Russia Ukraine Conflict and Russia's Annexations

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Russian air strikes on Ukrainian cities Source

Richard Brenner

London UK

 

I do not support Ukraine or NATO in this war. At the same time, I have never supported the Russian Federation, or its war aims. I have to make it clear that while the main enemy of the British workers is at home, no one in the labour movement or the left should take Putin‘s annexation or the reasons he has given for it in good faith.

The people of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have never before indicated any intention to separate from Ukraine let alone to join the Russian Federation. The people of Donbass – that is Donetsk and Luhansk – voted in 2014 not to separate from Ukraine or to join the Russian Federation, but for greater autonomy within Ukraine. The same outcome was seen in a series of subsequent surveys, by think tanks based both in Kyiv, and in Donetsk itself, and even in a survey conducted by a mainstream American newspaper.

Of course it is possible that views have changed since the war this year, but it is not objectively possible to determine whether the majority of the people in Donbass are better or worse disposed to either Ukraine or Russia, given that both armies have been bombarding them with heavy artillery since February.

But one thing must surely be absolutely clear, as a matter of logic and common sense and principle. No referendum can be treated as having any sort of objective legitimacy if it takes place in the midst of a war under the auspices of one of the contending armies. It is not possible, it is against the very laws of war for one army to be able to tolerate let alone facilitate political operations on and behind its lines, demanding its withdrawal from an ongoing combat situation.

War is politics and no fair election can take place as fighting rages around the ballot boxes. One need not apply the Daily Mail’s trope of soldiers literally forcing voters into the polling stations at the point of a bayonet to recognise that it would simply not be safe to organise a political campaign against the presence of an occupying army, openly and under its very nose. It couldn’t happen and it didn’t.

The Russian Federation has no right to annex these four territories: the right of self-determination is being denied to Donbass, by Ukraine, and by the Russian Federation, and only an immediate end to hostilities, and the withdrawal of both armies, can establish any sound basis for a democratic process that could really express the right of Donbass people to self-determination, which means the right to determine whether they want autonomy within Ukraine, independence or accession to the Russian Federation.

At the same time socialists, and especially socialists in the west, have to point out the utter hypocrisy of governments in Washington and London and their allies in Kyiv who are denouncing the Russian action. The west and its Ukrainian ally have been trampling on the right of Donbas to self-determination since 2014. They refused to recognise its autonomy. They were forced to accept it at the Minsk accord in 2015, but they have trampled on the provisions of the treaty, sent troops to the border of Donbass in violation of the agreement, and have opposed the right of that region to self-determination every step of the way. They are in no position to criticise.

This is an inter-imperialist conflict, and the working-class should take sides with neither of the belligerent powers. The answer lies in the defeat of the governments in Kyiv and Moscow, defeat at the hands of their own people, to turn the imperialist war into a Civil War of workers and oppressed people against the capitalist gangsters, and end their otherwise endless and escalating cycle of war.