Ukrainian partisan in the trenches resisting Putin's invading army

The Marx International

During the first months of 2026, the capitalist mass media spoke of "four years of war in Ukraine," reducing the Ukrainian people's struggle to the large-scale invasion launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022. This perspective oversimplifies a much deeper and more prolonged historical process. In reality, it has been 12 years since the beginning of one of the most important revolutions of the 21st century: the Ukrainian national liberation revolution. This process began with the Independence Square mobilizations in February 2014 that overthrew the oligarchic government of Viktor Yanukovych, continued with the resistance against the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the fight against the invasion of Donbas in April 2014, and was consolidated with the massive defense of the country against the generalized invasion carried out by Putin in February 2022.

In this article, we will assess the development of the revolutionary war and the current state of the Ukrainian people's struggle. We want to draw a conclusion: After four years, Putin's attempted invasion has been completely defeated. Putin's troops came within 20 kilometers of capturing the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, possessing overwhelming military, economic, and political superiority. But after suffering a brutal defeat, Putin's army was limited to occupying the Ukrainian Donbas, which has come at a horrific cost: more than 1,200,000 casualties, including dead and wounded, the loss of a large part of its elite troops such as the Wagner Group, a stagnation in its advances, and no significant qualitative gains. This military failure has plunged the Russian Federation into a political, social, and economic crisis of historic proportions.

Putin was defeated in the Battle of Kyiv by a people with virtually no army, while NATO, the US, and European imperialism did nothing to defend Kyiv. The victors were a grassroots army of millions of armed workers and peasants who erected barricades, conducted espionage, and provided support for the soldiers. Following Putin's defeat, the process of popular arming spread, and armed partisan detachments began to emerge throughout the country, ready to fight. However, NATO intervened, announcing its "support" for Ukraine and beginning to supply weapons with the aim of halting the process of popular arming and the development of urban partisan militias.

The pro-imperialist policies of Zelensky's capitalist government enabled the imperialists of the US, England, France, and Germany to intervene, halting the process of popular armament and diverting it toward the formation of a regular bourgeois army in defense of the Ukrainian capitalist state. The imperialist countries were certainly not going to allow the development of popular armament in a revolution unfolding in the heart of Europe. But even so, neither the policies of the imperialist governments nor those of the Ukrainian bourgeois government have been able to alter the national liberation character of the Ukrainian army, its popular base, or the fact that, despite a lack of resources and relying on popular ingenuity, it has developed a drone production industry that is revolutionizing modern military science.

These developments are impossible to explain except by the existence of a revolution, which is constantly denied by 99% of the global left. The revolution in the use of drones being carried out in Ukraine is not based on large capitalist investments, nor on large imperialist corporations, nor on NATO, but on the inventiveness and effort of thousands of Ukrainian families who develop these designs in small workshops and family homes. The Ukrainian army and bourgeois state rely on this mass effort, which is changing the course of the national liberation war, because the development of drones has allowed Ukraine to launch increasingly powerful and successful counter-offensives, jeopardizing Putin's invasion.

The Ukrainian revolution is not confined to the battlefield; it entails a profound affirmation of the rights of oppressed nationalities and indigenous peoples in the struggle for sovereignty and national self-determination. With this statement, we aim to clearly explain the deep roots of the revolution that is shaking Europe and the world, because it is necessary to dispel the torrent of lies that Stalinists, Putin's agents, and the reformist left have spread to discredit the Ukrainian revolution. Ukraine sets a precedent for other peoples facing external aggression and dictatorships, and it is at the forefront of existing national liberation processes, both of oppressed nations and indigenous peoples, such as the Palestinian Third Intifada, the struggle of the Houthis in Yemen, the Kurdish people, the Kashmiri people, the Tamils ​​in Sri Lanka, and the numerous oppressed nations in Europe and other continents, etc. Given the importance of the Ukrainian national liberation revolution, we have dedicated a section of @Revolution that you can consult with analysis and context available that you can read by clicking here.

The story of the revolution in the heart of Europe

The imperialists, Stalinists, social democrats, and imperialist pundits have dedicated themselves to repeating Putin's campaign with a torrent of lies about Ukraine, claiming that they are a group of Nazis, a group financed by NATO, that the invented republics created to justify the occupation of Donbas are oppressed by kyiv, etc. A whole string of lies, of nonsense that seeks to demonize Ukraine, and would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that they seek to justify the massacre of thousands of families, children, and vulnerable civilians who are bombed daily without mercy by the dictatorship of the war criminal Vladimir Putin.

The lies of social democrats and imperialists have gained traction due to the lack of awareness among the world's people and activists regarding the long history of oppression suffered by Ukraine. This history is well known to Ukrainians and their sister nations, but unknown and concealed from most of the world. This is why, in this work, we will assess the current situation by clarifying the history of Ukrainian oppression, without which it is impossible to understand the reality. The oppression of Ukraine is rooted in the old Tsarist Russian Empire, continued under the Stalinist regime in the USSR, and persists today under the brutal policies of the capitalist oligarchy headed by Vladimir Putin, the war criminal and former KGB agent trained in the infamous school of Stalinism. We will analyze all these stages in a concise manner.

The first stage of oppression under the Russian Empire

The history of Ukraine is a complex mosaic of migrations and settlements spanning centuries, "original peoples" who formed Kievan Rus', a powerful federation of primitive East Slavic communist tribes that traded from the 9th to the mid-13th centuries. This communal development is considered the common cultural and political ancestor of present-day Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, and its nerve center was the city of Kyiv, the current capital of Ukraine, which developed as the first organized state in the region more than 11 centuries ago. Despite the brutish and ignorant Putin's claims that "Ukraine doesn't exist," and that "the only thing that exists is Russia," the history of humanity indicates otherwise. Moscow was barely a village when Kyiv was the mother of all the Slavic nationalities in the region, such as the Varangians, Vikings from Scandinavia, who arrived in the area to control the trade routes between the Baltic Sea and the Byzantine Empire.

Under figures like Vladimir the Great and Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus' reached its zenith, adopting Orthodox Christianity as its official religion and remaining inextricably linked to Byzantine and European culture until the Mongol invasion of 1240. The mosaic of indigenous peoples settled in the principalities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Novgorod, and others included the Turkic Tatars, who organized themselves in the Crimean Peninsula. Their rights were finally recognized when Ukraine passed a law acknowledging them as indigenous peoples of the country, along with the Karaites and Crimachians. Other indigenous groups with their own distinct identities and dialects, such as the Hutsuls, Boyks, and Lemks, were brutally suppressed by the Tsarist regime, which denied any Ukrainian identity under the banner of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism."

The Cossacks were an indigenous people, mostly peasants, who fled serfdom and displayed exceptional equestrian skills. They had founded the Cossack Hetmanate, a confederation that was crushed by Tsarina Catherine the Great in 1764. She formally abolished the office of Hetman, or Cossack leader, and in 1775 invaded and destroyed the Zaporizhzhia Sich, the last Cossack military stronghold. Catherine the Great integrated Ukrainian lands into common Russian administrative provinces, from which a "state policy" arose to deny Ukrainian identity, similar to Netanyahu's denial of the Palestinians. Tsarina Catherine called Ukrainians "Little Russians" ( Malorossy ), and the Minister of the Interior, Pyotr Valuyev, declared that the Ukrainian language "does not exist, has not existed, and cannot exist."

Catherine the Great legally extended serfdom to Ukraine in 1783, binding the peasants to the land of the aristocracy. Thus, although Ukraine became the " breadbasket of Europe ," the profits primarily benefited the Russian crown and imperial nobility, leaving the Ukrainian peasantry in extreme poverty. By the Valuyev Circular of 1863, the Tsarist regime prohibited the publication of religious, educational, and literary books in Ukrainian, and by the Ems Edict of 1876, Tsar Alexander II forbade the importation of books in Ukrainian, theatrical performances, concerts, and even the use of the term "Ukraine" in official documents. Seeking to divide the Ukrainian people, the Tsarist regime established land grants and tax exemptions to transform the Cossacks into its Praetorian Guard, tasked with expanding the borders and repressing the populace.

The second stage of oppression under the Stalinist regime in the USSR

When the Russian Revolution abolished the old Russian Empire, the revolutionary government of the nascent workers' state, led by Lenin and Trotsky, confronted the problem of oppressed nationalities. Given the long history of oppression under the Russian Empire, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, upon founding the Soviet Union (USSR), established a clear policy of defending oppressed nationalities against all forms of "Great Russian chauvinism ," as one of the fundamental principles of Marxist politics. Before seizing power, Lenin had already had violent clashes with Rosa Luxemburg on this issue, and when he assumed the government of the USSR, clashes began with Stalin, who was leading a resurgence of Great Russian chauvinism. Stalin intervened in the Georgian branch of the Communist Party, accusing it of "social chauvinism" because it demanded self-determination, and Lenin sided with the Georgian communists, accusing Stalin of being a " Russian henchman" who "harms the interests of proletarian class solidarity."

In his battle against Stalin, Lenin asserted : "...nothing delays the development and consolidation of this solidarity as much as injustice on the national level..." (Lenin, Letter to the Congress, 1922). Stalin threatened Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, after which Lenin severed all political and personal ties with Stalin and wrote a work against Stalin, called "Letter to the Congress," known as Lenin's "testament ." Following this, he formed an alliance with Trotsky in defense of national rights, and the national question ultimately became the catalyst for the break between Lenin and Stalin. In his "testament," Lenin demanded that Stalin be removed from his position as General Secretary of the Party and prepared to wage war against Stalinism, but he fell gravely ill after a stroke and was unable to continue the fight, dying a few months later.

Stalinism formed a counter-revolutionary political current that crushed all opposition within the USSR's political regime, suppressed the Soviets by bureaucratizing them, and assassinated most of the leaders of the old Bolshevik party who had seized power, including Trotsky, who was expelled from the USSR in 1929. The counter-revolution was based on the defeat of the European revolution, especially the revolution in Germany, which left the USSR completely isolated and became fertile ground for the strengthening of totalitarian and anti-Marxist tendencies like Stalinism, while in parallel, fascism and Nazism were gaining strength in the rest of Europe.

The battleground between Stalinism and Marxism was the policy toward oppressed nations aimed at modifying the political regime of the USSR. Stalinism abolished the revolutionary Leninist regime of the USSR, transforming it into a counter-revolutionary Stalinist regime. From exile, Leon Trotsky continued the struggle in defense of the Leninist position regarding oppressed nations : " What does a revolutionary say... to the Ukrainian people? 'What matters to me is their attitude toward their national destiny... I will support their struggle for independence with all my strength!'" ( Leon Trotsky, "The Independence of Ukraine and Sectarian Confusion," July 30, 1939 )

Ukraine then fell into a new stage of oppression, now under the boot of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist regime. To crush Ukraine and consolidate the counter-revolutionary regime, Stalin carried out horrific massacres and genocides such as the Holodomor of 1932, a famine planned by Stalin to eliminate the Ukrainian independence movement, which resulted in the deaths of more than 12 million Ukrainians. Alongside the Holodomor, Stalin launched a wave of purges to expel all those Marxists who defended Ukrainian rights, such as Mykola Skrypnyk, who committed suicide in 1933, nearly half the members of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and the leadership of the Ukrainian CP, who were mostly replaced by cadres sent from Moscow. Stalin even brought Russian settlers to regions that were being depopulated by famine, which constituted a policy of "Russification" of Ukraine, a policy that would later be implemented by many fascist regimes, or states like Israel in Palestine.

The 3rd stage under the oppression of Putin and the Russian Federation

Twenty years later, the Stalinist regimes were in serious crisis in 1952, when, after Stalin's death, the Communist Party governments began a slow process of returning to capitalism. This was a gradual process that the Stalinist dictatorships carried out very carefully for fear of popular uprisings, as happened with the revolutionary process that had begun in Poland, led by the Solidarity trade union. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Stalinist regimes, the process of returning to capitalism accelerated in the former USSR in 1991 with a brutal adjustment imposed on the people, known as "Shock Therapy ," under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Egor Gaidar.

The Yeltsin-Gaidar duo implemented the "Shock Therapy" plan under the supervision of US imperialism, specifically the administration of President Bill Clinton. The entire project to create a "new capitalist Russia" was a creation of US imperialism, which commissioned US Treasury Department official Larry Summers to launch a project between 1992 and 1997, advised by the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). The privatization of the former USSR was a project born with deep-seated corruption, as HIID's own investors were businessmen seeking to seize the vast assets of the former USSR in partnership with former Stalinist officials who had become powerful millionaire oligarchs.

Following the collapse of the USSR, Russia was internationally recognized as the successor state, inheriting its seat on the UN Security Council, its embassies, and its nuclear arsenal. The entire territory formerly occupied by the USSR was integrated into a kind of "association of nations" called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an international organization similar to a mini-UN or a regional bloc, created on December 8, 1991, through the Belavezha Accords. The CIS was established to test a horrific plan to plunder the assets of the former USSR through a policy of " shock therapy," which involved price liberalization, trade liberalization that allowed the influx of imperialist capital, and cuts to subsidies for the people.

The widespread privatization of valuable companies was financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a scam carried out through voucher privatization initiated in 1992 by Anatoly Chubais, who would later become an executive at the global corporation JP Morgan Chase. The voucher system was a sham presented with the deception that every citizen would become an "owner" of the companies. To this end, the government distributed 114 million vouchers representing a portion of the value of state-owned enterprises. But most people, mired in hyperinflation and poverty, did not understand the purpose of the vouchers and sold them for next to nothing—bottles of vodka, or food—to factory managers or shrewd investors.

The end result was that control of the companies remained in the hands of former Stalinist managers, a process from which the infamous Russian oligarchs emerged. In the mid-1990s, the Yeltsin government went bankrupt and took out loans from a small group of private banks, using oil, gas, and metals companies like Norilsk Nickel and Yukos as collateral. The Yeltsin government defaulted on the loans, allowing the oligarchs to acquire the companies for a fraction of their value. This led to a process of wealth concentration whereby the oligarchs gained control of the majority of the country's GDP.

The oppressed nations began their struggle for self-determination, led by the Chechens, who launched a war of national liberation and achieved independence by defeating the Russian army. But the capitalist economy of the new republics of the former USSR collapsed in the 1990s, leading to a terrible social inequality previously unknown in those nations. The emerging, extremely wealthy oligarchy also concentrated mafia-like mechanisms as a result of its predatory policies, which led it to seize assets and companies at any cost. They did so by promoting all kinds of illicit businesses, including arms sales, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, using the most despicable and violent methods, while the overwhelming majority of the population sank into poverty. The privatization and restoration of capitalism gave rise to a capitalist class in a brutal state of decay, a true reflection of the imperialist decadence of capitalism itself—a veritable corrupt and dangerous mafia.

In the early years, a "business brotherhood" emerged between the oligarchs of Moscow and Kyiv, primarily linked by the gas trade. This was because the Russian oligarchs, at the helm of the powerful Gazprom, needed Ukrainian gas pipelines to export to Europe. This led to the rise of Ukrainian oligarchs like Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma, who made his fortune in steel pipe manufacturing . Ukrainian oligarchs enriched themselves by collecting tolls or reselling cheap gas on their domestic market. Dmytro Firtash, for example, was the key figure in Russian gas in Ukraine, whose influence crumbled almost entirely during Putin's invasion, following the nationalization of many of his assets for reasons of national security.

The Russian and Ukrainian oligarchies shared the same corrupt and violent modus operandi , carrying out fraudulent privatizations, engaging in state-backed deals, and funneling capital to tax havens. These ties of interdependence were reinforced by the fact that many factories in eastern Ukraine, or in the Donbas region, were entirely dependent on supply chains controlled by Russian oligarchs. Ukraine's wealthiest man , Rinat Akhmetov, headed the Donetsk Clan , which maintained close ties with Russian oligarchs, amassing a fortune from the steel and coal industries. Other oligarchs include Ihor Kolomoisky, Zelensky's mentor and backer, who fell from grace after being accused of fraud and money laundering, which forced the government to nationalize his bank, PrivatBank. Another well-known oligarch is Petro Poroshenko, who became a chocolate industry magnate with the company Roshen .

By 1996, the situation in the newly emerging capitalist state of the former USSR was a complete disaster. Chechen rebels had driven the army out of Grozny, the economic situation was catastrophic, unemployment was severe, and Yeltsin's popularity was plummeting, leading to his downfall in 1999. The entire experiment of "return to capitalism" was a utter failure, and it became necessary to establish a provisional government until the next elections. This government was headed by former KGB agent and then-Chief of Staff Vladimir Putin. The crisis of the government and the political regime forced the elections to be brought forward by three months, but "surprisingly," attacks occurred in Moscow and other cities, which the regime blamed on "Chechen terrorism." The attacks resulted in hundreds of deaths and a national upheaval that allowed Putin to proceed with the invasion of Chechnya, causing thousands more deaths and widespread destruction. Strong popular support for the war allowed Putin to emerge triumphant and helped him seize power by winning the elections.

The policy of strengthening a regime through a military attack on another country, itself based on an attack of dubious origin, was later imitated by the US in the attacks of September 11, 2001, which made the invasion of Iraq possible. In this way, the group of oligarchs was able to "stabilize" the critical situation in which the former USSR found itself, as a new political regime with Bonapartist and dictatorial characteristics emerged around Putin, supported by electoral fraud and the military, and escalating in its repression and violence over the 27 years it has been in power. Putin is the central figure of the regime, re-elected in 2004, serving as prime minister from 2008 to 2012 under President Dmitry Medvedev, and then re-elected president successively in 2012, 2018, and 2024. As a result of constitutional amendments, he could remain in power until 2036, through which Putin aspires to become the world's " symbol " of Bonapartism.

During Putin's first term, the Russian Federation's economy grew at an average rate of 7%, fueled by rising oil and gas prices. This economic strength allowed Putin to consolidate a dictatorship based on military and police reform, paramilitary forces and secret services, attacks on oppressed nations, the assassination of opponents, brutal repression of the LGBT community, and attacks on democratic activists, crushing all rights. Putin was able to consolidate this dictatorial political regime by taking advantage of the reactionary global situation opened by imperialism with the "global campaign against terrorism," which included the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2008. However, after NATO's defeat in Iraq, the global situation shifted from reactionary to revolutionary, and the first wave of global revolutions began, spearheaded by the "Arab Spring." This forced Putin to confront the uprising of the Russian people between 2011 and 2013. The popular demonstrations led to a crisis within his political coalition, "United Russia," which began to lose credibility, compelling Putin to launch a new political coalition called the "All-Russian People's Front."

2014: The Independence Square revolution

And it was precisely within the context of that first global revolutionary wave that the revolution erupted in Ukraine. Although a founding member of the CIS, Ukraine never ratified the organization's charter, but it was deeply linked to Russia through the economic ties between the oligarchs of both countries. But in 2014, the people of Ukraine rose up, fed up with poverty, misery, and the meager wages that were never paid because the government owed months' worth of salaries. The people were tired of governments that defended the oligarchs and starved their own people, suffering levels of poverty that make it the poorest country in Europe, with living standards comparable to those of El Salvador or Turkmenistan.

The desperate situation led some sectors of the population to believe that by joining the European Union (EU), they could achieve the same standard of living as in Germany, France, Italy, or Portugal. This false ideology, promoted by the leaders of European imperialist governments, gained traction because the Ukrainian people were unaware of the global crisis of capitalism, and there was no revolutionary Marxist organization in Ukraine to explain the truth to them. What the European imperialist governments never imagined was that their proposal for Ukraine's entry into the EU would have the opposite effect: instead of triggering Ukraine's entry into the zone under their control, they sparked a revolution.

Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs viewed EU membership with suspicion, fearing that European imperialism would displace them from their dominance in the business world. Therefore, the Ukrainian government under Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, which defended the oligarchs' interests, repeatedly postponed Ukraine's association agreement with the EU, stalling negotiations. However, the Ukrainian parliament ratified the agreement with the EU, forcing Putin's government to pressure Kyiv to reject it. When Yanukovych rejected EU association on November 21, 2013, numerous demonstrations took place in Independence Square, demanding that the government resume dialogue with the EU.

The demonstrations in Maidan Square, known in Ukrainian as Maidan Nezalezhnosti, drew hundreds of thousands of people who attended daily speeches by leaders. However, these protests escalated into riots and grew in intensity, continuing throughout the night until the oligarchs' regime unleashed a crackdown on the demonstrators. On January 16, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) issued a decree ordering punishments for the protesters, which was perceived as a veto of their right to demonstrate and protest. By January 22, 2014, the demonstrations had resulted in five deaths, but they had spread across central and western Ukraine, with protesters demanding the government's downfall . Independence Square effectively transformed into a deliberative body, rejecting proposals from the government, following the example of Tahrir Square in Egypt during the Arab Spring.

The Yanukovych government launched the "anti-protest" laws, a set of 10 laws that restricted freedom of expression and the right to assembly, on January 16, 2014. These laws were driven by a coalition between the Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine, which supported the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy. On February 18, 2014, the police attempted to forcibly clear the protesters from Dignity Square, and the clashes resulted in 26 deaths and over 100 injuries. Following this, the Dignity Square assembly began to develop self-defense mechanisms, including barricades and armed front lines of protesters, to defend the right to protest.

On February 19, the truce agreed upon between the government and the assembly in Independence Square broke down, and demonstrations involving firearms erupted again, resulting in 21 deaths. Interior Minister Vitali Zakharchenko described the situation as " pre-civil war" and ordered the distribution of combat weapons to police officers in an " anti-terrorist operation," seeking to eliminate the self-organization and self-defense developed by the people. This raised the death toll that day to over one hundred. However, this only intensified the people's reaction and mobilization, who began arresting police officers and detained 67, accusing them of "shooting to kill . "

European imperialism, concerned about the escalating situation, sent foreign ministers Radosław Sikorski of Poland, Laurent Fabius of France, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany to negotiate with the government of the oligarchs and the protesters in an attempt to reach an agreement and halt the revolution. In the negotiations, Yanukovych's government conceded by releasing opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, and an agreement was signed that stipulated early elections, the formation of a transitional government, a return to the 2004 Constitution, and an end to the repression. Yanukovych announced that he was traveling to a congress of deputies and governors in Kharkiv while the agreement was being submitted. However, the assembly in Independence Square rejected the agreements reached between the government and the European Union.

Once the Independence Square assembly rejected the agreements, the people began occupying key government institutions—ministries, parliament, and the judiciary—effectively seizing power. The repressive forces attempted to prevent this popular takeover by unleashing a brutal crackdown on February 20, 2014. Snipers from the oligarchs' regime fired on demonstrators and even police officers, killing more than 60 people in what became known as "Black Thursday." Yanukovych denounced a supposed coup attempt, but in the early hours of the morning, he abandoned his luxurious residence in Mezhyhirya and disappeared to an unknown location.

It was finally made public that Yanukovych had found asylum with Putin in Russia. The revolution that ended his rule was part of the first global revolutionary wave, with movements that preceded and inspired the Ukrainian people, such as the Arab Spring, the Indignados movement in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in the US, and later the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, among others. The absence of a Marxist party to drive the revolution and fight for a workers' and people's government led to the governmental vacuum being filled by the Verkhovna Rada, which took control of the country, thus giving rise to the provisional government of Oleksandr Turchynov.

Thus, the 2014 Ukrainian revolution was a February Revolution that ushered in a revolutionary era for the country and the region, posing a genuine threat to the plans of the capitalist oligarchs who base their fortunes and businesses on the existence of a de facto " federation " with Russia. Images of the revolution can be seen in the powerful Netflix documentary " Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom," produced and directed by Evgeny Afineevsky . From that point on, the priority for Putin's capitalist oligarchy regime became defeating the Ukrainian revolution in defense of the privileges of the ruling classes of the Russian Federation's capitalist oligarchy.

Putin occupies Donbas in Ukraine

Putin's response to the triumph of the Ukrainian revolution was the occupation of the Ukrainian territories of Crimea and Donbas. On March 7, 2014, Putin's troops entered and seized the Crimean Peninsula. On April 7, demonstrators supported by Putin proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and on April 28, 2014, the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) was proclaimed, which quickly joined the DPR in its struggle against the Ukrainian government. In this way, Putin took control of vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, some of the country's most economically rich areas, occupying Ukrainian regions that were vulnerable given Ukraine's small and weak army. Following this invasion, Putin shut down all joint economic programs between Russia and Ukraine.

In April, Putin orchestrated referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk, which were a sham and a charade for his occupation policy, announcing that the people had voted for independence and secession from Ukraine. The warlords occupied vast swathes of land, violating all international and bilateral treaties signed with Ukraine, with militias led by officers of the state's special services and saboteurs sent from Moscow. These armed men stormed town halls, expelled municipal employees, occupied barracks, checkpoints, and police stations, and ousted mayors. They then seized transmission centers and radio and television broadcasting facilities, cutting off Ukrainian channels and ordering staff to restore Russian television broadcasts.

In April 2014, negotiations took place in Geneva, Switzerland, between the EU, the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. A document was approved that included amnesty for protesters, the disarmament of armed groups, and the return of illegally occupied buildings. However, the entire negotiation process was a farce and a distraction, because the occupying militias, controlled by Putin, refused to accept the agreement, arguing that "they had not participated in the Geneva talks." They rejected the agreement and continued their advance in the occupation of Ukraine, leading to several battles, such as the one in Mariupol. Following the sham referendums in May 2014, Putin promoted the founding of the "New Russia Party " (NRP) in the occupied territories and appointed Aleksandr Borodai as prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, which then federated with the Luhansk People's Republic to form the territory of "Novorossiya" (New Russia).

However, military clashes continued in Donbas with increasingly brutal actions. A new round of negotiations between the imperialist countries, Russia and Ukraine, took place in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on September 5, 2014, and resulted in the Minsk Protocol, an agreement to achieve a ceasefire. The Minsk I agreements were a deception against the Ukrainian people, a demonstration of the hypocrisy of the imperialist governments of the EU and the US, who were perfectly aware of the aggression Putin was carrying out. The former KGB agent had successfully defended capitalism throughout the region using all kinds of genocidal and brutal methods, so the imperialist officials knew the usefulness of the war criminal's political regime and had no interest whatsoever in destabilizing it.

Minsk I was nothing more than another distraction maneuver because it was disregarded by Putin, who continued his attacks and advances against Ukraine, including the takeover of Donetsk International Airport. The only purpose of the Minsk agreement was to ratify the status quo imposed by Putin, whereby the internationally unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics effectively controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas. Holding elections in these artificial republics created by Putin was a mockery of the Minsk I agreements, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the elections were a necessary and important step to "legitimize the authorities of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic . "

Ukraine attempted to defend and reclaim the occupied territories, which led to a resurgence of armed conflict. This prompted the imperialist governments of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine to hold a new round of negotiations overseen by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This new round of negotiations was called Minsk II, a response to the failure of Minsk I. The agreement signed on February 12, 2015, included an unconditional ceasefire to be monitored by the OSCE, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front lines, the release of prisoners of war, and other measures.

But in turn, due to their illegal and illegitimate nature, and their lack of popular support, the mini-republics invented by Putin entered into crisis. The Novorossiya confederation disintegrated in May 2015, and in November 2017, an internal coup took place in Luhansk, a result of the divisions that had arisen among the occupiers, forcing the self-proclaimed president, Igor Plotnitsky, to flee to Moscow. To secure a popular base, Putin pressured the government to simplify access to Russian citizenship for the inhabitants of Donbas, seeking to "Russify " the population.

For Putin, it wasn't just about suppressing the revolution and defending his dictatorship, but also about halting the Arab Spring and protecting neighboring dictatorships. Therefore, on September 30, 2015, he launched a military intervention in the Syrian civil war in support of Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship, sending top advisors and paramilitary mercenary groups led by the Wagner Group. He combined this intervention with airstrikes and cruise missiles to brutally repress the Syrian people, bomb cities, and kill thousands of civilians in an attempt to suppress the revolution against the dictatorship. At the same time, the occupation of Ukrainian territories was finding it increasingly difficult to gain a foothold, leading to an escalation of violent methods to enforce it, including targeted assassinations, torture, threats, the kidnapping of journalists and international observers, beatings, and attacks against supporters of Ukrainian unity. The occupiers led the Donbas region into a humanitarian crisis due to the disruption of social services, the exodus of people from the affected areas, and the shortage of supplies and crucial medicines, such as insulin.

Up to this point, the failure of the Minsk I and Minsk II peace plans had resulted in the deaths of 14,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, in addition to more than 1.9 million displaced Ukrainians. The occupation war in Donbas had caused thousands of displaced persons and refugees, but the Ukrainian revolution spread to other republics: In 2020, the "Sneaker Revolution" erupted in Belarus against the government of Alexander Lukashenko, another representative of the oligarchy seeking his sixth term. In 2021, amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, protests against Putin began again in Russia. And in January 2022, the uprising of the people of Kazakhstan began against the puppet government of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a representative of the oligarchs. Putin had to send troops to quell the protests, which began in major factories, working-class neighborhoods, and cities throughout Kazakhstan.

This led Putin to prepare the conditions for invading and crushing the Ukrainian revolution. He began with a political campaign whose main slogans were that the Ukrainian government was "illegitimate and under the control of radicals ," a group of " neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites," and that the 2014 Independence Square revolution had been a "coup d'état." Social Democrats, Reformists, Camps, and Stalinists repeated these slogans ad nauseam and became part of Putin's campaign, while the war criminal began a massive military buildup on Ukraine's borders starting in 2021.

During this period, Putin repeatedly denied having plans to invade Ukraine, but at the same time, he recognized the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic as part of Russia and sent troops to those territories. The Council authorized Putin to use military force outside Russia's borders, which allowed him to announce the so-called "special military operation ," a euphemism to conceal the fact that it was an invasion. This operation unfolded with the entry of troops and the crossing of borders, accompanied by missile launches, beginning on February 24, 2022, as a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin and the high command of the invading army planned it as a "short intervention ," anticipating that Ukrainians dissatisfied with Zelensky's government would support the invasion . Prior to the invasion, Ukraine was engulfed in a wave of strikes by state employees, teachers, miners, and metalworkers, reflecting widespread popular discontent with Zelensky's government. The invader's high command assumed that amidst such widespread discontent, the occupying army's entry into Kyiv would be met with cheers, support, and affection from the Ukrainians, allowing them to overthrow Zelensky and install a new government to regain control of the country. However, all of Putin and the high command's political calculations were completely wrong, leading them to commit serious errors in military strategy. The war, beginning with the large-scale invasion, unfolded in five phases:

1) The large-scale invasion, and victories of Ukraine in Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson (February 24 to November 11, 2022)

2) Putin's counter-offensive in Bakhmut (November 11, 2022 to May 21, 2023)

3) Ukraine's counter-offensive (June 8 to November 1, 2023)

4) Putin's offensive in Avdiivka (February 17, 2024 to December 31, 2025)

5) The current Ukrainian counter-offensive (February 24, 2026 to present)

From now on, the work focuses on the analysis of these 5 moments, developing more extensively the 1st, the shortest but at the same time, the most decisive since in it all the constitutive processes of the revolutionary war are triggered (armament of the masses, crisis of the Zelensky government, NATO intervention, development of a popular base army, the partisans, etc.).

1) Putin's large-scale invasion, and Ukrainian victories in Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson (February 24 to April 2, 2022)

We begin by analyzing the first phase of the revolutionary war, marked by Ukraine's major victories and the rise of the partisan movement. Putin amassed up to 175,000 troops on Ukraine's border and addressed the nation on February 24, 2022, announcing the launch of a "special military operation." That same day, Putin's troops entered Ukrainian territory, which had an initial force of 400,000 soldiers, including thousands of Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Latvian volunteers who joined the Ukrainian militias.

Faced with the invasion, the people of Ukraine were abandoned by all the imperialist capitalist governments of Europe and the US. In the early hours of February 25, 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, declared: "They have left us alone to defend our state" in a televised message posted on his social media. Zelensky mentioned that he had called 27 European leaders and said: "They are all afraid, no one is responding." Neither the imperialist governments of the G7, nor the UN or its Security Council, nor NATO intervened to help Ukraine, nor did they answer Zelensky's calls because they were all complicit in the invasion. But the policy of the imperialist governments contrasted sharply with the mobilizations of people from all over the world who demonstrated in support of Ukraine, while in 40 Russian cities thousands mobilized in protest against the war, forcing Putin to imprison more than 2,000 activists who were protesting against the invasion.

The extreme situation of an invasion, Ukraine's abandonment and isolation in the face of a vastly superior army, forced Zelensky's bourgeois government to take drastic measures. Imperialist governments offered Zelensky the option of leaving the country, but he responded, "I don't need a plane, I need weapons." Following this, the Ukrainian government declared martial law and ordered a general mobilization of all Ukrainian citizens between the ages of 18 and 60, decreeing a people's arming program. The Ministries of Defense and Internal Affairs streamlined the procedures for weapons distribution, and between February 24 and 25, 2026, they distributed more than 18,000 assault rifles in the Kyiv region alone to volunteers and citizens who presented themselves at recruitment centers. This triggered the mass arming of the population and fueled the development of the Ukrainian partisan and guerrilla movement.

The same procedure was carried out in all regions of the country, while legislation was passed allowing Ukrainian civilians and resident foreigners to use firearms against the invading forces without fear of legal repercussions, granting them a status similar to that of combatants. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and official government accounts published detailed instructions and manuals on how to manufacture and use homemade bombs or Molotov cocktails to attack enemy armored vehicles in urban environments. This popular mobilization was channeled primarily through the Territorial Defense Forces, which had previously been a secondary reserve but, through this mobilization process, became a massive force with thousands of civilian fighters joining its ranks. The requirements set by the government were minimal for joining the forces, such as presenting a passport and thereby receiving a weapon and basic equipment.

Suddenly, the Ukrainian army, which had 400,000 soldiers, became a force of 2 or 3 million combatants, along with civilian militiamen from all walks of life—teachers, artists, IT professionals, construction workers—who erected barricades and checkpoints in their own neighborhoods. Men and women built barricades in Kyiv, and beyond its military effectiveness, this action sent a message that occupying the cities would be extremely costly for the occupying army. From then on, on all fronts, local volunteer groups provided critical intelligence and logistical support to the regular army units deployed at the front— women and men belonging to the Ukrainian proletariat, fighting to defend their homes, their families, their land, and their right to self-determination against the invading troops. This is how Leon Trotsky explained it : "When the small peasant or the worker speaks of the defense of the fatherland, he speaks of the defense of his home, his family, and the families of others against invasion, against bombs, against asphyxiating gases. The capitalist and his journalist understand the defense of the fatherland to mean the conquest of colonies and markets, the extortionate expansion of the 'national' share of world income." (Leon Trotsky, Transitional Program).

The inept leaders of the imperialist bourgeoisie reignited the flames of class struggle. They had launched a campaign among the Ukrainian people about the benefits of joining the Eurozone, thereby sparking a revolution. Then, they had left Ukraine defenseless against Putin's invasion, thereby unleashing the popular masses' armed struggle. Now, with Putin's invasion, things took a dramatic turn: If the Ukrainian people's national revolution had led to a revolutionary war of national liberation, then the Ukrainian army, which until then had been a regular bourgeois army, had been transformed into a bourgeois army of national liberation, with a strong working-class and popular base.

The occupying troops entered Ukraine from four main directions, resulting in four major battlegrounds. First, the Battle of Kyiv, fought from the north along the Belarusian border towards Kyiv; second, the Battle of Kharkiv, where the occupying troops entered from the northeast from the Russian border towards Kharkiv; third, the Battle of the East and the Donbas, in which the occupying army invaded from the fictional republics of the DPR and LPR; and fourth, the Battle of the South and Kherson, where the occupying army entered from the south through the Crimean region. Of all these battles, the central and most important was the Battle of Kyiv, which defined the course of the invasion and, more generally, of the entire revolutionary war of national liberation.

In the Battle of Kyiv, Putin's troops captured the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and from there advanced to the city of Ivankiv. From that point on, the Battle of Kyiv was actually a series of battles fought in Hostomel, Bucha, Brovary, Chernobyl, Ivankiv, Slavutych, and Vasylkiv. But two battles were key: Irpin and Moshchun. Irpin remains etched in memory because of the enormous column of between 150 and 200 tanks heading towards Kyiv, which was stopped by partisans who blew up the access bridges, halting the advance. Then, imitating the tactics of Chechen guerrillas, they detonated the tanks at the front and rear of the column, paralyzing the massive tank convoy. Incredibly, the column became isolated, unable to resupply with fuel and food, forcing the soldiers to flee because Putin believed the invasion would be a short-lived action, but the resistance of the Ukrainian people made it last longer than expected, an incredible miscalculation that left the occupying soldiers in a vulnerable state.

If the Battle of Irpin was a war of attrition in the suburbs, the Battle of Moshchun in March 2022 was the "Thermopylae moment" in a small, wooded village on the outskirts of Kyiv. It became the most critical point of the invasion because if it fell, the occupiers could enter directly into Kyiv's northern districts. Therefore, the battle, which lasted from approximately March 5 to 21, 2022, was one of the bloodiest and most pivotal. Russian elite paratroopers from the VDV and the 155th Marine Infantry Brigade managed to cross the Irpin River under dense fog and artillery fire. The fighting then devolved into hand-to-hand combat and house-to-house fighting in the surrounding dense forests.

In a desperate tactical move, the Ukrainians blew up the Kozarovychi Dam, flooding the Irpin River basin and turning the terrain into an impassable swamp. This cut off the Russian troops who had already crossed, preventing them from receiving reinforcements or heavy supplies. The occupiers, who deployed their best airborne forces, such as the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment, suffered massive casualties and were driven out of Moshchun. The defeat at Moshchun was the final nail in the coffin for the Russian plan to take Kyiv. Without the ability to safely cross the Irpin, Putin's army was forced to withdraw from all of northern Ukraine by the end of March. After suffering enormous casualties, destruction, and significant loss of equipment, Sergei Rudskoi, on behalf of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of Russia, announced the withdrawal of troops from Kyiv on March 25, 2022.

The people of Ukraine managed to defend the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and advanced, liberating Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv, forcing Putin's troops to retreat . The victory at the Battle of Kyiv had a major impact on the global class struggle and ushered in the third global revolutionary wave, which would later give rise to the Third Palestinian Intifada. This Intifada followed a similar pattern of armed militias confronting a vastly superior army in urban guerrilla warfare. It is a new type of revolution that began in World War II and became widespread in the 21st century, starting with the Iraq War. In Iraq, a new type of revolutionary warfare developed, one that combined urban insurrection with the guerrilla warfare typical of the jungle or countryside. In urban revolutionary warfare, invading troops must fight an invisible enemy that stalks and ambushes them on every corner, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, and in the houses.

In Iraq, guerrilla warfare and urban revolution merged, inaugurating the most modern concept of warfare history could offer: a combination of mass insurrection centered in cities, enjoying the support and sympathy of millions of inhabitants across the region. Now, urban revolutionary warfare was beginning to unfold in Ukraine, and after their victory in the Battle of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops completed their advance and won the Battle of Kharkiv, allowing them to capture Ukraine's second-largest city on May 13, 2022. Ukraine's resounding victory left Putin's forces severely weakened and decimated, leading Putin to concentrate his forces in the Ukrainian Donbas.

The imperialist governments of the US and the EU began sending weapons to Ukraine to better pressure the country into ending the war and resolving everything diplomatically. Speaking from the European Parliament, French President Emmanuel Macron stated, "We must not humiliate Russia," expressing the EU's imperialist policy of a diplomatic settlement that would mean Ukraine relinquishing control of Donbas to grant Putin a minimal victory. What the imperialist leaders sought was an elegant way out of the military quagmire into which the dictatorship was sinking, but to exert even more pressure, they suspended all arms shipments to Ukraine, which they had recently begun providing.

However, after so much death, destruction, and suffering, the Ukrainian people were in no way going to surrender what they had achieved through so much struggle and effort at the negotiating table.It was also impossible for Zelensky to accept this agreement to hand over Donbas, knowing that the people would reject it. Nevertheless, the EU's criminal policy toward Ukraine became clear, given that fascists and genocidal figures like Putin cannot be given even a minute's respite because they will use it to destroy lives and families. NATO's policy of suspending arms shipments to Ukraine left the Ukrainian people vulnerable to bombing and also exposed the fact that Zelensky's capitalist government is lying when it claims that NATO is an ally.

It was the pressure from the masses in European countries, the growth of the partisans in Ukraine, and the spread of this phenomenon to Eastern European countries that forced NATO to provide Ukraine with weapons only in dribs and drabs. This policy shift was aimed at controlling actions in the theater of war, ensuring that its development was dictated by imperialist governments, not the masses. Finally, in early July 2022, the United States deployed HIMARS missile systems. While these missiles had a limited range of only 80 kilometers, they enabled Ukrainian army troops to begin demolishing warehouses, supply centers, and all manner of installations belonging to the invaders.

Riding the momentum of the victories in Kyiv and Kharkiv, another enormous triumph for the workers and people of Ukraine occurred on November 12, 2022, with the capture of Kherson, the regional capital of southern Ukraine. Kherson was the only major city Russia had occupied since the invasion, a predominantly Russian-speaking city whose inhabitants identify as Ukrainian. As soon as Putin's troops entered, thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest the invasion. Putin launched a sham referendum declaring Kherson part of Russia, but he was ridiculed when the city was lost just 45 days later. The victories in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson resulted in the recapture of hundreds of urban centers and thousands of square kilometers of territory in just eight months—a resounding military defeat for the oligarchs' regime.

The partisan phenomenon is unleashed

In turn, the entire development of the national liberation war triggered a crisis within the oligarchic class. The outbreak of war accelerated all the contradictions, as Russian oligarchs faced sanctions from Europe and the US, while Ukrainian oligarchs saw their industrial empires bombed by the Russian army. This led to changes in the ranking of Ukraine's most prominent oligarchs. So hated are the oligarchs by the people that, in order to gain popularity, the Zelensky government announced a policy of complete "de-oligarchization," which exacerbated the crisis of this once "untouchable" social class , now facing massive asset losses and legal proceedings. This highlighted the anti-capitalist nature of the Ukrainian revolution, because it is the people's struggle to escape poverty against the decadent, corrupt, and mafia-like Ukrainian and Russian capitalism.

The victory in the Battle of Kyiv in March 2022 not only triggered the third global revolutionary wave, but also coincided with the partisan phenomenon that had been developing since 2014 when Putin occupied Donbas and Crimea. This phenomenon exploded and spread throughout the country as part of the surge in mass armament brought about by the extreme measures the Ukrainian government was forced to take domestically. But it also spread beyond Ukraine, as in Belarus, where partisans spearheaded all kinds of boycotts and a wave of attacks , bombings, ambushes, and mass-organized weaponry. The development of these guerrilla groups—peasants, women, workers, and young people—who took up arms, reviving the European tradition of fighting against fascist occupation, resulted in three distinct phenomena.

On the one hand, there is the phenomenon of self-organized, independent partisan corps that collaborate with the army but maintain their own autonomous structure. On the other hand, there are civilians integrated into the army, which has given it a popular base as well as a curious structure in which numerous divisions are organized as "independent units." And finally, there is the mass production of drones based on family-run businesses, a product of the fact that each partisan or fighter has millions of friends, family, and neighbors behind them who equip and supply all kinds of support, which has transformed the Ukrainian partisan movement into a mass resistance organization. Among the partisans of Russia and Belarus, the "Stop the Wagons" movement developed , claiming responsibility for the train derailment in the Amur Oblast, which halted traffic on the Trans-Siberian Railway on June 29, 2022.

The Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization (BOAK) operates clandestinely in Eastern Europe, carrying out attacks within Russia, as does the Dagestan Partisan Movement, founded on September 26, 2022, in response to the detention of citizens during protests in the Caucasus and the Far East. Within the temporarily occupied territories (TOT), the Yellow Ribbon Movement emerged, a guerrilla partisan movement that began by displaying the first 100 yellow ribbons. Simultaneously, they purchased printers and produced posters, which allowed them to expand to Melitopol, Enerhodar, Henichesk, Nova Kakhovka, Berdiansk, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. In April 2022, the Berdiansk Partisan Army was formed, operating primarily in the Zaporizhzhia region and publishing the newspaper "The Voice of the Partisan." The People's Resistance of Ukraine is a clandestine partisan organization that operates within the TOTs and transmits coordinates of military installations and invading troops for espionage purposes.

In June 2022, the " Luhansk Partisan" project was launched to strengthen resistance against the occupiers' attempts to consolidate control of the Luhansk Oblast . In September 2022, the Atesh Partisan Movement emerged—Atesh means "Fire" in Tatar — comprised of Crimean Tatars and Russian dissidents who have specialized in attacks and car bombings against the occupying authorities, as you can read in the Kyiv Post article here. Atesh leaders believe that 2025 was the year they "metastasized" throughout the Russian Federation, even infiltrating the highest ranks of Putin's army. Lacking weapons, the partisans had to sharpen their ingenuity and resort to all sorts of alternative solutions, improvising weapons of all kinds, assembling parts of captured equipment, and using their creativity to design and build systems. All this work relies on the capacity of a disciplined, trained, and highly skilled working class that includes engineers, technicians, and computer specialists in its ranks.

Partisan operations in Ukraine have evolved from sabotage and Molotov cocktails to advanced technology such as drones, small unmanned aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance and direct attacks. Drones provide a tactical advantage, demonstrating that no target, even in the heart of occupied territory, is beyond the reach of the resistance. And although Putin calls partisan attacks "acts of terrorism," nothing deters the fighters. We Marxists are the only ones who support the partisans, given that capitalist officials are completely opposed to popular armament and the armed self-organization of the masses because these processes imply the emergence and development of dual power.

With the partisan movement, the bourgeois state begins to face a mass organization it cannot control, and which even imposes its own power in its areas of operation and in the country's politics. Alongside imperialist governments, social democrats, Stalinists, and reformists of all stripes deny the existence of the partisans and the militias, given their policy of bourgeois pacifism. Ninety-nine percent of the global left pays lip service to "peace" and becomes complicit in the UN's imperialist policies, for which it must deny the partisan phenomenon, progressive in every respect. The partisan phenomenon is at the forefront of the process of global political revolution, and due to its internationalist character, which includes fighters from up to 55 different countries with the so-called International Legion, it has served as inspiration for the Palestinian militias in the urban guerrilla war in Gaza, for the militias in Syria with Bashar Al Assad, the Houthi militias against Saudi Arabia, the Kurdish militias, etc.

Imperialism and Zelensky against the Ukrainian revolution

NATO governments are horrified by the process of popular armament unfolding in Ukraine, which is spreading to Finland, Georgia, Belarus, and other republics in the region, where people fear aggression from Putin. This is why Zelensky's capitalist government introduced martial law in the country, to suppress mobilization, as workers and unions are legally prohibited from organizing protest marches.

But even worse, Zelensky's bourgeois government pushed through the Ukrainian Parliament the passage of bills that attack the labor rights of Ukrainian workers. On the one hand, Law 5161 introduces "zero-hour" contracts , and on the other, Law 5371 effectively abolishes important labor rights and protections that safeguard workers against arbitrary actions by employers. This entire offensive by the capitalist government of Ukraine against the masses is taking place right in the middle of a war, when such cases of employer abuse are becoming more frequent.

Prior to Putin's invasion, a wave of strikes prevented Zelensky's government from passing this anti-worker legislative package, but now, amid calls for "National Unity," Zelensky took the opportunity to push through these "simplified regime" laws , which mean arbitrary dismissals, overtime for spurious reasons, and ignoring collective agreements regarding wage payments. Zelensky 's policies violate even the minimum social provisions of the European Association Agreement of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and fail to comply with a series of minimum standards enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Social Charter. They also violate the standards stipulated by ILO Conventions Nos. 132, 135, and 158, and even the founding Convention No. 1 (1919), concerning the limitation of working hours in industrial enterprises to 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week, along with other European Union regulations—a serious matter for a government that constantly talks about joining the EU.

While all this legislation is sanctioned by capitalist institutions that Marxists in no way defend, it is important to denounce that these are workers' victories achieved through the struggle of millions of European workers. On the other hand, and as could be expected, the capitalist government of Volodymyr Zelensky is deeply corrupt, with cases such as the most recent one known as " Operation Midas," a network that allegedly embezzled some $100 million through the state-owned nuclear company Energoatom. It is alleged that officials demanded bribes of between 10% and 15% for awarding contracts, which resulted in the dismissal of Justice Minister German Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk in 2025. The investigation also reached Timur Mindich, a former associate of Zelensky and co-owner of the production company behind his television series.

The corruption scandal at the Ministry of Defense also erupted in 2023, revealing that the Ministry was purchasing food for troops, such as eggs and potatoes, at prices up to three times higher than market rates. Simultaneously, the purchase of low-quality uniforms at exorbitant prices was detected through a Turkish company linked to relatives of officials. As a result, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov was forced to resign in September 2023. Then came the Recruitment Center scandal, which compelled Zelensky to take drastic measures after the discovery of a widespread bribery system to avoid military service. Finally, the Supreme Court scandal erupted when the President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, Vsevolod Kniaziev, was arrested after being caught accepting a bribe of approximately $2.7 million.

In other words, while the Ukrainian people defended their independence in the streets and on the battlefield, Zelensky's capitalist government attacked their most basic rights, and its officials enriched themselves. Meanwhile, Putin concentrated his forces in the Ukrainian Donbas with regular troops, mercenaries from the militias of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Chechen mercenaries, and mercenaries from the Wagner Group. Following this, Putin launched brutal counteroffensives against the strongholds of resistance, ushering in a second phase of the war.

2) Putin's counter-offensive in Bakhmut (November 11, 2022 to May 21, 2023)

The retreat of Putin's troops toward the Donbas, a consequence of the defeats suffered in the battles of Kiev, Kharkiv, and Kherson, established a front line approximately 1,000 to 1,200 kilometers long. At the end of 2022, Putin announced with great fanfare that he would reverse these defeats through the "Winter Offensive," a plan devised by the capitalist oligarchy to achieve victory and culminate in a central event in Moscow on "Victory Day" on May 9, 2023, to showcase Putin's triumphs and announce that he was winning the war.

Throughout the "Winter Offensive," Putin continued to fire hundreds of missiles at the civilian population, killing families, children, the elderly, and the most vulnerable sectors of the Ukrainian people, while the occupation authorities continued to repress the Ukrainian people in the TOT, kidnapping and selling Ukrainian children, an action that has resulted in more than 16,000 children being kidnapped, all aberrant acts that sought to break the will of resistance of the Ukrainian people.

All the fascist actions of Putin's capitalist dictatorship were a continuation of horrific war crimes such as the Bucha massacre and the bombing of the New Kahovka hydroelectric plant in Kherson. Putin concentrated his entire attack on the offensive to capture the city of Bakhmut, but the resistance of the Ukrainian people did not break. Putin's counter-offensive crashed against a wall of steel in Bakhmut, in the Donetsk Oblast of the Donbas. After five months of fighting, assaults, skirmishes, and brutal battles, Putin's troops in Bakhmut finally managed to take the city, but at a horrific cost to the mercenaries. The Wagner Group lost more than 20,000 soldiers in Bakhmut, according to Wagner commander Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The final tally of the entire "Winter Offensive" is that in five months, Putin's troops managed to advance a mere 70 kilometers, a negligible achievement compared to what Putin's high command had planned. This made it impossible for Putin to claim any victories, which is why on "Victory Day" he was ultimately unable to make the announcements he so desperately hoped to make. To grasp the magnitude of this phenomenon, consider this comparison: the total casualties of the Soviet army in the invasion of Afghanistan amounted to 14,000 soldiers over ten years, but Putin lost more in the "Winter Offensive" in just five months than he lost in Afghanistan—a brutal failure for the dictatorship. But the failure of the "Winter Offensive" also had another significance: the Battle of Bakhmut was used by Ukrainian forces to decimate Putin's best troops, the Wagner mercenaries.

Bakhmut, far from being a triumph of the "Winter Offensive," became a giant graveyard for Wagner mercenaries, a "triumph" that in reality resulted in a true military disaster in terms of equipment and troop losses. Furthermore, the failure triggered a political crisis of enormous magnitude in the Russian Federation dictatorship because it led to a rupture in relations between the Wagner Group and the high command of the armed forces. Prigozhyn launched fierce verbal attacks against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, accusing the high command of being responsible for the disaster due to corruption, incompetence, and the denial of ammunition to his mercenaries during the Battle of Bakhmut.

Finally, the crisis in Putin's regime erupted with Prigozhin's uprising , which began with the capture of the Wagner Group of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don. After seizing the city and the surrounding region, Prigozhin led an armored column that began advancing north along the M4 highway, aiming to reach Moscow. Along the way, they shot down several helicopters and a Russian command aircraft, killing about a dozen pilots. In a televised address, Putin called the act a "stab in the back " and a betrayal, while Prigozhin's army, now in open rebellion against Putin, continued its advance without any intervention from the regular army.

Even the column of Wagner Group vehicles received cheers and demonstrations of support from the civilian population when, just 200 kilometers from Moscow, Prigozhin received a call from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin eventually announced an agreement and ordered a withdrawal to " avoid Russian bloodshed," in exchange for which the Kremlin dropped the treason charges. The agreement also stipulated that the Wagner Group's headquarters would be relocated to Belarus. But despite the agreement, and Putin's takeover of Bakhmut, the military disaster caused by the Ukrainian resistance had triggered a major crisis within the Russian regime and armed forces.

After the mutiny, Prigozhin didn't disappear entirely. He was seen at summits and released videos attempting to demonstrate that he remained useful to the regime. However, Putin had another fate in store for Prigozhin. On one hand, he began dismantling his assets, and on the other, on August 23, 2023, two months after the rebellion, the Embraer Legacy 600 private jet flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino, killing all 10 people on board, including Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitri Utkin. Clearly, Putin made Prigozhin pay the price, sending a clear message to anyone who challenged his central authority.

The failure of the "Winter Offensive," and the subsequent open crisis in Putin's regime, fueled fears among imperialist leaders of a Vietnam-like scenario for Putin's capitalist dictatorship. As former US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explained: "...the dissolution of Russia or the destruction of its capacity for strategic policy could turn its territory, spanning 11 time zones, into a contested vacuum. Its competing societies might decide to resolve their disputes through violence ... " The US strategic advisor warned of the danger of a crisis in the Russian Federation at the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2023. Following Bakhmut's failure, Kissinger warned of the possibility of the Russian Federation's dissolution, which raised the possibility that imperialism would lose control of vast regions of Asia—the "11 time zones," as Kissinger put it—making clear the fear that the Ukrainian revolution was sowing in the imperialist high command.

3) Ukraine's counter-offensive (June 8 to November 1, 2023)

Following the failure of Putin's "Winter Offensive," imperialist governments renewed their insistence on a way out of the "Peace Agreement," publicly urging Xi Jinping and China's capitalist oligarchy to use their influence and good relations with Putin to reach a peace agreement. The heads of global corporations, led by William R. Rhodes, CEO of Citibank, and Stuart PM Mackintosh, published an open letter titled "It is time for China to use its influence with Putin to create space for peace " in the South China Morning Post, the newspaper of China's capitalist oligarchy controlled by the Alibaba Group.

But the Ukrainian people clamored for revenge against the aggression they had suffered. The Ukrainian high command was planning a counter-offensive throughout 2023 to definitively expel Putin's troops. NATO pledged to provide the weapons, but months were spent publicly debating "whether to send tanks or not," or whether they should be Leopard or Abrams tanks. All this delay in delivering weapons to Ukraine gave Sergei Surovikin, the supreme commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, precious time to construct a massive and complex defensive wall system along the border, which became known as the "Surovikin Line." This intricate system of dense minefields, trenches, and barbed wire enabled Putin's forces to withstand any offensive.

When NATO finally sent weapons to Ukraine, the arms shipment was insufficient and arrived too late to guarantee success, thus ensuring the failure of the Ukrainian offensive. This allowed them to continue pressuring for a "peace" agreement— a policy of shameless complicity between imperialist governments and Putin. When NATO weapons arrived in June 2023, Ukraine's counteroffensive encountered the most heavily fortified defenses in Europe since World War II. Furthermore, NATO refused to provide aircraft, making the ground offensive impossible. Ukraine launched its counteroffensive without F-16 fighter jets and with limited air defense systems to cover the front, enabling Russian attack helicopters like the Ka-52 to destroy Leopard tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers before they could even approach the occupying lines.

When we analyze these back-and-forths regarding NATO's arms shipments to Ukraine, we pause to shed light on a fact that confuses many honest activists. While the campaign waged by Putin, the Progressive International, Stalinism, and reformists of all stripes claims that "NATO is invading Russia," the stark reality that emerges upon closer examination makes it clear that the imperialist management of these weapons is deliberately aimed at preventing a Ukrainian victory, preventing the triumph of a national liberation revolution in the heart of Europe, diverting the dual partisan power structure, and preventing Putin's downfall.

In other words, a serious and rigorous analysis of the imperialist management of arms supplies to Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the claim made by Stalinists, camp followers, and reformists—that "NATO supports Ukraine" —is completely false. The disastrous arms management strengthened the "Surovikin Line," which was riddled with vast minefields, but Ukrainian troops lacked the necessary equipment for demining. When Ukrainian officials denounced the situation, NATO sent mine-clearing vehicles, but in insufficient numbers, allowing Ukrainian armored vehicles to become static targets as they became trapped in these minefields. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces, published a famous essay in November 2023 in The Economist in which he admitted that the war had reached a stalemate, a standstill, because the weapons received only served to prevent defeat, not to secure victory.

Following the defeats at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, and then the failure at Bakhmut, Putin's troops were vulnerable, and NATO's strategy of delaying arms deliveries to Ukraine allowed the Putin regime to recover. Even so, the crisis within Putin's regime continued to deepen, and Surovikin himself fell from grace shortly after the Ukrainian offensive began. The architect of the "line," and a war criminal against the Syrian people, was investigated and removed from command for his alleged ties to the Wagner Group and Yevgeny Prigozhin after the failed mutiny. So, ironically, while his "line " was working and delivering a defensive victory for Putin, he was under house arrest or disappeared from public life.

Ironically, Ukraine's greatest successes were not on land, but in the Black Sea, forcing the Russian fleet to withdraw from Sevastopol. Despite having no navy, Ukraine achieved the military feat of neutralizing and destroying approximately 30% of Putin's Black Sea Fleet—an extraordinary triumph made possible by the development of its own maritime surface "kamikaze" drones , such as the Magura V5 and the Sea Baby. Ukraine accomplished feats such as sinking the Moskva, the flagship of the occupying fleet, and destroying air defense systems that left the occupying ships without cover against air attacks.

This drastically limited Putin's ability to blockade Ukrainian ports and safely launch missiles, allowing Ukraine to operate in the Black Sea, reopening its grain export corridor and protecting its coasts without needing its own battle fleet. Ukraine was able to somehow defend its battered economy, and it achieved this feat not through NATO arms shipments, but through the development of autonomous drones, a trend that began to emerge thanks to the collaborative work of thousands of Ukrainian families.

4) Putin's offensive in Avdiivka (February 17, 2024 to December 31, 2025)

The failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive, triggered by NATO's deliberate boycott, allowed Putin's dictatorship to launch a general offensive on the Donbas. As Putin launched the counteroffensive on February 17, 2024, a crisis between the Ukrainian military leadership and Zelensky's government was reaching its peak. Their relationship had deteriorated since the publication of Zaluzhnyi's article in The Economist. Zelensky disliked Zaluzhnyi's characterization of the situation as a "stalemate" and suspected that Zaluzhnyi, given his high popularity, would attempt to seize power. Although this ultimately never materialized, Zaluzhnyi's leadership was characterized by constant friction with the presidential office because he sought complete autonomy, while Zelensky looked for a general more aligned with his policies.

Zelensky promoted Oleksandr Syrskyi as his successor, who had to manage one of the most difficult periods for Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion. Among other things, he had to make the decision to withdraw from Avdiivka to avoid encirclement. Putin's troops took control of the strategic Coke Plant and used the withdrawal to quickly capture adjacent villages such as Lastochkyne, Stepove, and Sjeverne. Ukrainian troops again faced the problem of a lack of artillery ammunition due to another delay in arms shipments from NATO, which prevented Ukraine from establishing a solid defensive line.

This allowed the occupying troops to continue their offensive from Avdiivka and push toward the Ocheretyne area, using small but sustained assault groups, which also enabled them to threaten the logistical centers of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. The occupiers prioritized the massive use of glide bombs (KABs), which proved to be the decisive factor in demolishing Ukrainian fortifications and deepening the regional offensive in Donbas. To balance the forces and counter the occupying offensive, the commander of the Ukrainian troops, Oleksandr Syrskyi, launched Ukraine's most audacious move since the beginning of the war on August 6, 2024: invading Russian territory, a direct challenge to Putin's dictatorship.

The invasion of Kursk involved the mobilization of elite units and mechanized forces that crossed the border in the Sudzha region, encountering little resistance from poorly equipped Russian conscripts. This allowed Ukraine, in just two weeks, to seize control of approximately 1,200 km² of Russian territory and the strategic Sudzha gas metering plant, vital for the flow of gas to Europe . The invasion of Ukraine was an operation that shattered the taboo of the inviolability of Russian territory, a psychological blow with significant global impact because it implied that the occupied was invading the occupier, following the example of the Palestinian militias when they invaded Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Ukrainian command sought to force Russia to withdraw troops from Donbas and create a buffer zone to protect the Sumy region. It took Russia weeks to organize a coherent response. However, instead of withdrawing troops from the main front in Donbas, Putin used reserves from other regions and newly formed units. During the last months of 2024, the fighting became a war of attrition in a terrain of forests and open fields. Putin struck a deal with North Korea to send 10,000 troops to expel the Ukrainian forces, while on the Ukrainian side, he received support from Russian partisan groups fighting for Ukraine, such as the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and the Legion for the Freedom of Russia (LSR), as you can read by clicking here.

Two years later, Ukraine still holds a portion of Russian territory, although less than the peak reached in 2024, where they have built solid defensive lines. Given that the Zelensky government has made it clear that these lands are assets for future territorial negotiations on a "land-for-land" basis , the invasion of Kursk also allowed them to acquire more captured Russian soldiers and military personnel to be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners. Ultimately, the invasion of Kursk was a brilliant tactical success that humiliated the Kremlin, although it was undoubtedly a desperate maneuver by Ukraine because Putin's troops continued to advance in the Donbas.

Between January and June 2025, Putin's troops slowed their advance but remained systematic, capturing small towns to widen the salient and prevent Ukrainian counterattacks. By the end of the year, the pressure had definitively shifted toward the city of Pokrovsk, aiming to attack the railway and logistical infrastructure to strangle Ukrainian supplies throughout the Donetsk Oblast. During this period, the Russian Federation's high command shifted its tactical offensive strategy from armored column attacks to massive infantry waves supported by intensive air strikes. In response, Syrskyi and the Ukrainian high command adopted a "flexible defense ," ceding ground for time and seeking to maximize casualties on Putin's troops.

Putin's troops finally captured Avdiivka, which drew Ukrainian artillery away from Donetsk, allowing the occupiers to stabilize their regional administrative center. The battle for Avdiivka is estimated to have been one of the most costly in terms of human lives for both sides, with figures suggesting tens of thousands of casualties accumulated during the months of direct assault. Although Russia managed to enter and eventually control much of the city's ruins by the end of 2025, further advances were halted by the implementation of a massive defensive wall, known as the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk "Iron Belt," where Ukraine concentrated its reserves.

Bourgeois pundits, journalists, defenders of capitalism, Stalinists, and camp supporters spoke throughout the offensive of Putin's "imminent victory ." But in the harsh winter of 2025-2026, this never materialized. On the contrary, Ukraine withstood infantry assaults, and the offensive crashed against the toughest part of the Ukrainian defensive "wall ." Moreover, the failures, defeats, and paralysis on the front lines began to trigger an economic and political crisis within Putin's regime. The economy began to reflect the deep scars of years of conflict, exacerbated by massive military spending, leaving behind an exhausted economic structure and mounting pressure from the crisis on the people.

Thus, a war economy "bubble" was formed , generating apparent GDP growth based on an artificial phenomenon driven almost exclusively by the defense industry, whose budget represents approximately 40% of the state budget. In turn, the global capitalist crisis impacted the Russian Federation's economy, leading to stagflation with projected growth of only 0.8% to 1% by 2026, amid recession, and rising inflation that is hitting the people hard with increased prices for basic goods. Putin is making the people "pay the price" for the invasion through higher prices and new taxes. To finance the deficit, the government tightened VAT exemptions for companies that were previously exempt and now must pay, and imposed further increases in consumption taxes. Putin's measures have sparked discontent among segments of the population, with spontaneous demonstrations and "tax strikes" in the Volgograd and Pskov regions.

Meanwhile, the country's infrastructure is collapsing due to maintenance failures, leading to recurring problems with heating, electricity, and water systems. To support the currency and prevent devaluation, the central bank was forced to raise the interest rate to 14%, which is pushing the country into recession by bankrupting businesses and restricting credit . The deepening economic crisis is also exacerbating the political crisis, which is manifesting in growing friction and divisions within the political regime. This situation was brought to a head by the assassination of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov in December 2025, whose car was blown up in a parking lot near his home in Moscow.

President Valery Gerasimov criticized and blamed the attack on Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortinok for his incompetence, and the regime decided to extend reinforced security to 10 high-ranking military officers. This reflects the growing fear among Putin's elite regarding Ukrainian partisan attacks. Sergei Shoigu, the current Secretary of the Security Council with significant influence over the military high command, is seen as a potential opposition figure within the regime, which is why his right-hand man, Deputy Prime Minister Ruslan Talikov, was arrested in March 2026 on corruption and other charges. Considering the economic cost and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed, the offensive that seized control of Avdiivka can be seen as another failure and source of frustration for Putin, now opening a massive political, social, and economic crisis for the Russian Federation.

5) The current Ukrainian counter-offensive (February 24, 2026 to present)

At this stage of the revolutionary war, events took an unexpected, surprising, and shocking turn. For the " Victory Day" military parade in Moscow, commemorating the military victory against the Nazis on May 9, 2026, Putin and his high command canceled the participation of some military vehicles, canceled some of the air force, suspended all celebrations in multiple regions of Russia, withdrew the accreditation of international media outlets, and delayed the live broadcast for fear of an attack that would force them to interrupt the transmission. The imperialist government of Donald Trump announced a "ceasefire" between Russia and Ukraine for May 9, 10, and 11, so that Putin could proceed with the May 9 parade.

Suddenly, both Putin's measures and Trump's ceasefire reflected a shift in the course of the revolutionary war: fear and dread began to grip Putin's oligarchy. A momentous change had occurred in the development of the national liberation war, which had been unfolding for years, silently within the heart of the Ukrainian partisan movement. To understand this process, it is necessary to analyze the fact that the Ukrainian people have been suffering the constant and systematic bombardment of their cities by Putin, which has led the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to estimate more than 15,000 Ukrainian deaths and 40,000 injuries since the beginning of the invasion, of whom 3,200 are children. The OHCHR data is the only available, but its figures are conservative, meaning the actual number of Ukrainian victims is even higher and continues to grow daily.

Based on popular ingenuity, the Ukrainian people have developed a drone manufacturing industry that is revolutionizing modern military science, shifting the initiative in the war to Ukraine. By May 2026, the occupying army had lost control of hundreds of square kilometers, while Ukrainian drones were attacking ever deeper into Putin's rear, striking military and economic targets nearly 2,000 kilometers from the border. To make matters worse, social discontent in Russia intensified because the dictatorship suspended internet access to prevent the population from learning about unfavorable news from the war.

The development of drones for military use is not a Ukrainian invention. They appeared en masse in the Houthi revolution in Yemen, in the war where they defeated the superior Saudi Arabian army. But it is in Ukraine where drone development has imposed a new scenario dominated by attack, rendering traditional tactics of large-scale armored vehicle assaults obsolete. This exacerbates the crisis of Putin's dictatorship, which has amassed 1,200,000 casualties for the occupying army—more than six times the number of American casualties in the Vietnam War. Ukraine is redefining the rules of air defense with ultra-cheap interceptor drones like the P1-Sun and the Sting, FPV drones for unidirectional attack, and even long-range attack drones—all revolutionary drone systems that cost only between $1,000 and $2,500.

Flying at high speed with thermal cameras and guided by AI, Ukrainian operators now control drones from safe distances of up to 2,000 km. These drones detect tanks or enemy vehicles, and when the operator locks onto the target, the drone attacks autonomously, ignoring radio interference from the occupiers. This revolutionary approach destroys the occupiers' expensive missiles and drones before they reach cities or the front lines, saving millions on traditional missiles and keeping the skies safer. But if this development in the drone industry is extraordinary and impactful, even more so is the way in which Ukraine has developed this technological revolution.

The development of drone technology in Ukraine takes place in hundreds of clandestine, home-based workshops. This is because Ukraine cannot produce drones in large factories, as they would be immediately shut down by Putin. This has led to the most fascinating and moving aspect of the revolutionary war, as the Ukrainian drone revolution is the product of an unprecedented popular mobilization. Thousands of families participate in the highly organized drone production process in these hundreds of workshops. The government launched programs like the Victory Drones platform, which teaches ordinary citizens how to assemble FPV drones on their own dining room tables.

The state provides the list of components for assembly, and once the drone is finished, it's sent to a testing center where, if it passes quality control, it goes straight to the front lines. Partisan groups and communities in towns and cities form volunteer groups, often composed of relatives of soldiers who want to protect their loved ones, and set up small " assembly lines " in garages or basements. Some weld, others 3D print parts like fins or grenade mounts, and still others manage logistics. To coordinate the activity of these hundreds of workshops, the Ukrainian government created BRAVE-1, a technology cluster of interconnected servers that connects civilians working in their garages with investors and military engineers.

If a family-run workshop discovers a way to extend a drone's range by 2 km, BRAVE-1 helps standardize that improvement and distribute it to other workshops within weeks. This allows small software or logistics companies like TAF Drones to operate and coordinate multiple small, hidden factories that produce thousands of drones per month. The constant improvements these family-run drone companies make are based on direct feedback from soldiers via Telegram. In turn, soldier units like the renowned AchillesRegiment or the K-2 Brigade have their own R&D departments, where the same combatants who operate the drones on the front lines run workshops in the immediate rear.

There, they modify the drones they receive to adapt them to the specific radio frequencies the occupiers are using in that exact sector of the border at that moment. Putin's army can't stop this because there's no "factory" to bomb, and it's impossible for them to bomb thousands of basements and apartments. Meanwhile, while the occupying army takes months to approve a design change, a workshop in Kyiv can change its drones' software in an afternoon based on what a soldier told them that morning.

In late March 2026, Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, one of Europe's largest arms manufacturers, dismissively downplayed the Ukrainian drone industry, calling it the work of "housewives" with "3D printers in their kitchens." Ukrainian President Zelenskyy responded to Papperger, saying, " If every Ukrainian housewife can make drones, then every Ukrainian housewife could also be the CEO of Rheinmetall." By 2025, Ukraine had produced 3 million FPV ( First Person View ) drones , a quadcopter drone piloted by transmitting a real-time video signal from an integrated camera directly to virtual reality goggles or a headset worn by an operator who can be hundreds of kilometers away.

When flying it, the operator doesn't feel like they're looking at a device in the sky, but rather like they're sitting inside the drone's cockpit, as if in a video game, carrying out attacks with interceptors that are 1,000 times cheaper than Patriot missiles. Drone operators are trained at 26 training centers that have collectively trained 10,000 pilots. These drones can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in seconds, and when loaded with explosives, they transform into "kamikaze drones" that attack enemy positions or armored vehicles with surgical precision. New Ukrainian drones, like the Hornet model, use AI to automatically identify targets, and because they don't use radio waves, they are completely immune to signal jammers deployed by the occupants. They also offer perfect video quality right up until the moment of impact. Ukrainian operators use simulators and even modified game environments like Grand Theft Auto V to perfect complex attack maneuvers in urban settings.

This revolution has changed the game for the occupying forces in three critical ways. First, Ukrainian AI-powered drones now operate up to 60-65 km deep behind occupying lines, meaning supply trucks, ammunition depots, and reinforcement convoys are destroyed long before reaching the front, depriving Putin's troops of essential resources. Second, Russian tanks, even the most modern, have become vulnerable to $500 drones that strike their weak points. And finally, long-range technology allows Ukraine to hit critical infrastructure such as refineries, oil depots, and air bases within the Russian Federation, weakening Putin's economy and shifting the sense of insecurity to the Kremlin, which is forced to withdraw air defense systems from the front lines to protect cities like Moscow.

The effectiveness of these systems has led to extreme "robotization," and by 2026, more than 25,000 ground-based drone (UGV) missions had been recorded, where machines replaced soldiers to assault trenches or evacuate the wounded, drastically reducing Ukrainian casualties against the human waves of the occupying troops, who cannot advance with armored columns as they did in 2022. Each long-range drone costs between $50,000 and $300,000, ten times less than a missile of similar range, and according to Vadym Sukharevskyi, former commander of the drone forces, Ukraine began developing these drones " precisely because we lack missiles." To cite just one example, in April, Ukraine had only seven operational Patriot systems, far short of the 25 requested by Zelensky.

The development of the mass drone industry took a leap forward precisely because the imperialist powers almost completely withdrew aid to Ukraine, once again leaving it to face Putin's bombing campaign alone. Under Donald Trump's administration, the US completely withdrew military aid and intensified pressure on Ukraine, demanding its capitulation to Putin. This led to the infamous row between Trump and Zelensky at the White House in front of reporters. At the same time, imperialism began to openly display its full support for Putin. Trump held summits with Putin in which they once again agreed to a " peace" based on Ukraine handing over all of Donbas—the same old policy that imperialism has pursued toward Ukraine from the beginning.

In other words, the national liberation revolution has literally turned an entire nation into a high-tech factory to defend its homeland. Once again, the leaders of global imperialism are displaying their ineptitude and idiocy in the face of this world revolution: they incited Ukraine to join the EU and unleashed a revolution; they abandoned Ukraine during Putin's invasion and unleashed the partisan movement; and now, through NATO's disastrous arms management, which left the Ukrainian people defenseless against bombing, they have unleashed a mass drone production boom that is leading Putin's dictatorship toward defeat.

For the triumph of the Ukrainian revolution

Ninety-nine percent of the global left—Stalinists, Castro-Chavistas, and even sectors claiming to be Trotskyists—echo Putin's campaign, repeating the same arguments the war criminal uses to justify his aggression. They refuse to acknowledge that the Donbas belongs to Ukraine, thus capitulating to Putin's criminal campaign. This is an expression of the crisis of the global left: its social-democratization, its adaptation to the regime, its collaboration with imperialist policies, and its betrayal of Marxism, which in this case reaches another expression when it shares Putin's arguments and proposes the "national self-determination" of the sectors that supposedly demand it.

The position of the Marxist International is clear: The Dombas belongs to Ukraine. Just as we assert that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not Israel; that Ireland belongs to the Irish, not Great Britain; that Catalonia belongs to the Catalans, not the Spanish State; that the Falkland Islands belong to Argentina, not England, we affirm that the Dombas belongs to Ukraine, not Putin. And just as we have done since before the invasion, we stand unconditionally with the workers and people of Ukraine, and we join with the workers and peoples of the world in support of Putin's military defeat.

From the outset of the invasion, the Marxist International raised the slogan "Weapons for the Ukrainian people !" because in war and revolution , it is more dangerous for the proletariat and revolutionaries to side with pacifism than with defensive military forces. Any Ukrainian worker with a modicum of common sense understands what a war of invasion means: suffering class domination under capitalist exploitation, as well as suffering the domination of an occupying army that will commit all kinds of atrocities in its wake. Following the best anti-fascist traditions of the European partisans in World War II, we are promoting global mobilizations in support of Ukraine and the formation of brigadistas from around the world to fight. We salute the thousands of brigadistas, the thousands of partisans, and the thousands of families carrying out the drone revolution aimed at defeating Putin's invading troops.

We Marxists stand for the formation of a revolutionary party in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and the rest of Europe. The betrayal of the global left on the Ukrainian struggle has left thousands of Ukrainian, Eastern European, and European fighters without a revolutionary organization. We need to regroup all revolutionary fighters, activists, and militants who support Ukraine's victory and advocate for a revolutionary Marxist party. This is a fundamental task for creating an alternative to Zelensky's bourgeois leadership, and to this end, we unconditionally support the right of oppressed countries to independence and national self-determination.

We are committed to the military defeat of Putin, as part of the struggle for world socialist revolution, a task that is currently the most important one facing the workers and peoples of the world. It is necessary to regroup the Marxist revolutionaries of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, to build a revolutionary party to end capitalism in Ukraine and the region. Capitalism can offer Ukraine nothing but hunger, poverty, and oppression by aristocrats and oligarchs. The people of Ukraine must continue to take up arms to achieve national independence and establish a socialist government of the workers, the people, and armed soldiers to consolidate it.

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Ukrainian partisan in the trenches resisting Putin's invading army

The Marx International

During the first months of 2026, the capitalist mass media spoke of "four years of war in Ukraine," reducing the Ukrainian people's struggle to the large-scale invasion launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022. This perspective oversimplifies a much deeper and more prolonged historical process. In reality, it has been 12 years since the beginning of one of the most important revolutions of the 21st century: the Ukrainian national liberation revolution. This process began with the Independence Square mobilizations in February 2014 that overthrew the oligarchic government of Viktor Yanukovych, continued with the resistance against the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the fight against the invasion of Donbas in April 2014, and was consolidated with the massive defense of the country against the generalized invasion carried out by Putin in February 2022.

In this article, we will assess the development of the revolutionary war and the current state of the Ukrainian people's struggle. We want to draw a conclusion: After four years, Putin's attempted invasion has been completely defeated. Putin's troops came within 20 kilometers of capturing the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, possessing overwhelming military, economic, and political superiority. But after suffering a brutal defeat, Putin's army was limited to occupying the Ukrainian Donbas, which has come at a horrific cost: more than 1,200,000 casualties, including dead and wounded, the loss of a large part of its elite troops such as the Wagner Group, a stagnation in its advances, and no significant qualitative gains. This military failure has plunged the Russian Federation into a political, social, and economic crisis of historic proportions.

Putin was defeated in the Battle of Kyiv by a people with virtually no army, while NATO, the US, and European imperialism did nothing to defend Kyiv. The victors were a grassroots army of millions of armed workers and peasants who erected barricades, conducted espionage, and provided support for the soldiers. Following Putin's defeat, the process of popular arming spread, and armed partisan detachments began to emerge throughout the country, ready to fight. However, NATO intervened, announcing its "support" for Ukraine and beginning to supply weapons with the aim of halting the process of popular arming and the development of urban partisan militias.

The pro-imperialist policies of Zelensky's capitalist government enabled the imperialists of the US, England, France, and Germany to intervene, halting the process of popular armament and diverting it toward the formation of a regular bourgeois army in defense of the Ukrainian capitalist state. The imperialist countries were certainly not going to allow the development of popular armament in a revolution unfolding in the heart of Europe. But even so, neither the policies of the imperialist governments nor those of the Ukrainian bourgeois government have been able to alter the national liberation character of the Ukrainian army, its popular base, or the fact that, despite a lack of resources and relying on popular ingenuity, it has developed a drone production industry that is revolutionizing modern military science.

These developments are impossible to explain except by the existence of a revolution, which is constantly denied by 99% of the global left. The revolution in the use of drones being carried out in Ukraine is not based on large capitalist investments, nor on large imperialist corporations, nor on NATO, but on the inventiveness and effort of thousands of Ukrainian families who develop these designs in small workshops and family homes. The Ukrainian army and bourgeois state rely on this mass effort, which is changing the course of the national liberation war, because the development of drones has allowed Ukraine to launch increasingly powerful and successful counter-offensives, jeopardizing Putin's invasion.

The Ukrainian revolution is not confined to the battlefield; it entails a profound affirmation of the rights of oppressed nationalities and indigenous peoples in the struggle for sovereignty and national self-determination. With this statement, we aim to clearly explain the deep roots of the revolution that is shaking Europe and the world, because it is necessary to dispel the torrent of lies that Stalinists, Putin's agents, and the reformist left have spread to discredit the Ukrainian revolution. Ukraine sets a precedent for other peoples facing external aggression and dictatorships, and it is at the forefront of existing national liberation processes, both of oppressed nations and indigenous peoples, such as the Palestinian Third Intifada, the struggle of the Houthis in Yemen, the Kurdish people, the Kashmiri people, the Tamils ​​in Sri Lanka, and the numerous oppressed nations in Europe and other continents, etc. Given the importance of the Ukrainian national liberation revolution, we have dedicated a section of @Revolution that you can consult with analysis and context available that you can read by clicking here.

The story of the revolution in the heart of Europe

The imperialists, Stalinists, social democrats, and imperialist pundits have dedicated themselves to repeating Putin's campaign with a torrent of lies about Ukraine, claiming that they are a group of Nazis, a group financed by NATO, that the invented republics created to justify the occupation of Donbas are oppressed by kyiv, etc. A whole string of lies, of nonsense that seeks to demonize Ukraine, and would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that they seek to justify the massacre of thousands of families, children, and vulnerable civilians who are bombed daily without mercy by the dictatorship of the war criminal Vladimir Putin.

The lies of social democrats and imperialists have gained traction due to the lack of awareness among the world's people and activists regarding the long history of oppression suffered by Ukraine. This history is well known to Ukrainians and their sister nations, but unknown and concealed from most of the world. This is why, in this work, we will assess the current situation by clarifying the history of Ukrainian oppression, without which it is impossible to understand the reality. The oppression of Ukraine is rooted in the old Tsarist Russian Empire, continued under the Stalinist regime in the USSR, and persists today under the brutal policies of the capitalist oligarchy headed by Vladimir Putin, the war criminal and former KGB agent trained in the infamous school of Stalinism. We will analyze all these stages in a concise manner.

The first stage of oppression under the Russian Empire

The history of Ukraine is a complex mosaic of migrations and settlements spanning centuries, "original peoples" who formed Kievan Rus', a powerful federation of primitive East Slavic communist tribes that traded from the 9th to the mid-13th centuries. This communal development is considered the common cultural and political ancestor of present-day Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, and its nerve center was the city of Kyiv, the current capital of Ukraine, which developed as the first organized state in the region more than 11 centuries ago. Despite the brutish and ignorant Putin's claims that "Ukraine doesn't exist," and that "the only thing that exists is Russia," the history of humanity indicates otherwise. Moscow was barely a village when Kyiv was the mother of all the Slavic nationalities in the region, such as the Varangians, Vikings from Scandinavia, who arrived in the area to control the trade routes between the Baltic Sea and the Byzantine Empire.

Under figures like Vladimir the Great and Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus' reached its zenith, adopting Orthodox Christianity as its official religion and remaining inextricably linked to Byzantine and European culture until the Mongol invasion of 1240. The mosaic of indigenous peoples settled in the principalities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Novgorod, and others included the Turkic Tatars, who organized themselves in the Crimean Peninsula. Their rights were finally recognized when Ukraine passed a law acknowledging them as indigenous peoples of the country, along with the Karaites and Crimachians. Other indigenous groups with their own distinct identities and dialects, such as the Hutsuls, Boyks, and Lemks, were brutally suppressed by the Tsarist regime, which denied any Ukrainian identity under the banner of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism."

The Cossacks were an indigenous people, mostly peasants, who fled serfdom and displayed exceptional equestrian skills. They had founded the Cossack Hetmanate, a confederation that was crushed by Tsarina Catherine the Great in 1764. She formally abolished the office of Hetman, or Cossack leader, and in 1775 invaded and destroyed the Zaporizhzhia Sich, the last Cossack military stronghold. Catherine the Great integrated Ukrainian lands into common Russian administrative provinces, from which a "state policy" arose to deny Ukrainian identity, similar to Netanyahu's denial of the Palestinians. Tsarina Catherine called Ukrainians "Little Russians" ( Malorossy ), and the Minister of the Interior, Pyotr Valuyev, declared that the Ukrainian language "does not exist, has not existed, and cannot exist."

Catherine the Great legally extended serfdom to Ukraine in 1783, binding the peasants to the land of the aristocracy. Thus, although Ukraine became the " breadbasket of Europe ," the profits primarily benefited the Russian crown and imperial nobility, leaving the Ukrainian peasantry in extreme poverty. By the Valuyev Circular of 1863, the Tsarist regime prohibited the publication of religious, educational, and literary books in Ukrainian, and by the Ems Edict of 1876, Tsar Alexander II forbade the importation of books in Ukrainian, theatrical performances, concerts, and even the use of the term "Ukraine" in official documents. Seeking to divide the Ukrainian people, the Tsarist regime established land grants and tax exemptions to transform the Cossacks into its Praetorian Guard, tasked with expanding the borders and repressing the populace.

The second stage of oppression under the Stalinist regime in the USSR

When the Russian Revolution abolished the old Russian Empire, the revolutionary government of the nascent workers' state, led by Lenin and Trotsky, confronted the problem of oppressed nationalities. Given the long history of oppression under the Russian Empire, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, upon founding the Soviet Union (USSR), established a clear policy of defending oppressed nationalities against all forms of "Great Russian chauvinism ," as one of the fundamental principles of Marxist politics. Before seizing power, Lenin had already had violent clashes with Rosa Luxemburg on this issue, and when he assumed the government of the USSR, clashes began with Stalin, who was leading a resurgence of Great Russian chauvinism. Stalin intervened in the Georgian branch of the Communist Party, accusing it of "social chauvinism" because it demanded self-determination, and Lenin sided with the Georgian communists, accusing Stalin of being a " Russian henchman" who "harms the interests of proletarian class solidarity."

In his battle against Stalin, Lenin asserted : "...nothing delays the development and consolidation of this solidarity as much as injustice on the national level..." (Lenin, Letter to the Congress, 1922). Stalin threatened Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, after which Lenin severed all political and personal ties with Stalin and wrote a work against Stalin, called "Letter to the Congress," known as Lenin's "testament ." Following this, he formed an alliance with Trotsky in defense of national rights, and the national question ultimately became the catalyst for the break between Lenin and Stalin. In his "testament," Lenin demanded that Stalin be removed from his position as General Secretary of the Party and prepared to wage war against Stalinism, but he fell gravely ill after a stroke and was unable to continue the fight, dying a few months later.

Stalinism formed a counter-revolutionary political current that crushed all opposition within the USSR's political regime, suppressed the Soviets by bureaucratizing them, and assassinated most of the leaders of the old Bolshevik party who had seized power, including Trotsky, who was expelled from the USSR in 1929. The counter-revolution was based on the defeat of the European revolution, especially the revolution in Germany, which left the USSR completely isolated and became fertile ground for the strengthening of totalitarian and anti-Marxist tendencies like Stalinism, while in parallel, fascism and Nazism were gaining strength in the rest of Europe.

The battleground between Stalinism and Marxism was the policy toward oppressed nations aimed at modifying the political regime of the USSR. Stalinism abolished the revolutionary Leninist regime of the USSR, transforming it into a counter-revolutionary Stalinist regime. From exile, Leon Trotsky continued the struggle in defense of the Leninist position regarding oppressed nations : " What does a revolutionary say... to the Ukrainian people? 'What matters to me is their attitude toward their national destiny... I will support their struggle for independence with all my strength!'" ( Leon Trotsky, "The Independence of Ukraine and Sectarian Confusion," July 30, 1939 )

Ukraine then fell into a new stage of oppression, now under the boot of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist regime. To crush Ukraine and consolidate the counter-revolutionary regime, Stalin carried out horrific massacres and genocides such as the Holodomor of 1932, a famine planned by Stalin to eliminate the Ukrainian independence movement, which resulted in the deaths of more than 12 million Ukrainians. Alongside the Holodomor, Stalin launched a wave of purges to expel all those Marxists who defended Ukrainian rights, such as Mykola Skrypnyk, who committed suicide in 1933, nearly half the members of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and the leadership of the Ukrainian CP, who were mostly replaced by cadres sent from Moscow. Stalin even brought Russian settlers to regions that were being depopulated by famine, which constituted a policy of "Russification" of Ukraine, a policy that would later be implemented by many fascist regimes, or states like Israel in Palestine.

The 3rd stage under the oppression of Putin and the Russian Federation

Twenty years later, the Stalinist regimes were in serious crisis in 1952, when, after Stalin's death, the Communist Party governments began a slow process of returning to capitalism. This was a gradual process that the Stalinist dictatorships carried out very carefully for fear of popular uprisings, as happened with the revolutionary process that had begun in Poland, led by the Solidarity trade union. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Stalinist regimes, the process of returning to capitalism accelerated in the former USSR in 1991 with a brutal adjustment imposed on the people, known as "Shock Therapy ," under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Egor Gaidar.

The Yeltsin-Gaidar duo implemented the "Shock Therapy" plan under the supervision of US imperialism, specifically the administration of President Bill Clinton. The entire project to create a "new capitalist Russia" was a creation of US imperialism, which commissioned US Treasury Department official Larry Summers to launch a project between 1992 and 1997, advised by the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). The privatization of the former USSR was a project born with deep-seated corruption, as HIID's own investors were businessmen seeking to seize the vast assets of the former USSR in partnership with former Stalinist officials who had become powerful millionaire oligarchs.

Following the collapse of the USSR, Russia was internationally recognized as the successor state, inheriting its seat on the UN Security Council, its embassies, and its nuclear arsenal. The entire territory formerly occupied by the USSR was integrated into a kind of "association of nations" called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an international organization similar to a mini-UN or a regional bloc, created on December 8, 1991, through the Belavezha Accords. The CIS was established to test a horrific plan to plunder the assets of the former USSR through a policy of " shock therapy," which involved price liberalization, trade liberalization that allowed the influx of imperialist capital, and cuts to subsidies for the people.

The widespread privatization of valuable companies was financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a scam carried out through voucher privatization initiated in 1992 by Anatoly Chubais, who would later become an executive at the global corporation JP Morgan Chase. The voucher system was a sham presented with the deception that every citizen would become an "owner" of the companies. To this end, the government distributed 114 million vouchers representing a portion of the value of state-owned enterprises. But most people, mired in hyperinflation and poverty, did not understand the purpose of the vouchers and sold them for next to nothing—bottles of vodka, or food—to factory managers or shrewd investors.

The end result was that control of the companies remained in the hands of former Stalinist managers, a process from which the infamous Russian oligarchs emerged. In the mid-1990s, the Yeltsin government went bankrupt and took out loans from a small group of private banks, using oil, gas, and metals companies like Norilsk Nickel and Yukos as collateral. The Yeltsin government defaulted on the loans, allowing the oligarchs to acquire the companies for a fraction of their value. This led to a process of wealth concentration whereby the oligarchs gained control of the majority of the country's GDP.

The oppressed nations began their struggle for self-determination, led by the Chechens, who launched a war of national liberation and achieved independence by defeating the Russian army. But the capitalist economy of the new republics of the former USSR collapsed in the 1990s, leading to a terrible social inequality previously unknown in those nations. The emerging, extremely wealthy oligarchy also concentrated mafia-like mechanisms as a result of its predatory policies, which led it to seize assets and companies at any cost. They did so by promoting all kinds of illicit businesses, including arms sales, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, using the most despicable and violent methods, while the overwhelming majority of the population sank into poverty. The privatization and restoration of capitalism gave rise to a capitalist class in a brutal state of decay, a true reflection of the imperialist decadence of capitalism itself—a veritable corrupt and dangerous mafia.

In the early years, a "business brotherhood" emerged between the oligarchs of Moscow and Kyiv, primarily linked by the gas trade. This was because the Russian oligarchs, at the helm of the powerful Gazprom, needed Ukrainian gas pipelines to export to Europe. This led to the rise of Ukrainian oligarchs like Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma, who made his fortune in steel pipe manufacturing . Ukrainian oligarchs enriched themselves by collecting tolls or reselling cheap gas on their domestic market. Dmytro Firtash, for example, was the key figure in Russian gas in Ukraine, whose influence crumbled almost entirely during Putin's invasion, following the nationalization of many of his assets for reasons of national security.

The Russian and Ukrainian oligarchies shared the same corrupt and violent modus operandi , carrying out fraudulent privatizations, engaging in state-backed deals, and funneling capital to tax havens. These ties of interdependence were reinforced by the fact that many factories in eastern Ukraine, or in the Donbas region, were entirely dependent on supply chains controlled by Russian oligarchs. Ukraine's wealthiest man , Rinat Akhmetov, headed the Donetsk Clan , which maintained close ties with Russian oligarchs, amassing a fortune from the steel and coal industries. Other oligarchs include Ihor Kolomoisky, Zelensky's mentor and backer, who fell from grace after being accused of fraud and money laundering, which forced the government to nationalize his bank, PrivatBank. Another well-known oligarch is Petro Poroshenko, who became a chocolate industry magnate with the company Roshen .

By 1996, the situation in the newly emerging capitalist state of the former USSR was a complete disaster. Chechen rebels had driven the army out of Grozny, the economic situation was catastrophic, unemployment was severe, and Yeltsin's popularity was plummeting, leading to his downfall in 1999. The entire experiment of "return to capitalism" was a utter failure, and it became necessary to establish a provisional government until the next elections. This government was headed by former KGB agent and then-Chief of Staff Vladimir Putin. The crisis of the government and the political regime forced the elections to be brought forward by three months, but "surprisingly," attacks occurred in Moscow and other cities, which the regime blamed on "Chechen terrorism." The attacks resulted in hundreds of deaths and a national upheaval that allowed Putin to proceed with the invasion of Chechnya, causing thousands more deaths and widespread destruction. Strong popular support for the war allowed Putin to emerge triumphant and helped him seize power by winning the elections.

The policy of strengthening a regime through a military attack on another country, itself based on an attack of dubious origin, was later imitated by the US in the attacks of September 11, 2001, which made the invasion of Iraq possible. In this way, the group of oligarchs was able to "stabilize" the critical situation in which the former USSR found itself, as a new political regime with Bonapartist and dictatorial characteristics emerged around Putin, supported by electoral fraud and the military, and escalating in its repression and violence over the 27 years it has been in power. Putin is the central figure of the regime, re-elected in 2004, serving as prime minister from 2008 to 2012 under President Dmitry Medvedev, and then re-elected president successively in 2012, 2018, and 2024. As a result of constitutional amendments, he could remain in power until 2036, through which Putin aspires to become the world's " symbol " of Bonapartism.

During Putin's first term, the Russian Federation's economy grew at an average rate of 7%, fueled by rising oil and gas prices. This economic strength allowed Putin to consolidate a dictatorship based on military and police reform, paramilitary forces and secret services, attacks on oppressed nations, the assassination of opponents, brutal repression of the LGBT community, and attacks on democratic activists, crushing all rights. Putin was able to consolidate this dictatorial political regime by taking advantage of the reactionary global situation opened by imperialism with the "global campaign against terrorism," which included the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2008. However, after NATO's defeat in Iraq, the global situation shifted from reactionary to revolutionary, and the first wave of global revolutions began, spearheaded by the "Arab Spring." This forced Putin to confront the uprising of the Russian people between 2011 and 2013. The popular demonstrations led to a crisis within his political coalition, "United Russia," which began to lose credibility, compelling Putin to launch a new political coalition called the "All-Russian People's Front."

2014: The Independence Square revolution

And it was precisely within the context of that first global revolutionary wave that the revolution erupted in Ukraine. Although a founding member of the CIS, Ukraine never ratified the organization's charter, but it was deeply linked to Russia through the economic ties between the oligarchs of both countries. But in 2014, the people of Ukraine rose up, fed up with poverty, misery, and the meager wages that were never paid because the government owed months' worth of salaries. The people were tired of governments that defended the oligarchs and starved their own people, suffering levels of poverty that make it the poorest country in Europe, with living standards comparable to those of El Salvador or Turkmenistan.

The desperate situation led some sectors of the population to believe that by joining the European Union (EU), they could achieve the same standard of living as in Germany, France, Italy, or Portugal. This false ideology, promoted by the leaders of European imperialist governments, gained traction because the Ukrainian people were unaware of the global crisis of capitalism, and there was no revolutionary Marxist organization in Ukraine to explain the truth to them. What the European imperialist governments never imagined was that their proposal for Ukraine's entry into the EU would have the opposite effect: instead of triggering Ukraine's entry into the zone under their control, they sparked a revolution.

Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs viewed EU membership with suspicion, fearing that European imperialism would displace them from their dominance in the business world. Therefore, the Ukrainian government under Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, which defended the oligarchs' interests, repeatedly postponed Ukraine's association agreement with the EU, stalling negotiations. However, the Ukrainian parliament ratified the agreement with the EU, forcing Putin's government to pressure Kyiv to reject it. When Yanukovych rejected EU association on November 21, 2013, numerous demonstrations took place in Independence Square, demanding that the government resume dialogue with the EU.

The demonstrations in Maidan Square, known in Ukrainian as Maidan Nezalezhnosti, drew hundreds of thousands of people who attended daily speeches by leaders. However, these protests escalated into riots and grew in intensity, continuing throughout the night until the oligarchs' regime unleashed a crackdown on the demonstrators. On January 16, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) issued a decree ordering punishments for the protesters, which was perceived as a veto of their right to demonstrate and protest. By January 22, 2014, the demonstrations had resulted in five deaths, but they had spread across central and western Ukraine, with protesters demanding the government's downfall . Independence Square effectively transformed into a deliberative body, rejecting proposals from the government, following the example of Tahrir Square in Egypt during the Arab Spring.

The Yanukovych government launched the "anti-protest" laws, a set of 10 laws that restricted freedom of expression and the right to assembly, on January 16, 2014. These laws were driven by a coalition between the Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine, which supported the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy. On February 18, 2014, the police attempted to forcibly clear the protesters from Dignity Square, and the clashes resulted in 26 deaths and over 100 injuries. Following this, the Dignity Square assembly began to develop self-defense mechanisms, including barricades and armed front lines of protesters, to defend the right to protest.

On February 19, the truce agreed upon between the government and the assembly in Independence Square broke down, and demonstrations involving firearms erupted again, resulting in 21 deaths. Interior Minister Vitali Zakharchenko described the situation as " pre-civil war" and ordered the distribution of combat weapons to police officers in an " anti-terrorist operation," seeking to eliminate the self-organization and self-defense developed by the people. This raised the death toll that day to over one hundred. However, this only intensified the people's reaction and mobilization, who began arresting police officers and detained 67, accusing them of "shooting to kill . "

European imperialism, concerned about the escalating situation, sent foreign ministers Radosław Sikorski of Poland, Laurent Fabius of France, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany to negotiate with the government of the oligarchs and the protesters in an attempt to reach an agreement and halt the revolution. In the negotiations, Yanukovych's government conceded by releasing opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, and an agreement was signed that stipulated early elections, the formation of a transitional government, a return to the 2004 Constitution, and an end to the repression. Yanukovych announced that he was traveling to a congress of deputies and governors in Kharkiv while the agreement was being submitted. However, the assembly in Independence Square rejected the agreements reached between the government and the European Union.

Once the Independence Square assembly rejected the agreements, the people began occupying key government institutions—ministries, parliament, and the judiciary—effectively seizing power. The repressive forces attempted to prevent this popular takeover by unleashing a brutal crackdown on February 20, 2014. Snipers from the oligarchs' regime fired on demonstrators and even police officers, killing more than 60 people in what became known as "Black Thursday." Yanukovych denounced a supposed coup attempt, but in the early hours of the morning, he abandoned his luxurious residence in Mezhyhirya and disappeared to an unknown location.

It was finally made public that Yanukovych had found asylum with Putin in Russia. The revolution that ended his rule was part of the first global revolutionary wave, with movements that preceded and inspired the Ukrainian people, such as the Arab Spring, the Indignados movement in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in the US, and later the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, among others. The absence of a Marxist party to drive the revolution and fight for a workers' and people's government led to the governmental vacuum being filled by the Verkhovna Rada, which took control of the country, thus giving rise to the provisional government of Oleksandr Turchynov.

Thus, the 2014 Ukrainian revolution was a February Revolution that ushered in a revolutionary era for the country and the region, posing a genuine threat to the plans of the capitalist oligarchs who base their fortunes and businesses on the existence of a de facto " federation " with Russia. Images of the revolution can be seen in the powerful Netflix documentary " Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom," produced and directed by Evgeny Afineevsky . From that point on, the priority for Putin's capitalist oligarchy regime became defeating the Ukrainian revolution in defense of the privileges of the ruling classes of the Russian Federation's capitalist oligarchy.

Putin occupies Donbas in Ukraine

Putin's response to the triumph of the Ukrainian revolution was the occupation of the Ukrainian territories of Crimea and Donbas. On March 7, 2014, Putin's troops entered and seized the Crimean Peninsula. On April 7, demonstrators supported by Putin proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and on April 28, 2014, the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) was proclaimed, which quickly joined the DPR in its struggle against the Ukrainian government. In this way, Putin took control of vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, some of the country's most economically rich areas, occupying Ukrainian regions that were vulnerable given Ukraine's small and weak army. Following this invasion, Putin shut down all joint economic programs between Russia and Ukraine.

In April, Putin orchestrated referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk, which were a sham and a charade for his occupation policy, announcing that the people had voted for independence and secession from Ukraine. The warlords occupied vast swathes of land, violating all international and bilateral treaties signed with Ukraine, with militias led by officers of the state's special services and saboteurs sent from Moscow. These armed men stormed town halls, expelled municipal employees, occupied barracks, checkpoints, and police stations, and ousted mayors. They then seized transmission centers and radio and television broadcasting facilities, cutting off Ukrainian channels and ordering staff to restore Russian television broadcasts.

In April 2014, negotiations took place in Geneva, Switzerland, between the EU, the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. A document was approved that included amnesty for protesters, the disarmament of armed groups, and the return of illegally occupied buildings. However, the entire negotiation process was a farce and a distraction, because the occupying militias, controlled by Putin, refused to accept the agreement, arguing that "they had not participated in the Geneva talks." They rejected the agreement and continued their advance in the occupation of Ukraine, leading to several battles, such as the one in Mariupol. Following the sham referendums in May 2014, Putin promoted the founding of the "New Russia Party " (NRP) in the occupied territories and appointed Aleksandr Borodai as prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, which then federated with the Luhansk People's Republic to form the territory of "Novorossiya" (New Russia).

However, military clashes continued in Donbas with increasingly brutal actions. A new round of negotiations between the imperialist countries, Russia and Ukraine, took place in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on September 5, 2014, and resulted in the Minsk Protocol, an agreement to achieve a ceasefire. The Minsk I agreements were a deception against the Ukrainian people, a demonstration of the hypocrisy of the imperialist governments of the EU and the US, who were perfectly aware of the aggression Putin was carrying out. The former KGB agent had successfully defended capitalism throughout the region using all kinds of genocidal and brutal methods, so the imperialist officials knew the usefulness of the war criminal's political regime and had no interest whatsoever in destabilizing it.

Minsk I was nothing more than another distraction maneuver because it was disregarded by Putin, who continued his attacks and advances against Ukraine, including the takeover of Donetsk International Airport. The only purpose of the Minsk agreement was to ratify the status quo imposed by Putin, whereby the internationally unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics effectively controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas. Holding elections in these artificial republics created by Putin was a mockery of the Minsk I agreements, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the elections were a necessary and important step to "legitimize the authorities of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic . "

Ukraine attempted to defend and reclaim the occupied territories, which led to a resurgence of armed conflict. This prompted the imperialist governments of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine to hold a new round of negotiations overseen by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This new round of negotiations was called Minsk II, a response to the failure of Minsk I. The agreement signed on February 12, 2015, included an unconditional ceasefire to be monitored by the OSCE, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front lines, the release of prisoners of war, and other measures.

But in turn, due to their illegal and illegitimate nature, and their lack of popular support, the mini-republics invented by Putin entered into crisis. The Novorossiya confederation disintegrated in May 2015, and in November 2017, an internal coup took place in Luhansk, a result of the divisions that had arisen among the occupiers, forcing the self-proclaimed president, Igor Plotnitsky, to flee to Moscow. To secure a popular base, Putin pressured the government to simplify access to Russian citizenship for the inhabitants of Donbas, seeking to "Russify " the population.

For Putin, it wasn't just about suppressing the revolution and defending his dictatorship, but also about halting the Arab Spring and protecting neighboring dictatorships. Therefore, on September 30, 2015, he launched a military intervention in the Syrian civil war in support of Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship, sending top advisors and paramilitary mercenary groups led by the Wagner Group. He combined this intervention with airstrikes and cruise missiles to brutally repress the Syrian people, bomb cities, and kill thousands of civilians in an attempt to suppress the revolution against the dictatorship. At the same time, the occupation of Ukrainian territories was finding it increasingly difficult to gain a foothold, leading to an escalation of violent methods to enforce it, including targeted assassinations, torture, threats, the kidnapping of journalists and international observers, beatings, and attacks against supporters of Ukrainian unity. The occupiers led the Donbas region into a humanitarian crisis due to the disruption of social services, the exodus of people from the affected areas, and the shortage of supplies and crucial medicines, such as insulin.

Up to this point, the failure of the Minsk I and Minsk II peace plans had resulted in the deaths of 14,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, in addition to more than 1.9 million displaced Ukrainians. The occupation war in Donbas had caused thousands of displaced persons and refugees, but the Ukrainian revolution spread to other republics: In 2020, the "Sneaker Revolution" erupted in Belarus against the government of Alexander Lukashenko, another representative of the oligarchy seeking his sixth term. In 2021, amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, protests against Putin began again in Russia. And in January 2022, the uprising of the people of Kazakhstan began against the puppet government of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a representative of the oligarchs. Putin had to send troops to quell the protests, which began in major factories, working-class neighborhoods, and cities throughout Kazakhstan.

This led Putin to prepare the conditions for invading and crushing the Ukrainian revolution. He began with a political campaign whose main slogans were that the Ukrainian government was "illegitimate and under the control of radicals ," a group of " neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites," and that the 2014 Independence Square revolution had been a "coup d'état." Social Democrats, Reformists, Camps, and Stalinists repeated these slogans ad nauseam and became part of Putin's campaign, while the war criminal began a massive military buildup on Ukraine's borders starting in 2021.

During this period, Putin repeatedly denied having plans to invade Ukraine, but at the same time, he recognized the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic as part of Russia and sent troops to those territories. The Council authorized Putin to use military force outside Russia's borders, which allowed him to announce the so-called "special military operation ," a euphemism to conceal the fact that it was an invasion. This operation unfolded with the entry of troops and the crossing of borders, accompanied by missile launches, beginning on February 24, 2022, as a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin and the high command of the invading army planned it as a "short intervention ," anticipating that Ukrainians dissatisfied with Zelensky's government would support the invasion . Prior to the invasion, Ukraine was engulfed in a wave of strikes by state employees, teachers, miners, and metalworkers, reflecting widespread popular discontent with Zelensky's government. The invader's high command assumed that amidst such widespread discontent, the occupying army's entry into Kyiv would be met with cheers, support, and affection from the Ukrainians, allowing them to overthrow Zelensky and install a new government to regain control of the country. However, all of Putin and the high command's political calculations were completely wrong, leading them to commit serious errors in military strategy. The war, beginning with the large-scale invasion, unfolded in five phases:

1) The large-scale invasion, and victories of Ukraine in Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson (February 24 to November 11, 2022)

2) Putin's counter-offensive in Bakhmut (November 11, 2022 to May 21, 2023)

3) Ukraine's counter-offensive (June 8 to November 1, 2023)

4) Putin's offensive in Avdiivka (February 17, 2024 to December 31, 2025)

5) The current Ukrainian counter-offensive (February 24, 2026 to present)

From now on, the work focuses on the analysis of these 5 moments, developing more extensively the 1st, the shortest but at the same time, the most decisive since in it all the constitutive processes of the revolutionary war are triggered (armament of the masses, crisis of the Zelensky government, NATO intervention, development of a popular base army, the partisans, etc.).

1) Putin's large-scale invasion, and Ukrainian victories in Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson (February 24 to April 2, 2022)

We begin by analyzing the first phase of the revolutionary war, marked by Ukraine's major victories and the rise of the partisan movement. Putin amassed up to 175,000 troops on Ukraine's border and addressed the nation on February 24, 2022, announcing the launch of a "special military operation." That same day, Putin's troops entered Ukrainian territory, which had an initial force of 400,000 soldiers, including thousands of Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Latvian volunteers who joined the Ukrainian militias.

Faced with the invasion, the people of Ukraine were abandoned by all the imperialist capitalist governments of Europe and the US. In the early hours of February 25, 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, declared: "They have left us alone to defend our state" in a televised message posted on his social media. Zelensky mentioned that he had called 27 European leaders and said: "They are all afraid, no one is responding." Neither the imperialist governments of the G7, nor the UN or its Security Council, nor NATO intervened to help Ukraine, nor did they answer Zelensky's calls because they were all complicit in the invasion. But the policy of the imperialist governments contrasted sharply with the mobilizations of people from all over the world who demonstrated in support of Ukraine, while in 40 Russian cities thousands mobilized in protest against the war, forcing Putin to imprison more than 2,000 activists who were protesting against the invasion.

The extreme situation of an invasion, Ukraine's abandonment and isolation in the face of a vastly superior army, forced Zelensky's bourgeois government to take drastic measures. Imperialist governments offered Zelensky the option of leaving the country, but he responded, "I don't need a plane, I need weapons." Following this, the Ukrainian government declared martial law and ordered a general mobilization of all Ukrainian citizens between the ages of 18 and 60, decreeing a people's arming program. The Ministries of Defense and Internal Affairs streamlined the procedures for weapons distribution, and between February 24 and 25, 2026, they distributed more than 18,000 assault rifles in the Kyiv region alone to volunteers and citizens who presented themselves at recruitment centers. This triggered the mass arming of the population and fueled the development of the Ukrainian partisan and guerrilla movement.

The same procedure was carried out in all regions of the country, while legislation was passed allowing Ukrainian civilians and resident foreigners to use firearms against the invading forces without fear of legal repercussions, granting them a status similar to that of combatants. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and official government accounts published detailed instructions and manuals on how to manufacture and use homemade bombs or Molotov cocktails to attack enemy armored vehicles in urban environments. This popular mobilization was channeled primarily through the Territorial Defense Forces, which had previously been a secondary reserve but, through this mobilization process, became a massive force with thousands of civilian fighters joining its ranks. The requirements set by the government were minimal for joining the forces, such as presenting a passport and thereby receiving a weapon and basic equipment.

Suddenly, the Ukrainian army, which had 400,000 soldiers, became a force of 2 or 3 million combatants, along with civilian militiamen from all walks of life—teachers, artists, IT professionals, construction workers—who erected barricades and checkpoints in their own neighborhoods. Men and women built barricades in Kyiv, and beyond its military effectiveness, this action sent a message that occupying the cities would be extremely costly for the occupying army. From then on, on all fronts, local volunteer groups provided critical intelligence and logistical support to the regular army units deployed at the front— women and men belonging to the Ukrainian proletariat, fighting to defend their homes, their families, their land, and their right to self-determination against the invading troops. This is how Leon Trotsky explained it : "When the small peasant or the worker speaks of the defense of the fatherland, he speaks of the defense of his home, his family, and the families of others against invasion, against bombs, against asphyxiating gases. The capitalist and his journalist understand the defense of the fatherland to mean the conquest of colonies and markets, the extortionate expansion of the 'national' share of world income." (Leon Trotsky, Transitional Program).

The inept leaders of the imperialist bourgeoisie reignited the flames of class struggle. They had launched a campaign among the Ukrainian people about the benefits of joining the Eurozone, thereby sparking a revolution. Then, they had left Ukraine defenseless against Putin's invasion, thereby unleashing the popular masses' armed struggle. Now, with Putin's invasion, things took a dramatic turn: If the Ukrainian people's national revolution had led to a revolutionary war of national liberation, then the Ukrainian army, which until then had been a regular bourgeois army, had been transformed into a bourgeois army of national liberation, with a strong working-class and popular base.

The occupying troops entered Ukraine from four main directions, resulting in four major battlegrounds. First, the Battle of Kyiv, fought from the north along the Belarusian border towards Kyiv; second, the Battle of Kharkiv, where the occupying troops entered from the northeast from the Russian border towards Kharkiv; third, the Battle of the East and the Donbas, in which the occupying army invaded from the fictional republics of the DPR and LPR; and fourth, the Battle of the South and Kherson, where the occupying army entered from the south through the Crimean region. Of all these battles, the central and most important was the Battle of Kyiv, which defined the course of the invasion and, more generally, of the entire revolutionary war of national liberation.

In the Battle of Kyiv, Putin's troops captured the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and from there advanced to the city of Ivankiv. From that point on, the Battle of Kyiv was actually a series of battles fought in Hostomel, Bucha, Brovary, Chernobyl, Ivankiv, Slavutych, and Vasylkiv. But two battles were key: Irpin and Moshchun. Irpin remains etched in memory because of the enormous column of between 150 and 200 tanks heading towards Kyiv, which was stopped by partisans who blew up the access bridges, halting the advance. Then, imitating the tactics of Chechen guerrillas, they detonated the tanks at the front and rear of the column, paralyzing the massive tank convoy. Incredibly, the column became isolated, unable to resupply with fuel and food, forcing the soldiers to flee because Putin believed the invasion would be a short-lived action, but the resistance of the Ukrainian people made it last longer than expected, an incredible miscalculation that left the occupying soldiers in a vulnerable state.

If the Battle of Irpin was a war of attrition in the suburbs, the Battle of Moshchun in March 2022 was the "Thermopylae moment" in a small, wooded village on the outskirts of Kyiv. It became the most critical point of the invasion because if it fell, the occupiers could enter directly into Kyiv's northern districts. Therefore, the battle, which lasted from approximately March 5 to 21, 2022, was one of the bloodiest and most pivotal. Russian elite paratroopers from the VDV and the 155th Marine Infantry Brigade managed to cross the Irpin River under dense fog and artillery fire. The fighting then devolved into hand-to-hand combat and house-to-house fighting in the surrounding dense forests.

In a desperate tactical move, the Ukrainians blew up the Kozarovychi Dam, flooding the Irpin River basin and turning the terrain into an impassable swamp. This cut off the Russian troops who had already crossed, preventing them from receiving reinforcements or heavy supplies. The occupiers, who deployed their best airborne forces, such as the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment, suffered massive casualties and were driven out of Moshchun. The defeat at Moshchun was the final nail in the coffin for the Russian plan to take Kyiv. Without the ability to safely cross the Irpin, Putin's army was forced to withdraw from all of northern Ukraine by the end of March. After suffering enormous casualties, destruction, and significant loss of equipment, Sergei Rudskoi, on behalf of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of Russia, announced the withdrawal of troops from Kyiv on March 25, 2022.

The people of Ukraine managed to defend the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and advanced, liberating Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv, forcing Putin's troops to retreat . The victory at the Battle of Kyiv had a major impact on the global class struggle and ushered in the third global revolutionary wave, which would later give rise to the Third Palestinian Intifada. This Intifada followed a similar pattern of armed militias confronting a vastly superior army in urban guerrilla warfare. It is a new type of revolution that began in World War II and became widespread in the 21st century, starting with the Iraq War. In Iraq, a new type of revolutionary warfare developed, one that combined urban insurrection with the guerrilla warfare typical of the jungle or countryside. In urban revolutionary warfare, invading troops must fight an invisible enemy that stalks and ambushes them on every corner, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, and in the houses.

In Iraq, guerrilla warfare and urban revolution merged, inaugurating the most modern concept of warfare history could offer: a combination of mass insurrection centered in cities, enjoying the support and sympathy of millions of inhabitants across the region. Now, urban revolutionary warfare was beginning to unfold in Ukraine, and after their victory in the Battle of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops completed their advance and won the Battle of Kharkiv, allowing them to capture Ukraine's second-largest city on May 13, 2022. Ukraine's resounding victory left Putin's forces severely weakened and decimated, leading Putin to concentrate his forces in the Ukrainian Donbas.

The imperialist governments of the US and the EU began sending weapons to Ukraine to better pressure the country into ending the war and resolving everything diplomatically. Speaking from the European Parliament, French President Emmanuel Macron stated, "We must not humiliate Russia," expressing the EU's imperialist policy of a diplomatic settlement that would mean Ukraine relinquishing control of Donbas to grant Putin a minimal victory. What the imperialist leaders sought was an elegant way out of the military quagmire into which the dictatorship was sinking, but to exert even more pressure, they suspended all arms shipments to Ukraine, which they had recently begun providing.

However, after so much death, destruction, and suffering, the Ukrainian people were in no way going to surrender what they had achieved through so much struggle and effort at the negotiating table.It was also impossible for Zelensky to accept this agreement to hand over Donbas, knowing that the people would reject it. Nevertheless, the EU's criminal policy toward Ukraine became clear, given that fascists and genocidal figures like Putin cannot be given even a minute's respite because they will use it to destroy lives and families. NATO's policy of suspending arms shipments to Ukraine left the Ukrainian people vulnerable to bombing and also exposed the fact that Zelensky's capitalist government is lying when it claims that NATO is an ally.

It was the pressure from the masses in European countries, the growth of the partisans in Ukraine, and the spread of this phenomenon to Eastern European countries that forced NATO to provide Ukraine with weapons only in dribs and drabs. This policy shift was aimed at controlling actions in the theater of war, ensuring that its development was dictated by imperialist governments, not the masses. Finally, in early July 2022, the United States deployed HIMARS missile systems. While these missiles had a limited range of only 80 kilometers, they enabled Ukrainian army troops to begin demolishing warehouses, supply centers, and all manner of installations belonging to the invaders.

Riding the momentum of the victories in Kyiv and Kharkiv, another enormous triumph for the workers and people of Ukraine occurred on November 12, 2022, with the capture of Kherson, the regional capital of southern Ukraine. Kherson was the only major city Russia had occupied since the invasion, a predominantly Russian-speaking city whose inhabitants identify as Ukrainian. As soon as Putin's troops entered, thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest the invasion. Putin launched a sham referendum declaring Kherson part of Russia, but he was ridiculed when the city was lost just 45 days later. The victories in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson resulted in the recapture of hundreds of urban centers and thousands of square kilometers of territory in just eight months—a resounding military defeat for the oligarchs' regime.

The partisan phenomenon is unleashed

In turn, the entire development of the national liberation war triggered a crisis within the oligarchic class. The outbreak of war accelerated all the contradictions, as Russian oligarchs faced sanctions from Europe and the US, while Ukrainian oligarchs saw their industrial empires bombed by the Russian army. This led to changes in the ranking of Ukraine's most prominent oligarchs. So hated are the oligarchs by the people that, in order to gain popularity, the Zelensky government announced a policy of complete "de-oligarchization," which exacerbated the crisis of this once "untouchable" social class , now facing massive asset losses and legal proceedings. This highlighted the anti-capitalist nature of the Ukrainian revolution, because it is the people's struggle to escape poverty against the decadent, corrupt, and mafia-like Ukrainian and Russian capitalism.

The victory in the Battle of Kyiv in March 2022 not only triggered the third global revolutionary wave, but also coincided with the partisan phenomenon that had been developing since 2014 when Putin occupied Donbas and Crimea. This phenomenon exploded and spread throughout the country as part of the surge in mass armament brought about by the extreme measures the Ukrainian government was forced to take domestically. But it also spread beyond Ukraine, as in Belarus, where partisans spearheaded all kinds of boycotts and a wave of attacks , bombings, ambushes, and mass-organized weaponry. The development of these guerrilla groups—peasants, women, workers, and young people—who took up arms, reviving the European tradition of fighting against fascist occupation, resulted in three distinct phenomena.

On the one hand, there is the phenomenon of self-organized, independent partisan corps that collaborate with the army but maintain their own autonomous structure. On the other hand, there are civilians integrated into the army, which has given it a popular base as well as a curious structure in which numerous divisions are organized as "independent units." And finally, there is the mass production of drones based on family-run businesses, a product of the fact that each partisan or fighter has millions of friends, family, and neighbors behind them who equip and supply all kinds of support, which has transformed the Ukrainian partisan movement into a mass resistance organization. Among the partisans of Russia and Belarus, the "Stop the Wagons" movement developed , claiming responsibility for the train derailment in the Amur Oblast, which halted traffic on the Trans-Siberian Railway on June 29, 2022.

The Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization (BOAK) operates clandestinely in Eastern Europe, carrying out attacks within Russia, as does the Dagestan Partisan Movement, founded on September 26, 2022, in response to the detention of citizens during protests in the Caucasus and the Far East. Within the temporarily occupied territories (TOT), the Yellow Ribbon Movement emerged, a guerrilla partisan movement that began by displaying the first 100 yellow ribbons. Simultaneously, they purchased printers and produced posters, which allowed them to expand to Melitopol, Enerhodar, Henichesk, Nova Kakhovka, Berdiansk, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. In April 2022, the Berdiansk Partisan Army was formed, operating primarily in the Zaporizhzhia region and publishing the newspaper "The Voice of the Partisan." The People's Resistance of Ukraine is a clandestine partisan organization that operates within the TOTs and transmits coordinates of military installations and invading troops for espionage purposes.

In June 2022, the " Luhansk Partisan" project was launched to strengthen resistance against the occupiers' attempts to consolidate control of the Luhansk Oblast . In September 2022, the Atesh Partisan Movement emerged—Atesh means "Fire" in Tatar — comprised of Crimean Tatars and Russian dissidents who have specialized in attacks and car bombings against the occupying authorities, as you can read in the Kyiv Post article here. Atesh leaders believe that 2025 was the year they "metastasized" throughout the Russian Federation, even infiltrating the highest ranks of Putin's army. Lacking weapons, the partisans had to sharpen their ingenuity and resort to all sorts of alternative solutions, improvising weapons of all kinds, assembling parts of captured equipment, and using their creativity to design and build systems. All this work relies on the capacity of a disciplined, trained, and highly skilled working class that includes engineers, technicians, and computer specialists in its ranks.

Partisan operations in Ukraine have evolved from sabotage and Molotov cocktails to advanced technology such as drones, small unmanned aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance and direct attacks. Drones provide a tactical advantage, demonstrating that no target, even in the heart of occupied territory, is beyond the reach of the resistance. And although Putin calls partisan attacks "acts of terrorism," nothing deters the fighters. We Marxists are the only ones who support the partisans, given that capitalist officials are completely opposed to popular armament and the armed self-organization of the masses because these processes imply the emergence and development of dual power.

With the partisan movement, the bourgeois state begins to face a mass organization it cannot control, and which even imposes its own power in its areas of operation and in the country's politics. Alongside imperialist governments, social democrats, Stalinists, and reformists of all stripes deny the existence of the partisans and the militias, given their policy of bourgeois pacifism. Ninety-nine percent of the global left pays lip service to "peace" and becomes complicit in the UN's imperialist policies, for which it must deny the partisan phenomenon, progressive in every respect. The partisan phenomenon is at the forefront of the process of global political revolution, and due to its internationalist character, which includes fighters from up to 55 different countries with the so-called International Legion, it has served as inspiration for the Palestinian militias in the urban guerrilla war in Gaza, for the militias in Syria with Bashar Al Assad, the Houthi militias against Saudi Arabia, the Kurdish militias, etc.

Imperialism and Zelensky against the Ukrainian revolution

NATO governments are horrified by the process of popular armament unfolding in Ukraine, which is spreading to Finland, Georgia, Belarus, and other republics in the region, where people fear aggression from Putin. This is why Zelensky's capitalist government introduced martial law in the country, to suppress mobilization, as workers and unions are legally prohibited from organizing protest marches.

But even worse, Zelensky's bourgeois government pushed through the Ukrainian Parliament the passage of bills that attack the labor rights of Ukrainian workers. On the one hand, Law 5161 introduces "zero-hour" contracts , and on the other, Law 5371 effectively abolishes important labor rights and protections that safeguard workers against arbitrary actions by employers. This entire offensive by the capitalist government of Ukraine against the masses is taking place right in the middle of a war, when such cases of employer abuse are becoming more frequent.

Prior to Putin's invasion, a wave of strikes prevented Zelensky's government from passing this anti-worker legislative package, but now, amid calls for "National Unity," Zelensky took the opportunity to push through these "simplified regime" laws , which mean arbitrary dismissals, overtime for spurious reasons, and ignoring collective agreements regarding wage payments. Zelensky 's policies violate even the minimum social provisions of the European Association Agreement of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and fail to comply with a series of minimum standards enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Social Charter. They also violate the standards stipulated by ILO Conventions Nos. 132, 135, and 158, and even the founding Convention No. 1 (1919), concerning the limitation of working hours in industrial enterprises to 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week, along with other European Union regulations—a serious matter for a government that constantly talks about joining the EU.

While all this legislation is sanctioned by capitalist institutions that Marxists in no way defend, it is important to denounce that these are workers' victories achieved through the struggle of millions of European workers. On the other hand, and as could be expected, the capitalist government of Volodymyr Zelensky is deeply corrupt, with cases such as the most recent one known as " Operation Midas," a network that allegedly embezzled some $100 million through the state-owned nuclear company Energoatom. It is alleged that officials demanded bribes of between 10% and 15% for awarding contracts, which resulted in the dismissal of Justice Minister German Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk in 2025. The investigation also reached Timur Mindich, a former associate of Zelensky and co-owner of the production company behind his television series.

The corruption scandal at the Ministry of Defense also erupted in 2023, revealing that the Ministry was purchasing food for troops, such as eggs and potatoes, at prices up to three times higher than market rates. Simultaneously, the purchase of low-quality uniforms at exorbitant prices was detected through a Turkish company linked to relatives of officials. As a result, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov was forced to resign in September 2023. Then came the Recruitment Center scandal, which compelled Zelensky to take drastic measures after the discovery of a widespread bribery system to avoid military service. Finally, the Supreme Court scandal erupted when the President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, Vsevolod Kniaziev, was arrested after being caught accepting a bribe of approximately $2.7 million.

In other words, while the Ukrainian people defended their independence in the streets and on the battlefield, Zelensky's capitalist government attacked their most basic rights, and its officials enriched themselves. Meanwhile, Putin concentrated his forces in the Ukrainian Donbas with regular troops, mercenaries from the militias of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Chechen mercenaries, and mercenaries from the Wagner Group. Following this, Putin launched brutal counteroffensives against the strongholds of resistance, ushering in a second phase of the war.

2) Putin's counter-offensive in Bakhmut (November 11, 2022 to May 21, 2023)

The retreat of Putin's troops toward the Donbas, a consequence of the defeats suffered in the battles of Kiev, Kharkiv, and Kherson, established a front line approximately 1,000 to 1,200 kilometers long. At the end of 2022, Putin announced with great fanfare that he would reverse these defeats through the "Winter Offensive," a plan devised by the capitalist oligarchy to achieve victory and culminate in a central event in Moscow on "Victory Day" on May 9, 2023, to showcase Putin's triumphs and announce that he was winning the war.

Throughout the "Winter Offensive," Putin continued to fire hundreds of missiles at the civilian population, killing families, children, the elderly, and the most vulnerable sectors of the Ukrainian people, while the occupation authorities continued to repress the Ukrainian people in the TOT, kidnapping and selling Ukrainian children, an action that has resulted in more than 16,000 children being kidnapped, all aberrant acts that sought to break the will of resistance of the Ukrainian people.

All the fascist actions of Putin's capitalist dictatorship were a continuation of horrific war crimes such as the Bucha massacre and the bombing of the New Kahovka hydroelectric plant in Kherson. Putin concentrated his entire attack on the offensive to capture the city of Bakhmut, but the resistance of the Ukrainian people did not break. Putin's counter-offensive crashed against a wall of steel in Bakhmut, in the Donetsk Oblast of the Donbas. After five months of fighting, assaults, skirmishes, and brutal battles, Putin's troops in Bakhmut finally managed to take the city, but at a horrific cost to the mercenaries. The Wagner Group lost more than 20,000 soldiers in Bakhmut, according to Wagner commander Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The final tally of the entire "Winter Offensive" is that in five months, Putin's troops managed to advance a mere 70 kilometers, a negligible achievement compared to what Putin's high command had planned. This made it impossible for Putin to claim any victories, which is why on "Victory Day" he was ultimately unable to make the announcements he so desperately hoped to make. To grasp the magnitude of this phenomenon, consider this comparison: the total casualties of the Soviet army in the invasion of Afghanistan amounted to 14,000 soldiers over ten years, but Putin lost more in the "Winter Offensive" in just five months than he lost in Afghanistan—a brutal failure for the dictatorship. But the failure of the "Winter Offensive" also had another significance: the Battle of Bakhmut was used by Ukrainian forces to decimate Putin's best troops, the Wagner mercenaries.

Bakhmut, far from being a triumph of the "Winter Offensive," became a giant graveyard for Wagner mercenaries, a "triumph" that in reality resulted in a true military disaster in terms of equipment and troop losses. Furthermore, the failure triggered a political crisis of enormous magnitude in the Russian Federation dictatorship because it led to a rupture in relations between the Wagner Group and the high command of the armed forces. Prigozhyn launched fierce verbal attacks against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, accusing the high command of being responsible for the disaster due to corruption, incompetence, and the denial of ammunition to his mercenaries during the Battle of Bakhmut.

Finally, the crisis in Putin's regime erupted with Prigozhin's uprising , which began with the capture of the Wagner Group of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don. After seizing the city and the surrounding region, Prigozhin led an armored column that began advancing north along the M4 highway, aiming to reach Moscow. Along the way, they shot down several helicopters and a Russian command aircraft, killing about a dozen pilots. In a televised address, Putin called the act a "stab in the back " and a betrayal, while Prigozhin's army, now in open rebellion against Putin, continued its advance without any intervention from the regular army.

Even the column of Wagner Group vehicles received cheers and demonstrations of support from the civilian population when, just 200 kilometers from Moscow, Prigozhin received a call from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin eventually announced an agreement and ordered a withdrawal to " avoid Russian bloodshed," in exchange for which the Kremlin dropped the treason charges. The agreement also stipulated that the Wagner Group's headquarters would be relocated to Belarus. But despite the agreement, and Putin's takeover of Bakhmut, the military disaster caused by the Ukrainian resistance had triggered a major crisis within the Russian regime and armed forces.

After the mutiny, Prigozhin didn't disappear entirely. He was seen at summits and released videos attempting to demonstrate that he remained useful to the regime. However, Putin had another fate in store for Prigozhin. On one hand, he began dismantling his assets, and on the other, on August 23, 2023, two months after the rebellion, the Embraer Legacy 600 private jet flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino, killing all 10 people on board, including Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitri Utkin. Clearly, Putin made Prigozhin pay the price, sending a clear message to anyone who challenged his central authority.

The failure of the "Winter Offensive," and the subsequent open crisis in Putin's regime, fueled fears among imperialist leaders of a Vietnam-like scenario for Putin's capitalist dictatorship. As former US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explained: "...the dissolution of Russia or the destruction of its capacity for strategic policy could turn its territory, spanning 11 time zones, into a contested vacuum. Its competing societies might decide to resolve their disputes through violence ... " The US strategic advisor warned of the danger of a crisis in the Russian Federation at the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2023. Following Bakhmut's failure, Kissinger warned of the possibility of the Russian Federation's dissolution, which raised the possibility that imperialism would lose control of vast regions of Asia—the "11 time zones," as Kissinger put it—making clear the fear that the Ukrainian revolution was sowing in the imperialist high command.

3) Ukraine's counter-offensive (June 8 to November 1, 2023)

Following the failure of Putin's "Winter Offensive," imperialist governments renewed their insistence on a way out of the "Peace Agreement," publicly urging Xi Jinping and China's capitalist oligarchy to use their influence and good relations with Putin to reach a peace agreement. The heads of global corporations, led by William R. Rhodes, CEO of Citibank, and Stuart PM Mackintosh, published an open letter titled "It is time for China to use its influence with Putin to create space for peace " in the South China Morning Post, the newspaper of China's capitalist oligarchy controlled by the Alibaba Group.

But the Ukrainian people clamored for revenge against the aggression they had suffered. The Ukrainian high command was planning a counter-offensive throughout 2023 to definitively expel Putin's troops. NATO pledged to provide the weapons, but months were spent publicly debating "whether to send tanks or not," or whether they should be Leopard or Abrams tanks. All this delay in delivering weapons to Ukraine gave Sergei Surovikin, the supreme commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, precious time to construct a massive and complex defensive wall system along the border, which became known as the "Surovikin Line." This intricate system of dense minefields, trenches, and barbed wire enabled Putin's forces to withstand any offensive.

When NATO finally sent weapons to Ukraine, the arms shipment was insufficient and arrived too late to guarantee success, thus ensuring the failure of the Ukrainian offensive. This allowed them to continue pressuring for a "peace" agreement— a policy of shameless complicity between imperialist governments and Putin. When NATO weapons arrived in June 2023, Ukraine's counteroffensive encountered the most heavily fortified defenses in Europe since World War II. Furthermore, NATO refused to provide aircraft, making the ground offensive impossible. Ukraine launched its counteroffensive without F-16 fighter jets and with limited air defense systems to cover the front, enabling Russian attack helicopters like the Ka-52 to destroy Leopard tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers before they could even approach the occupying lines.

When we analyze these back-and-forths regarding NATO's arms shipments to Ukraine, we pause to shed light on a fact that confuses many honest activists. While the campaign waged by Putin, the Progressive International, Stalinism, and reformists of all stripes claims that "NATO is invading Russia," the stark reality that emerges upon closer examination makes it clear that the imperialist management of these weapons is deliberately aimed at preventing a Ukrainian victory, preventing the triumph of a national liberation revolution in the heart of Europe, diverting the dual partisan power structure, and preventing Putin's downfall.

In other words, a serious and rigorous analysis of the imperialist management of arms supplies to Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the claim made by Stalinists, camp followers, and reformists—that "NATO supports Ukraine" —is completely false. The disastrous arms management strengthened the "Surovikin Line," which was riddled with vast minefields, but Ukrainian troops lacked the necessary equipment for demining. When Ukrainian officials denounced the situation, NATO sent mine-clearing vehicles, but in insufficient numbers, allowing Ukrainian armored vehicles to become static targets as they became trapped in these minefields. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces, published a famous essay in November 2023 in The Economist in which he admitted that the war had reached a stalemate, a standstill, because the weapons received only served to prevent defeat, not to secure victory.

Following the defeats at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, and then the failure at Bakhmut, Putin's troops were vulnerable, and NATO's strategy of delaying arms deliveries to Ukraine allowed the Putin regime to recover. Even so, the crisis within Putin's regime continued to deepen, and Surovikin himself fell from grace shortly after the Ukrainian offensive began. The architect of the "line," and a war criminal against the Syrian people, was investigated and removed from command for his alleged ties to the Wagner Group and Yevgeny Prigozhin after the failed mutiny. So, ironically, while his "line " was working and delivering a defensive victory for Putin, he was under house arrest or disappeared from public life.

Ironically, Ukraine's greatest successes were not on land, but in the Black Sea, forcing the Russian fleet to withdraw from Sevastopol. Despite having no navy, Ukraine achieved the military feat of neutralizing and destroying approximately 30% of Putin's Black Sea Fleet—an extraordinary triumph made possible by the development of its own maritime surface "kamikaze" drones , such as the Magura V5 and the Sea Baby. Ukraine accomplished feats such as sinking the Moskva, the flagship of the occupying fleet, and destroying air defense systems that left the occupying ships without cover against air attacks.

This drastically limited Putin's ability to blockade Ukrainian ports and safely launch missiles, allowing Ukraine to operate in the Black Sea, reopening its grain export corridor and protecting its coasts without needing its own battle fleet. Ukraine was able to somehow defend its battered economy, and it achieved this feat not through NATO arms shipments, but through the development of autonomous drones, a trend that began to emerge thanks to the collaborative work of thousands of Ukrainian families.

4) Putin's offensive in Avdiivka (February 17, 2024 to December 31, 2025)

The failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive, triggered by NATO's deliberate boycott, allowed Putin's dictatorship to launch a general offensive on the Donbas. As Putin launched the counteroffensive on February 17, 2024, a crisis between the Ukrainian military leadership and Zelensky's government was reaching its peak. Their relationship had deteriorated since the publication of Zaluzhnyi's article in The Economist. Zelensky disliked Zaluzhnyi's characterization of the situation as a "stalemate" and suspected that Zaluzhnyi, given his high popularity, would attempt to seize power. Although this ultimately never materialized, Zaluzhnyi's leadership was characterized by constant friction with the presidential office because he sought complete autonomy, while Zelensky looked for a general more aligned with his policies.

Zelensky promoted Oleksandr Syrskyi as his successor, who had to manage one of the most difficult periods for Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion. Among other things, he had to make the decision to withdraw from Avdiivka to avoid encirclement. Putin's troops took control of the strategic Coke Plant and used the withdrawal to quickly capture adjacent villages such as Lastochkyne, Stepove, and Sjeverne. Ukrainian troops again faced the problem of a lack of artillery ammunition due to another delay in arms shipments from NATO, which prevented Ukraine from establishing a solid defensive line.

This allowed the occupying troops to continue their offensive from Avdiivka and push toward the Ocheretyne area, using small but sustained assault groups, which also enabled them to threaten the logistical centers of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. The occupiers prioritized the massive use of glide bombs (KABs), which proved to be the decisive factor in demolishing Ukrainian fortifications and deepening the regional offensive in Donbas. To balance the forces and counter the occupying offensive, the commander of the Ukrainian troops, Oleksandr Syrskyi, launched Ukraine's most audacious move since the beginning of the war on August 6, 2024: invading Russian territory, a direct challenge to Putin's dictatorship.

The invasion of Kursk involved the mobilization of elite units and mechanized forces that crossed the border in the Sudzha region, encountering little resistance from poorly equipped Russian conscripts. This allowed Ukraine, in just two weeks, to seize control of approximately 1,200 km² of Russian territory and the strategic Sudzha gas metering plant, vital for the flow of gas to Europe . The invasion of Ukraine was an operation that shattered the taboo of the inviolability of Russian territory, a psychological blow with significant global impact because it implied that the occupied was invading the occupier, following the example of the Palestinian militias when they invaded Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Ukrainian command sought to force Russia to withdraw troops from Donbas and create a buffer zone to protect the Sumy region. It took Russia weeks to organize a coherent response. However, instead of withdrawing troops from the main front in Donbas, Putin used reserves from other regions and newly formed units. During the last months of 2024, the fighting became a war of attrition in a terrain of forests and open fields. Putin struck a deal with North Korea to send 10,000 troops to expel the Ukrainian forces, while on the Ukrainian side, he received support from Russian partisan groups fighting for Ukraine, such as the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and the Legion for the Freedom of Russia (LSR), as you can read by clicking here.

Two years later, Ukraine still holds a portion of Russian territory, although less than the peak reached in 2024, where they have built solid defensive lines. Given that the Zelensky government has made it clear that these lands are assets for future territorial negotiations on a "land-for-land" basis , the invasion of Kursk also allowed them to acquire more captured Russian soldiers and military personnel to be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners. Ultimately, the invasion of Kursk was a brilliant tactical success that humiliated the Kremlin, although it was undoubtedly a desperate maneuver by Ukraine because Putin's troops continued to advance in the Donbas.

Between January and June 2025, Putin's troops slowed their advance but remained systematic, capturing small towns to widen the salient and prevent Ukrainian counterattacks. By the end of the year, the pressure had definitively shifted toward the city of Pokrovsk, aiming to attack the railway and logistical infrastructure to strangle Ukrainian supplies throughout the Donetsk Oblast. During this period, the Russian Federation's high command shifted its tactical offensive strategy from armored column attacks to massive infantry waves supported by intensive air strikes. In response, Syrskyi and the Ukrainian high command adopted a "flexible defense ," ceding ground for time and seeking to maximize casualties on Putin's troops.

Putin's troops finally captured Avdiivka, which drew Ukrainian artillery away from Donetsk, allowing the occupiers to stabilize their regional administrative center. The battle for Avdiivka is estimated to have been one of the most costly in terms of human lives for both sides, with figures suggesting tens of thousands of casualties accumulated during the months of direct assault. Although Russia managed to enter and eventually control much of the city's ruins by the end of 2025, further advances were halted by the implementation of a massive defensive wall, known as the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk "Iron Belt," where Ukraine concentrated its reserves.

Bourgeois pundits, journalists, defenders of capitalism, Stalinists, and camp supporters spoke throughout the offensive of Putin's "imminent victory ." But in the harsh winter of 2025-2026, this never materialized. On the contrary, Ukraine withstood infantry assaults, and the offensive crashed against the toughest part of the Ukrainian defensive "wall ." Moreover, the failures, defeats, and paralysis on the front lines began to trigger an economic and political crisis within Putin's regime. The economy began to reflect the deep scars of years of conflict, exacerbated by massive military spending, leaving behind an exhausted economic structure and mounting pressure from the crisis on the people.

Thus, a war economy "bubble" was formed , generating apparent GDP growth based on an artificial phenomenon driven almost exclusively by the defense industry, whose budget represents approximately 40% of the state budget. In turn, the global capitalist crisis impacted the Russian Federation's economy, leading to stagflation with projected growth of only 0.8% to 1% by 2026, amid recession, and rising inflation that is hitting the people hard with increased prices for basic goods. Putin is making the people "pay the price" for the invasion through higher prices and new taxes. To finance the deficit, the government tightened VAT exemptions for companies that were previously exempt and now must pay, and imposed further increases in consumption taxes. Putin's measures have sparked discontent among segments of the population, with spontaneous demonstrations and "tax strikes" in the Volgograd and Pskov regions.

Meanwhile, the country's infrastructure is collapsing due to maintenance failures, leading to recurring problems with heating, electricity, and water systems. To support the currency and prevent devaluation, the central bank was forced to raise the interest rate to 14%, which is pushing the country into recession by bankrupting businesses and restricting credit . The deepening economic crisis is also exacerbating the political crisis, which is manifesting in growing friction and divisions within the political regime. This situation was brought to a head by the assassination of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov in December 2025, whose car was blown up in a parking lot near his home in Moscow.

President Valery Gerasimov criticized and blamed the attack on Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortinok for his incompetence, and the regime decided to extend reinforced security to 10 high-ranking military officers. This reflects the growing fear among Putin's elite regarding Ukrainian partisan attacks. Sergei Shoigu, the current Secretary of the Security Council with significant influence over the military high command, is seen as a potential opposition figure within the regime, which is why his right-hand man, Deputy Prime Minister Ruslan Talikov, was arrested in March 2026 on corruption and other charges. Considering the economic cost and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed, the offensive that seized control of Avdiivka can be seen as another failure and source of frustration for Putin, now opening a massive political, social, and economic crisis for the Russian Federation.

5) The current Ukrainian counter-offensive (February 24, 2026 to present)

At this stage of the revolutionary war, events took an unexpected, surprising, and shocking turn. For the " Victory Day" military parade in Moscow, commemorating the military victory against the Nazis on May 9, 2026, Putin and his high command canceled the participation of some military vehicles, canceled some of the air force, suspended all celebrations in multiple regions of Russia, withdrew the accreditation of international media outlets, and delayed the live broadcast for fear of an attack that would force them to interrupt the transmission. The imperialist government of Donald Trump announced a "ceasefire" between Russia and Ukraine for May 9, 10, and 11, so that Putin could proceed with the May 9 parade.

Suddenly, both Putin's measures and Trump's ceasefire reflected a shift in the course of the revolutionary war: fear and dread began to grip Putin's oligarchy. A momentous change had occurred in the development of the national liberation war, which had been unfolding for years, silently within the heart of the Ukrainian partisan movement. To understand this process, it is necessary to analyze the fact that the Ukrainian people have been suffering the constant and systematic bombardment of their cities by Putin, which has led the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to estimate more than 15,000 Ukrainian deaths and 40,000 injuries since the beginning of the invasion, of whom 3,200 are children. The OHCHR data is the only available, but its figures are conservative, meaning the actual number of Ukrainian victims is even higher and continues to grow daily.

Based on popular ingenuity, the Ukrainian people have developed a drone manufacturing industry that is revolutionizing modern military science, shifting the initiative in the war to Ukraine. By May 2026, the occupying army had lost control of hundreds of square kilometers, while Ukrainian drones were attacking ever deeper into Putin's rear, striking military and economic targets nearly 2,000 kilometers from the border. To make matters worse, social discontent in Russia intensified because the dictatorship suspended internet access to prevent the population from learning about unfavorable news from the war.

The development of drones for military use is not a Ukrainian invention. They appeared en masse in the Houthi revolution in Yemen, in the war where they defeated the superior Saudi Arabian army. But it is in Ukraine where drone development has imposed a new scenario dominated by attack, rendering traditional tactics of large-scale armored vehicle assaults obsolete. This exacerbates the crisis of Putin's dictatorship, which has amassed 1,200,000 casualties for the occupying army—more than six times the number of American casualties in the Vietnam War. Ukraine is redefining the rules of air defense with ultra-cheap interceptor drones like the P1-Sun and the Sting, FPV drones for unidirectional attack, and even long-range attack drones—all revolutionary drone systems that cost only between $1,000 and $2,500.

Flying at high speed with thermal cameras and guided by AI, Ukrainian operators now control drones from safe distances of up to 2,000 km. These drones detect tanks or enemy vehicles, and when the operator locks onto the target, the drone attacks autonomously, ignoring radio interference from the occupiers. This revolutionary approach destroys the occupiers' expensive missiles and drones before they reach cities or the front lines, saving millions on traditional missiles and keeping the skies safer. But if this development in the drone industry is extraordinary and impactful, even more so is the way in which Ukraine has developed this technological revolution.

The development of drone technology in Ukraine takes place in hundreds of clandestine, home-based workshops. This is because Ukraine cannot produce drones in large factories, as they would be immediately shut down by Putin. This has led to the most fascinating and moving aspect of the revolutionary war, as the Ukrainian drone revolution is the product of an unprecedented popular mobilization. Thousands of families participate in the highly organized drone production process in these hundreds of workshops. The government launched programs like the Victory Drones platform, which teaches ordinary citizens how to assemble FPV drones on their own dining room tables.

The state provides the list of components for assembly, and once the drone is finished, it's sent to a testing center where, if it passes quality control, it goes straight to the front lines. Partisan groups and communities in towns and cities form volunteer groups, often composed of relatives of soldiers who want to protect their loved ones, and set up small " assembly lines " in garages or basements. Some weld, others 3D print parts like fins or grenade mounts, and still others manage logistics. To coordinate the activity of these hundreds of workshops, the Ukrainian government created BRAVE-1, a technology cluster of interconnected servers that connects civilians working in their garages with investors and military engineers.

If a family-run workshop discovers a way to extend a drone's range by 2 km, BRAVE-1 helps standardize that improvement and distribute it to other workshops within weeks. This allows small software or logistics companies like TAF Drones to operate and coordinate multiple small, hidden factories that produce thousands of drones per month. The constant improvements these family-run drone companies make are based on direct feedback from soldiers via Telegram. In turn, soldier units like the renowned AchillesRegiment or the K-2 Brigade have their own R&D departments, where the same combatants who operate the drones on the front lines run workshops in the immediate rear.

There, they modify the drones they receive to adapt them to the specific radio frequencies the occupiers are using in that exact sector of the border at that moment. Putin's army can't stop this because there's no "factory" to bomb, and it's impossible for them to bomb thousands of basements and apartments. Meanwhile, while the occupying army takes months to approve a design change, a workshop in Kyiv can change its drones' software in an afternoon based on what a soldier told them that morning.

In late March 2026, Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, one of Europe's largest arms manufacturers, dismissively downplayed the Ukrainian drone industry, calling it the work of "housewives" with "3D printers in their kitchens." Ukrainian President Zelenskyy responded to Papperger, saying, " If every Ukrainian housewife can make drones, then every Ukrainian housewife could also be the CEO of Rheinmetall." By 2025, Ukraine had produced 3 million FPV ( First Person View ) drones , a quadcopter drone piloted by transmitting a real-time video signal from an integrated camera directly to virtual reality goggles or a headset worn by an operator who can be hundreds of kilometers away.

When flying it, the operator doesn't feel like they're looking at a device in the sky, but rather like they're sitting inside the drone's cockpit, as if in a video game, carrying out attacks with interceptors that are 1,000 times cheaper than Patriot missiles. Drone operators are trained at 26 training centers that have collectively trained 10,000 pilots. These drones can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in seconds, and when loaded with explosives, they transform into "kamikaze drones" that attack enemy positions or armored vehicles with surgical precision. New Ukrainian drones, like the Hornet model, use AI to automatically identify targets, and because they don't use radio waves, they are completely immune to signal jammers deployed by the occupants. They also offer perfect video quality right up until the moment of impact. Ukrainian operators use simulators and even modified game environments like Grand Theft Auto V to perfect complex attack maneuvers in urban settings.

This revolution has changed the game for the occupying forces in three critical ways. First, Ukrainian AI-powered drones now operate up to 60-65 km deep behind occupying lines, meaning supply trucks, ammunition depots, and reinforcement convoys are destroyed long before reaching the front, depriving Putin's troops of essential resources. Second, Russian tanks, even the most modern, have become vulnerable to $500 drones that strike their weak points. And finally, long-range technology allows Ukraine to hit critical infrastructure such as refineries, oil depots, and air bases within the Russian Federation, weakening Putin's economy and shifting the sense of insecurity to the Kremlin, which is forced to withdraw air defense systems from the front lines to protect cities like Moscow.

The effectiveness of these systems has led to extreme "robotization," and by 2026, more than 25,000 ground-based drone (UGV) missions had been recorded, where machines replaced soldiers to assault trenches or evacuate the wounded, drastically reducing Ukrainian casualties against the human waves of the occupying troops, who cannot advance with armored columns as they did in 2022. Each long-range drone costs between $50,000 and $300,000, ten times less than a missile of similar range, and according to Vadym Sukharevskyi, former commander of the drone forces, Ukraine began developing these drones " precisely because we lack missiles." To cite just one example, in April, Ukraine had only seven operational Patriot systems, far short of the 25 requested by Zelensky.

The development of the mass drone industry took a leap forward precisely because the imperialist powers almost completely withdrew aid to Ukraine, once again leaving it to face Putin's bombing campaign alone. Under Donald Trump's administration, the US completely withdrew military aid and intensified pressure on Ukraine, demanding its capitulation to Putin. This led to the infamous row between Trump and Zelensky at the White House in front of reporters. At the same time, imperialism began to openly display its full support for Putin. Trump held summits with Putin in which they once again agreed to a " peace" based on Ukraine handing over all of Donbas—the same old policy that imperialism has pursued toward Ukraine from the beginning.

In other words, the national liberation revolution has literally turned an entire nation into a high-tech factory to defend its homeland. Once again, the leaders of global imperialism are displaying their ineptitude and idiocy in the face of this world revolution: they incited Ukraine to join the EU and unleashed a revolution; they abandoned Ukraine during Putin's invasion and unleashed the partisan movement; and now, through NATO's disastrous arms management, which left the Ukrainian people defenseless against bombing, they have unleashed a mass drone production boom that is leading Putin's dictatorship toward defeat.

For the triumph of the Ukrainian revolution

Ninety-nine percent of the global left—Stalinists, Castro-Chavistas, and even sectors claiming to be Trotskyists—echo Putin's campaign, repeating the same arguments the war criminal uses to justify his aggression. They refuse to acknowledge that the Donbas belongs to Ukraine, thus capitulating to Putin's criminal campaign. This is an expression of the crisis of the global left: its social-democratization, its adaptation to the regime, its collaboration with imperialist policies, and its betrayal of Marxism, which in this case reaches another expression when it shares Putin's arguments and proposes the "national self-determination" of the sectors that supposedly demand it.

The position of the Marxist International is clear: The Dombas belongs to Ukraine. Just as we assert that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not Israel; that Ireland belongs to the Irish, not Great Britain; that Catalonia belongs to the Catalans, not the Spanish State; that the Falkland Islands belong to Argentina, not England, we affirm that the Dombas belongs to Ukraine, not Putin. And just as we have done since before the invasion, we stand unconditionally with the workers and people of Ukraine, and we join with the workers and peoples of the world in support of Putin's military defeat.

From the outset of the invasion, the Marxist International raised the slogan "Weapons for the Ukrainian people !" because in war and revolution , it is more dangerous for the proletariat and revolutionaries to side with pacifism than with defensive military forces. Any Ukrainian worker with a modicum of common sense understands what a war of invasion means: suffering class domination under capitalist exploitation, as well as suffering the domination of an occupying army that will commit all kinds of atrocities in its wake. Following the best anti-fascist traditions of the European partisans in World War II, we are promoting global mobilizations in support of Ukraine and the formation of brigadistas from around the world to fight. We salute the thousands of brigadistas, the thousands of partisans, and the thousands of families carrying out the drone revolution aimed at defeating Putin's invading troops.

We Marxists stand for the formation of a revolutionary party in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and the rest of Europe. The betrayal of the global left on the Ukrainian struggle has left thousands of Ukrainian, Eastern European, and European fighters without a revolutionary organization. We need to regroup all revolutionary fighters, activists, and militants who support Ukraine's victory and advocate for a revolutionary Marxist party. This is a fundamental task for creating an alternative to Zelensky's bourgeois leadership, and to this end, we unconditionally support the right of oppressed countries to independence and national self-determination.

We are committed to the military defeat of Putin, as part of the struggle for world socialist revolution, a task that is currently the most important one facing the workers and peoples of the world. It is necessary to regroup the Marxist revolutionaries of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, to build a revolutionary party to end capitalism in Ukraine and the region. Capitalism can offer Ukraine nothing but hunger, poverty, and oppression by aristocrats and oligarchs. The people of Ukraine must continue to take up arms to achieve national independence and establish a socialist government of the workers, the people, and armed soldiers to consolidate it.

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