[As a socialist and internationalist, I abhor war. But the basic
premise of self-determination justifies the resistance of ordinary
Ukrainians to Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of our country.]
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I’M A UKRAINIAN SOCIALIST. HERE’S WHY I RESIST THE RUSSIAN
INVASION.  
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Taras Bilous
July 26, 2022
Jacobin
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_ As a socialist and internationalist, I abhor war. But the basic
premise of self-determination justifies the resistance of ordinary
Ukrainians to Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of our country. _

Ukrainian soldier cleans weapon, public domain

 

I’m writing from Ukraine, where I serve in the Territorial Defense
Forces. A year ago, I couldn’t have expected to be in this
situation. Like millions of Ukrainians my life has been upturned by
the chaos of war.

For the past four months, I have had the opportunity to meet people
whom I would hardly have met under other circumstances. Some of them
had never thought of taking up arms before February 24, but the
Russian invasion forced them to drop everything and go to protect
their families.

We often criticize the actions of the Ukrainian government and the way
defense is organized. But they do not question the necessity of
resistance and understand well why and for what we are fighting.

At the same time, during these months, I’ve tried to follow and
participate in the discussions of the international left about the
Russian-Ukrainian war. And the main thing that I now feel from these
discussions is fatigue and disappointment. Too much time being forced
to rebut obviously false Russian propaganda, too much time explaining
why Moscow had no “legitimate security concerns” to justify war,
too much time asserting the basic premises of self-determination that
any leftist should already agree with.

Perhaps most striking about many of these debates about the
Russian-Ukrainian war is the ignoring of the opinion of Ukrainians.
Ukrainians are still often presented in some left-wing discussions
either as passive victims who should be sympathized with or as Nazis
who should be condemned. But the far right makes up a clear minority
of the Ukrainian resistance, while the absolute majority of Ukrainians
support the resistance and do not want to be just passive victims.

Negotiations

Among even many well-intentioned people in recent months, there’s
been increasingly loud but ultimately vague calls for negotiations and
a diplomatic settlement of the conflict. But what exactly does this
mean? Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia took place for several
months following the invasion, but they did not stop the war. Before
that, negotiations on Donbas had lasted for more than seven years with
French and German participation; but despite signed agreements and a
cease-fire, the conflict was never resolved. On the other hand, in a
war between two states, even the terms of surrender are usually
settled at the negotiating table.

A call for diplomacy in itself means nothing if we don’t address
negotiating positions, concrete concessions, and the willingness of
the parties to adhere to any signed agreement. All of this directly
depends on the course of hostilities, which in turn depends on the
extent of international military aid. And this can speed up the
conclusion of a just peace.

The situation in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine
indicates that Russian troops are trying to establish a permanent
position there because they provide Russia with a land corridor to
Crimea. The Kremlin uses the grain looted in these territories to
support its client regimes and simultaneously threatens the whole
world with famine by blocking Ukrainian ports. The agreement on
unblocking the export of Ukrainian grain, signed on July 22 in
Istanbul, was violated by Russia the day after it was signed by
attacking the Odessa Sea Trade Port with missiles.

Meanwhile, high-ranking Russian politicians, such as the former
president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council, Dmitry
Medvedev, or the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, continue to write
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There is no reason to believe that Russia will stop its territorial
expansion, even if one day it becomes beneficial for the Kremlin to
sign a temporary truce.

On the other hand, 80 percent of Ukrainians consider
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concessions unacceptable. For Ukrainians, giving up the occupied
territories means betraying their fellow citizens and relatives, and
putting up with the daily abductions and tortures perpetrated by
occupiers. Under these conditions, the parliament will not ratify
cession, even if the West forces the Ukrainian government to agree to
territorial losses. This would only discredit President Volodymyr
Zelensky and lead to the reelection of more nationalist authorities,
while the far right would be rewarded with favorable conditions for
recruiting new members.

Zelensky’s government, of course, is neoliberal. Ukrainian leftists
and trade unionists have organized extensively against his social and
economic policies
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However, in terms of war and nationalism, Zelensky is the most
moderate politician who could have come to power in Ukraine after the
2014 annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbas.

There’s been some misunderstanding about his own record, too. For
example, many authors now blame Zelensky for the nationalist language
policy, centered around restrictions on the Russian language in the
public sphere and including restriction of secondary education in the
languages of national minorities. In fact, these language laws were
adopted during the previous term of parliament’s just that
individual provisions of these laws came into force after Zelensky
took office. His government has repeatedly tried to soften them, but
each time backed down after nationalist protests.

Only a mass domestic movement for change in Russia can open the
possibility for the restoration of stable relations between Ukraine
and Russia in the future.

This was evident after the beginning of the invasion in his frequent
appeals to the Russians, his invitation to the Kremlin to negotiate,
and his statements that the Ukrainian army would not try to retake the
territories that were under Russian control before February 24 but
would seek their return through diplomatic means in the future. If
Zelensky were replaced by someone more nationalistic, the situation
would become much worse.

I hardly need to spell out the consequences of that outcome. There
would be even more authoritarianism in our domestic politics,
revanchist sentiments will prevail, and the war would not stop. Any
new government would be much less restrained from shelling Russian
territory. With a reinvigorated far right, our country would be
dragged ever deeper into a maelstrom of nationalism and reaction.

As someone who has seen the horrors of this war, I understand the
desire for it to be over as soon as possible. Indeed, no one is more
eager for the war to end than we who live in Ukraine, but it is also
important to Ukrainians how exactly the war will end. At the beginning
of the war, I too hoped that the Russian antiwar movement would force
the Kremlin to end its invasion. But unfortunately this didn’t
happen. Today, the Russian antiwar movement can only influence the
situation by carrying out the small-scale sabotage of railways
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Something bigger will be possible only after the military defeat of
Russia.

Of course, under certain circumstances, it might be appropriate to
agree to a cease-fire. But such a cease-fire would only be temporary.
Any Russian success would strengthen Vladimir Putin’s regime and its
reactionary tendencies. It would not mean peace, but decades of
instability, guerrilla resistance in the occupied territories, and
recurrent clashes on the demarcation line. It would be a disaster not
only for Ukraine but also for Russia, where a reactionary political
drift would intensify and the economy would suffer from sanctions,
with severe consequences for ordinary civilians.

A military defeat of the Russian invasion is therefore also in the
interests of the Russians. Only a mass domestic movement for change
can open the possibility for the restoration of stable relations
between Ukraine and Russia in the future. But if Putin’s regime is
victorious, that revolution will be impossible for a long time. Its
defeat is necessary for the possibility of progressive changes in
Ukraine, Russia, and the entire post-Soviet world.

What Socialists Should Do

It’s worth acknowledging that my focus has been largely on the
domestic dimensions — for both Ukrainians and Russians — of the
current conflict. For many leftists abroad, discussions tend to focus
on its wider geopolitical implications. But in my opinion, in
assessing the conflict, socialists should first of all pay attention
to the people directly involved in it. And secondly, many leftists
underestimate the threats posed by the possible success of Russia.

The decision to oppose the Russian occupation was not made by Joe
Biden, nor by Zelensky, but by the Ukrainian people, who rose en masse
in the first days of the invasion and lined up for weapons. Had
Zelensky capitulated then, he would only have been discredited in the
eyes of most of society, but the resistance would have continued in a
different form, led by hard-line nationalist forces.

Besides, as Volodymyr Artiukh has noted
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the West did not want this war. The United States did not want
problems in Europe because it wanted to focus on the confrontation
with China. Even less did Germany and France want this war. Although
Washington has done a lot to undermine international law (we, like
socialists anywhere in the world, will never forget the criminal
invasion of Iraq, for instance), by supporting Ukrainian resistance to
the invasion they are doing the right thing.

To put it in historical terms, the war in Ukraine is no more a proxy
war than the Vietnam War was a proxy war between the United States on
one side and the Soviet Union and China on the other. And yet, at the
same time, it was also a national liberation war of the Vietnamese
people against the United States as well as a civil war between
supporters of North and South Vietnam. Almost every war is
multilayered; its nature can change during its course. But what does
this give us in practical terms?

During the Cold War, internationalists did not need to laud the USSR
to support the Vietnamese struggle against the United States. And it
is unlikely that any socialists would have advised left-wing
dissidents in the Soviet Union to oppose support for the Vietcong.
Should Soviet military support for Vietnam have been resisted because
the USSR criminally suppressed the Prague Spring of 1968? Why then,
when it comes to Western support for Ukraine, are the murderous
occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq considered serious
counterarguments for aid?

Socialist internationalists must evaluate every conflict based on the
interests of working people and their struggle for freedom and
equality.

Instead of seeing the world as being composed solely of geopolitical
camps, socialist internationalists must evaluate every conflict based
on the interests of working people and their struggle for freedom and
equality. The revolutionary Leon Trotsky once wrote
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hypothetically, if fascist Italy pursuing their interests had
supported the anti-colonial uprising in Algeria against democratic
France, the internationalists should have supported the Italian arming
of the rebels. It sounds quite right, and this did not stop him from
being an anti-fascist.

Vietnam’s struggle did not just benefit Vietnam; the defeat of the
United States there had a significant (if temporary) deterrent effect
on American imperialism. The same is true with Ukraine. What will
Russia do if Ukraine is defeated? What would prevent Putin from
conquering Moldova or other post-Soviet states?

US hegemony has had terrible consequences for humanity and it’s
thankfully now in decline. However, an end of US supremacy can mean
either a transition to a more democratic and just international order
or a war of all against all. It can also mean a return to the policy
of imperialist spheres of influence and the military redrawing
borders, as in previous centuries.

The world will become even more unjust and dangerous if non-Western
imperialist predators take advantage of American decline to normalize
their aggressive policies. Ukraine and Syria are examples of what a
“multipolar world” will be like if the appetites of non-Western
imperialisms are not reduced.

The longer this horrible conflict in Ukraine goes on, the more popular
discontent in Western countries could grow as a result of the economic
difficulties of the war and sanctions. Capital, which does not like
the loss of profits and wants to return to “business as usual,”
may try to exploit this situation. It can also be used by right-wing
populists who do not mind sharing spheres of influence with Putin.

But for socialists to use this discontent to demand less aid to
Ukraine and less pressure on Russia would be a rejection of solidarity
with the oppressed.

_Taras Bilous is a Ukrainian historian, the editor of Commons:
Journal of Social Criticism, and an activist of the Social Movement
organization._

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