemos does, which joined the Sanchez government in Spain, Syriza that rose to power and ruled for the "Troika" in Greece ,the DSA that integrates the imperialist government of Biden, and now the PSOL of Brazil that integrates with ministers, and unifies its benches with those of the capitalist government of Lula in Parliament. The social democrats have no idea how to promote a revolution, but they are very clear on how to betray it.
We have united with the comrades of Razem and Sotsialny Rukh in denouncing Putin's "tankies" , and we will continue to denounce them together, and fight their disgusting fascist propaganda. But this is not about fighting Putin's "tankies", to replace them with "tankies" from the EU or NATO. It is about building an Independent Left of all capitalist governments, and of all economic blocs to promote a project of the workers and the people in Ukraine and the world, as formulated by the European Solidarity Network with Ukraine.
The revolutionary war of national liberation must triumph
They are lying, they say that the only thing the Ukrainian people can do is surrender to the imperialism of the EU. The Ukrainian people are winning because they have expropriated the weapons of the invaders. It has expropriated their tanks, machine guns, howitzers, trucks, has recovered land, ports, coasts, and numerous assets. Why can't the people also expropriate the banks, companies, industries of the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs? If the Ukrainian army and partisans have violated the private property of Putin's armies, what political, social, and economic reasons are there to respect the private property of the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who amassed fortunes on the starvation of the Ukrainian people?
Every time they win a battle like Kiev, Kharkiv, or Kherson, the Ukrainian people nationalize the weapons they expropriate, the villages they liberate, and the land they reclaim. That nationalization process must not stop! It is necessary to continue nationalizing the lands, the banks, and the industry, Zelensky has had to purge corrupt elements of his government that have stolen parts of the budget and received financial aid . So the soldiers, the Partisans and representatives of the local communes who equitably distribute weapons, medicines, food every day without stealing anything, let them be the ones who manage the budgets, draw up the plans, manage the distribution, the loans! and bank accounts!
Terrified Social Democrats will tell us: "But if we do that, we not only anger Putin, but we will also anger NATO, which can invade and attack us!" To which we will respond: "If they achieve freedom, and equitably distribute the country's goods, the popular masses, and millions of French, English, German, Spanish, Italian workers who are suffering from inflation, poverty, misery and high cost of living of the EU, will cross the few kilometers that separate Kiev from Paris to embrace them! What can Macron, Scholtz do about that?"
The social democrats will tell us: "And Democracy? Isn't it undemocratic to appropriate assets that don't belong to us? Isn't it better to run in the next elections and seek the support of the people with the elections? "To which we Marxists will answer: "Bourgeois Democracy is not any Democracy. What is more democratic than distributing the weapons obtained from the invader deciding everything collectively among the combatants?And if we can establish democratic self-determination mechanisms for the distribution of weapons. Why can't we use those same mechanisms to distribute the posts of offices, councils, schools, and mayoralties among those representatives that we all know and are our dearest friends, neighbors, colleagues?"
For Marxists the direct Democracy of the armed workers, soldiers, and peasants of Ukraine is the only democracy. From La Marx Internacional we celebrate the Ukrainian revolution that is defeating Putin, and changing the world. And we propose to regroup all of us who want this revolution to continue, defeating the campist, evasive, Stalinist left that defends Putin's fascist invasion. And building an independent revolutionary Marxist project to impose Socialist Ukraine, and Global Socialism.
For the victory of the Ukrainian people: Down with Putin!
For the National Liberation of Ukraine: Arms for the Partisans!