Tomás Ó Flatharta

Statement from the RSD – Russian Socialist Movement. (Thanks to Peter Saxtrup Nielsen). The Russian Socialist movement was founded in March 2011 by two organizations, the Socialist Movement Vperiod (“Forward”), Russian section of the Fourth International, and Socialist Resistance. It is part of the Left Front, an alliance formed during the protests against the falsification of the elections in 2011 and 2012.

Against Russian imperialism, hands off Ukraine!

Putin’s address to the Russians has just ended. The man who calls himself president began his speech with an anti-communist panegyric and said that the creator of Ukraine is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and its existence in its current form is the result of the national policy of the Bolsheviks. By accusing the Bolsheviks of “cultivating nationalists,” Putin is covering up the most terrible and disgusting kind of nationalism – Great Russian chauvinism. Against this background, Putin threatened the Ukrainians to show what “decommunization” is. Given the context of his speech, one can perceive these words only as a threat of direct intervention on the territory of Ukraine. Not surprisingly, in criticizing the Leninist nationality policy, Putin threw stones at the planned economy, nationalization and complimented Stalinism.

Persecution of the opposition, corruption, rising prices for goods and services, lack of independent courts, and everything Putin has said about Ukraine sounds like he was talking about Russia. We do not deny that the reforms taking place in Ukraine are leading to monstrous social inequality, impoverishment of the population, unemployment and other problems. But we are firmly convinced that the fate of Ukraine should be decided by the working people and all the oppressed sections of the population of this country, and not by Russian military equipment and pro-Russian lobbyists. Ukraine’s debts to the Russian Federation, which Putin reminded of, are not a reason for a military invasion. The Ukrainian population did not take these debts from Russia, let the Russian government demand them from those to whom it gave them, including Viktor Yanukovych, who lives quietly on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Violation of the “Minsk agreements” is the work of not only Kiev, but also Moscow, which is not going to stop supporting the imperialist enclaves in the so-called “people’s republics”. We stand for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, the cessation of any military support for the armed formations in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, the observance of the ceasefire and for the right of Ukrainian citizens to independently decide the fate of their country, without imperialists from East and West!