U.S., EU, out of Ukraine!

The following is a Workers World Party statement on the crisis in Ukraine.

U.S. and European Union imperialism have initiated an offensive against the Ukrainian government. It is part of their attempt to reconquer parts of the former Soviet Union and surround, weaken and destroy Russia.

The corporate media falsely present this conflict as one between the “democratic” West and a popular movement in Ukraine, on one side, and “autocratic” Russia and its supporters in the Ukrainian government on the other. This picture has no relation to the truth.

To overthrow and replace Ukraine’s current government, the Western imperialists are arming and relying on pro-fascist elements that are anti-Russian, xenophobic and anti-Semitic. The U.S./EU-provoked conflict threatens a civil war in Ukraine, or worse.

The corporate media are deceptively comparing the occupation of Maidan in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, to the Occupy Wall Street movement here. This can confuse some people about the character of the conflict in Ukraine. Far from fighting against the 1%, the Kiev occupiers are fighting for Wall Street and welcome the investment of Western capital in Ukraine.

The pro-Western Ukrainian nationalists are led by racist parties, like Svoboda and the Right Bloc, that are political allies of the National Front in France, the neo-Nazis in Germany and the most reactionary elements on the continent.

The people in the U.S. — especially the youth, workers and those facing oppression here — have nothing to gain from a Western victory over Ukraine and Russia. Regardless of the character of the Putin regime that now heads capitalist Russia, the worst outcome for the workers and the oppressed everywhere regarding the Ukraine struggle would be a victory for U.S. and/or European imperialism.

U.S. and European imperialist banks and corporate power aim to make Ukraine an open market for exports of goods and capital investments. The bosses want access to more low-wage labor so they can bring down wages even further and eliminate workers worldwide.

The EU had made an offer of inadequate loans to Ukraine with the following strings attached: that the EU gain open entry into the Ukrainian market; that the government impose austerity on the Ukrainian workers; and that Ukraine be incorporated into the NATO imperialist military alliance. It is the kind of offer that has brought misery to Portugal, Spain and Greece, without giving Ukraine real EU membership. Its rejection by the Yanukovich government in November opened the ongoing conflict.

Ever since world imperialism succeeded in overturning the socialist society in the former Soviet Union, the U.S. ruling class’s long-term goal has been to reduce all the Soviet republics, including Russia, to mere colonies. This goal leads Washington to try to surround Russia and brings it in conflict with strategic and economic Russian interests in Syria, Ukraine, Georgia, Iran and elsewhere.

In the infamous “F—- the EU!” intercepted phone call between U.S. diplomats — available all over the Internet — Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland spoke openly of how Washington was manipulating Ukrainian opposition politicians. Last December, after a visit to hand out pastries to the demonstrators in Maidan, Nuland bragged to a reactionary Ukrainian group in Washington that Washington had invested $5 billion in taking over Ukraine. The money was undoubtedly used for the 40,000 nongovernmental organizations the U.S. set up in that country before the 2004 “Orange Revolution.”

Should the U.S. and German maneuvers fail to capture all of Ukraine, the imperialists may, as they did in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, attempt to break it up and ignite civil war, a course far easier to start than to stop.

This Western assault on Ukraine is part of Washington’s campaign to reconquer all that was liberated from imperialism during the Soviet era, and is a continuation of the wars over Iraq, Libya, Syria and the ongoing offensive against the Bolivarian government in Venezuela.

“U.S. and EU imperialists, out of Ukraine!”

“Stop the U.S./EU-backed right-wing takeover!”