Stop U.S.-sponsored fascist terror in Ukraine!

May 4 — Workers World newspaper condemns the collaboration of the U.S. government with the fascist terror sweeping southeast Ukraine. Just in the last two days, brutal, neo-Nazi attacks have left 46 people dead and hundreds injured in the city of Odessa, Ukraine. We extend our solidarity to the anti-fascist resistance movement and call upon the progressive movement here to rally to its defense.

On May 2, some 38 anti-fascist activists died when organized and armed neo-Nazis set fire to the House of Trade Unions in Odessa. Many protesters against the coup regime in Kiev had retreated to the union headquarters after their encampment at Kulikovo Field was also burned. People fleeing the inferno were beaten and some killed.

The attack was choreographed by the Kiev junta. Police were deliberately withdrawn from the area of the fascist rampage to guard the headquarters of the Interior Ministry, headed by far-rightist Arsen Avakov. This took place simultaneously with a fierce military assault on the city of Slavyansk, which is held by anti-fascist forces and where at least eight resistance members died in the fighting.

Blame for the massacre in Odessa must be placed squarely on U.S. imperialism and its agencies: the federal government, Wall Street and the corporate media.

With the knowledge and active support of both Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington, the U.S. government has admittedly spent more than $5 billion to bring about “regime change” in Ukraine. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland even boasted about it to a rightist Ukrainian-American organization in December. Washington was deeply embedded in the illegal February coup against the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych, which brought to power a pro-West regime with fascists and other far-rightists heading the police and military. The Western corporate media have loyally repeated the U.S. line, turning reality on its head by blaming Russia and the anti-fascist resistance for the crisis.

Brooking no debate over its support for the illegal Kiev junta, Washington has promised its hand-picked stooges lavish loans, encouraged a multi-billion-dollar IMF aid package and provided them with international political cover. The U.S., with NATO, has carried out a provocative military buildup in Eastern Europe and a propaganda war against Russia while pushing its agents in the Ukrainian government to unleash a terror offensive against the people of southeast Ukraine, who have been heroically resisting.

At an emergency session of the UN Security Council called by Russia on May 2, the full horror of the Kiev regime’s crimes in Odessa and Slavyansk were reported. U.S. representatives there refused not only to condemn the attacks but even to speak with their Russian counterparts. This comes as no surprise, since U.S. involvement in Ukraine is founded on imperialism’s drive to expand NATO military bases to that country’s eastern border with Russia — the human cost be damned.

We urge the workers’ and progressive movements in the U.S. and throughout the world to join us in condemning the crimes of U.S. imperialism and its puppets in Kiev, and to educate and mobilize the people in opposition to this drive to unleash another criminal war.