Ukraine: resistance on two fronts

Sunday 10 November 2024, by Jacques Babel


Under pressure from Putin, the Russian military forces are using their superiority in terms of men and bombing resources to very slowly but surely gobble up territory and destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. Now, after massive deliveries of bombs, missiles and drones from North Korea and Iran, it has been announced that several thousand North Korean soldiers will be arriving to fight as reinforcements for the Russian army. Meanwhile, some on the left are still indignant about the delivery of arms to the Ukrainians by Western states, even though these are clearly insufficient to enable them to put up effective resistance to the Putin steamroller and reverse the balance of power.

At the same time, the Zelensky government’s requests for aid are increasingly part of a neo-liberal policy subservient to the West. And the misguided policy of recruiting for a Ukrainian national defence system exhausted by two and a half years of war is contributing to a demoralisation that is being expressed publicly, over and above the extraordinary mobilisation of the Ukrainian people to defend their freedoms.

As our comrades from the revolutionary left-wing organisation Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) put it, ‘Ukraine’s uncertain prospects of victory are due to the fact that the only reliable strategy for opposing the aggressor - mobilising all available economic resources to support the front line and critical infrastructure - was at odds with the interests of the oligarchy. Because of the free market, Ukraine is a caricature of a war economy, and the concentration of luxury amidst poverty is becoming explosive. The refusal to nationalise the production infrastructure, to tax big business and to allocate the necessary budget for rearmament means that the war continues at the cost of huge human losses and relentless mobilisation’. [1]

In this terrible situation, international people-to-people solidarity exists and is essential to develop, as the ENSU2 network is doing with its links from below with Ukrainian progressive associations - political, feminist, trade union, LGBT - fighting against Russian aggression, for the defence of social gains and in defence of egalitarian rights. [See the ENSU website]

L’Anticapitaliste

Attached documents

• ukraine-resistance-on-two-fronts_a8735.pdf (PDF - 903.9 KiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article8735]

Footnotes

[1] Resolution entitled ‘The Road to Victory and the Tasks of the Ukrainian Left’ adopted at the Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) Conference held in Kiev on 5 and 6 October 2024.

Ukraine

• Strength comes from within
• “The Path to Victory and the Tasks of the Ukrainian Left”
• Ukraine under Russian occupation
• The Ukrainian left is building on several fronts
• Why we are closing our center for displaced women in Lviv

North Korea

• North and South Korea at a turning point after 70 years
• Fruitless "joint struggle" between nuclear states
• North Korea’s chronic food shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic
• Revenge politics to raise the ghost of the elite pro-nuclear consensus
• The geopolitics of crisis

• Jacques Babel

  Jacques Babel is a member of the NPA leadership responsible for international work.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.