Ukraine

Ukraine’s long-planned counter-offensive in Kherson Oblast, southern Ukraine, continues to make small territorial gains towards its aim of retaking Kherson city. Workers’ Liberty supports Ukraine’s fight. Here’s why. Russian forces invaded Kherson region on 25 February, and by 3 March claimed to control the main town, Kherson. The population of the area is overwhelmingly hostile to Russian military rule. In March the people of Kherson city regularly demonstrated against the Russian occupation before their protests were crushed with violence and a regime of terror was imposed across the whole...

Last week I sent out a message to tens of thousands of trade unionists alerting them to two bits of news. The good news, I reported, was that some workers in Poland had won a big victory in court. The bad news was that in Ukraine, President Zelenskyy had failed to veto anti-union legislation, as we had been demanding. Most people reacted with thanks, or said nothing, but two of the emails I got within a minute of each other were, I think, interesting. The first said: “You’re talking about a fucking union at a time of war. Where’s your head at you dirty lefty”. The second said: “Of course...

On 29 August Ukraine launched its Kherson ground offensive. It claims to have broken through in three places. Initial reports, as Solidarity goes to press, suggest it has made some limited gains. Since the Russian army destroyed and then overran the eastern Ukrainian towns of Sievierodonetsk (24-25 June) and Lysychansk (3 July) the battlelines in Ukraine have remained largely unchanged. Russian forces have seemed to be temporarily exhausted, having suffered debilitating losses in the six months of fighting since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February. Russia has also been forced to...

The Russian imperialist war against Ukraine shows no sign of ending, although Russia’s military progress has slowed in recent weeks.

To download a leaflet in Ukrainian and English explaining Workers' Liberty's campaigning in the British labour movement to defend Ukraine and support Ukraine's workers - and struggles against oppression more widely - click here .

Darya Dugina on a day-trip to the Azovstal plant in "liberated" Mariupol For a shorter version of this article as a leaflet, click here . Darya Dugina was killed in a car bomb explosion last Saturday night (20th August) on the outskirts of Moscow. She was returning from the Tradition festival, where she had spoken on the themes of the Russian Idea, Empire, and culture wars. Earlier in the day she had given what was to be her final television interview, in which she had declared “the end of liberal totalitarianism, liberal fascism and Western totalitarianism. The special military operation [i.e...

William Burns, director of the CIA, estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine have reached around 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded. Russia has suffered the same number of military fatalities in a few months of war in Ukraine as the USSR in the decade it fought in Afghanistan. A growing number of Russian troops are refusing to fight. For example, Corporal Ilya Kaminsky and 77 other troops from Russia’s 11th Air Assault Brigade have refused to return to the front after four and a half months without leave during which, according to Kaminsky, around 1,000 troops — or half his battalion...

I have recently become a supporter of Workers' Liberty, having (as a second- generation Ukrainian) first noticed their clear and principled support of the Ukrainian fight for self-determination. Workers' Liberty are a refreshing contrast to much of the left, self-imprisoned as it is between two "camps" and reduced either to irrelevant fence-sitting or increasingly overt support for Putin and the Russian ruling class. This led me to find out more about the politics of AWL and I quickly discovered that they are equally as principled throughout, and consistently take the side of the independent...

Putin’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, declared to state media outlet RIA Novosti on 20 July, that Russia’s war aims now go beyond the seizure of the east of Ukraine. On 23 July, in Cairo, he went further: Russia’s aim is to remove Ukraine’s government. Attempting to blame the West, Lavrov said Russia would have to push Ukraine’s forces further back as the US had supplied Ukraine with highly accurate, longer-range weapons. The US believes Russia intends to stage sham referendums in southern Ukraine, perhaps as early as September, and then declare the annexation of areas round Kherson and...

A debate was held on 2 July at Queen Mary University London on the Ukrainian war between Alex Callinicos and Gilbert Achcar, two communist writers, as part of the 2022 Marxism programme organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). To stop the Ukraine war and prevent weapons from being sent, as Alex said? or to send weapons to Ukraine because Russian imperialism would not give up war and occupation without weapons, as Gilbert said? After the debate, I told Gilbert that this situation was more complicated than the two slogans. It is possible to talk about the attitude of the communists and...