End the war in Ukraine! U.S./NATO out of Eastern Europe!

End the war in Ukraine! U.S./NATO out of Eastern Europe!

Workers World republishes the March 21, 2025, commentary of the Louisiana Workers Voice Socialist Movement in New Orleans, which provides a summary of the U.S. intervention in Ukraine that provoked the war, including the role of the Democratic and Republican administrations. The facts about U.S. intervention presented in this commentary have been amply verified by recent statements by Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who participated with the U.S. government in the privatization of the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe.

Volodymyr Zelensky (right) with Andriy Biletsky (center) on August 14, 2023. Biletsky formerly commanded the Nazi “Azov Battalion” and now commands the much larger 3rd Army Corps of the Ukrainian Military. In 2010 Biletsky wrote, ‘The historic mission of our nation in this crucial moment is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against the Semite-led subhumans.’

Since the Workers Voice article was published, a March 29 article in The New York Times detailed the intense participation of the U.S. military in the ongoing war since Feb. 22, 2022. WW agrees with the conclusion that the tens of millions of people who oppose the Trump administration for its action since the last inauguration should oppose any role for the U.S. or NATO in Eastern Europe.

It seems impossible to have a discussion with those who insist on calling for more billions for weapons, training and mercenaries for Ukraine even after U.S./NATO wars have destroyed so many millions of lives. The cheerleaders for the U.S. war in Ukraine are as misguided and indoctrinated by the Biden regime as the dupes who believe that Trump will bring us peace. Biden’s minions, like Trump’s, stake their position on a mountain of lies, lack of information, wishful thinking and hatred of the other while invoking high-sounding words like sovereignty, democracy and freedom.

Many cling to the ridiculous idea that Putin somehow controls Trump. This idea is a fairy tale invented by war profiteers to channel the justified hatred of Trump into support for war against Russia.

In reality, both Biden and Trump want to subjugate Ukraine and Russia to U.S. capitalist control. They have different strategies to accomplish a common aim — to conquer the world for U.S. capitalist markets, labor and resources. Trump will continue to arm Ukraine and work with the Nazi-led Ukrainian army, just as Biden did — if for no other reason than Chevron, Lockheed Martin, BlackRock, Amazon and SpaceX demand it.

Military-industrial-banking complex, enemy of all the people of the world, fully controls the White House and Congress

The first thing to admit is that both the Republican and Democratic parties have embraced the continuous buildup of the military budget, adding up to over $1.2 trillion, plus $952 billion in interest payments on a deficit that military spending caused. Not a word is spoken by the Democratic Party about this.

Secondly, we need to understand the real purpose of the military budget. On whose behalf do the president and Congress rule, regardless of administration? They rule on behalf of the major shareholders of the banks and war-profiteering firms that fund their campaigns.

Whether by economic strangulation (so-called “sanctions”), invasions, coups or bombardment, the foreign policy of the U.S. is aimed at enhancing the bloated profits of U.S. investment firms, banks and conglomerates. Both parties pursue this mission regardless of the millions starved, maimed or killed as a result.

There is not a single country in the world that has benefited politically, socially or economically from a U.S. war, directly or by proxy. Certainly, the working class of the U.S. has no interest. In fact, militarism is destroying our lives.

Every year that the U.S. military budget has grown so has the power of the most reactionary sector of the capitalist ruling class. A large part of the wealth amassed by the Nazi Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and JD Vance has come out of U.S. taxpayers’ pockets as subsidies and government contracts to the war-profiteering corporations in which Musk, Bezos and Vance are invested, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Amazon, Palantir and Anduril. The austerity and repression of all civil, economic and academic rights occurring under Trump is directly tied to the buildup of the U.S./NATO war budgets. In other words, Trump is a monster the Democratic Party helped to create.

Those who clamor for more NATO bases, more weapons and ever younger Ukrainian conscripts have no right to decry the rise of right-wing governments in Europe, which are slashing social benefits and brutally repressing protest. This is what happens when war profiteers are allowed to raid government treasuries for ever higher profits.

History without lies: Zelensky and Biden plundered Ukraine, bombed and terrorized the Donbass

For years — especially since the U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2014 — foreign capitalists have plundered Ukraine of its public assets and impoverished its people. By 2020, Ukraine had become the poorest country in Europe, mainly due to the privatizations and cuts to public services dictated by the U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is no accident that the U.S.-sponsored buildup of openly Nazi forces like the Azov battalion coincided with the rapid decline in Ukrainians’ living standards. Austerity requires repression abroad and at home.

The looting of the economy and the vicious scapegoating and persecution of ethnic Russians and other minorities led the people of the Donbass and Crimea to rebel. In 2014, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were formed as a defense against the dictatorship of the U.S.-backed Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president who declared that “our children will go to school, to kindergartens — their children [in the Donbass] will sit in cellars.”

Poroshenko made this speech as the Ukrainian National Guard was shelling apartment buildings in the Donbass with U.S.-made artillery. Since 2014, U.S. training, funds and arms have enabled the Ukrainian military to kill tens of thousands of people who have resisted Kiev’s program of Nazism and austerity. Until this day, the Donbass has suffered most from the war, where battles still rage daily.

Like the eventual secession of the republics of the Donbass and Crimea, the special military operation declared by the Russian Federation in 2022 is also an act of self-defense. Few [U.S.] Americans fully appreciate that the people of the Soviet Union lost 27 million people in the fight to defeat the German Nazis and their collaborators, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose members were supported by the CIA for decades after WWII.

The more than 100,000 U.S.-armed and trained soldiers amassed at the border of the Donbass on February 23, 2022, were flying the flags and shouting the slogans of the OUN. Imagine if open Nazis were approaching your border with tanks and rocket launchers.

Dozens of military bases have encircled Russia in the last two decades despite a 1990 promise by the U.S. to cease the NATO buildup along Russia’s Western Border. Many of these bases are armed with nuclear weapons. Just this month, Poland’s right-wing president Andrzej Duda called on the U.S. to deploy nuclear warheads to Polish territory.

The 2015 Minsk agreement between Ukraine and Russia was worked out to cease hostilities and afford the Donbass republics some autonomy, but the U.S. and Ukraine tore it up. Ukrainian violations of the ceasefire skyrocketed in the days leading up to February 24, 2022. In other words, Biden initiated the current war against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy.

Zelensky: Dictator and thief, servant to BlackRock

“We have already managed to attract attention and have cooperation with such giants of the international financial and investment world as Black Rock, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Such American brands as Starlink or Westinghouse have already become part of our Ukrainian way. Your brilliant defense systems — such as HIMARS or Bradleys — are already uniting our history of freedom with your enterprises. … Everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine.” – Volodymyr Zelensky in a Jan. 23, 2023, address to the National Association of State Chambers [of Commerce].

Far from being a hero, the embezzler-in-chief Zelensky has facilitated the plunder and destruction of Ukraine while enriching himself by as much as $400 million, according to a report by Seymour Hersh. (Trading with the Enemy, April 12, 2023) His government has canceled union contracts for 70% of the country’s workers, and he’s made it legal for companies to increase the work week from 40 to 60 hours.

Detention camps for political prisoners are now widespread throughout the territory under Kiev’s control. Civilians are routinely grabbed off the street for the army or are shot when they resist. Press freedom has been crushed, and opposition parties are banned. The Zelensky government is now openly threatening to execute political prisoners like the Kononovich brothers, who are persecuted solely for opposing the U.S./NATO war.

Zelensky meeting with Larry Fink (center), CEO of BlackRock. In November 2022, BlackRock and the Ukraine Ministry of Economy signed a memorandum of agreement to coordinate investment in Ukraine.

While condemning thousands of Ukrainians to death on the frontlines, Zelensky has signed away Ukraine’s sovereignty to BlackRock. This U.S. investment company controls $10 trillion worth of the world’s resources and has controlling shares in most U.S. war-profiteering corporations. BlackRock is the same company that oversaw the corporate bailouts at the beginning of the COVID pandemic as millions died. They also got billions from the 2008 bank bailouts while millions of working people lost homes, jobs and pensions.

BlackRock loots U.S. and NATO-member government treasuries to boost the profits of the weapons, fuel, logistics and tech companies under its control. The bulk of the $100 billion in so-called U.S. “aid” to Ukraine is dispersed to these companies through government contracts. As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have lost lives and limbs, profits have soared. Chevron, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and SpaceX (which includes Musk’s Starlink) have also profited from the U.S./Israeli genocidal assault on Gaza.

Now that the billionaire owners of BlackRock have nearly exhausted Ukraine’s supply of soldiers, they want controlling shares of Ukraine itself: 50% “of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets … and other infrastructure relevant to natural resource assets,” per the draft of Trump’s “minerals deal,” signed by the U.S. Treasury and Ministry of Economy of Ukraine.

It’s never been about Putin

The U.S. invasion of Iraq (2003) had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. invasion of Panama (1989) had nothing to do with Manuel Noriega. Just like Putin, Hussein and Noriega were once U.S. allies. It was not until these countries declared that they would not allow the U.S. to dominate them economically and steal their resources that the U.S. turned and waged war against them.

Putin was only judged to be “criminal” by the U.S. when his government resisted the takeover of Russian state oil and gas companies by foreign hedge funds. But, to mask their real aims, every imperialist war requires a bogeyman, even if it means the demonization of a once-faithful client.

As for their real aims, look to Libya whose people enjoyed the highest standard of living in Africa until their country was destroyed by U.S./NATO bombs. The same U.S./NATO cheerleaders that demonized the Pan-African leader Gaddafi and celebrated his lynching by U.S.-backed forces fail to mention that the Libya of today is a country torn apart by warlords, complete with open slave markets.

Or look to Syria. The Biden administration never missed a chance to condemn Bashar al-Assad, even as the U.S. imposed an economic blockade on Syria and occupied as much as a third of its territory in the oil-rich northeast. Now that Assad has been replaced with the “help” of U.S. Special Forces, the government of Abu Mohammad al-Julani (aka Ahmed al-Sharaa) is mass executing its political opponents and selling off Syrian state property to foreign capitalists.

Democratic Party politicians cry about Putin’s “authoritarianism” but give standing ovations to Benjamin Netanyahu as he carries out genocide in Palestine. They wine and dine Saudi monarchs while political dissidents in Saudi Arabia are punished with crucifixion. Supporters of the war in Ukraine decry the rule of “oligarchs” in Russia while five U.S. billionaires own more wealth than 170 million Americans, and the Nazi billionaire Elon Musk dictates U.S. policy.

It’s worth remembering that before Musk was sieg-heiling at the presidential podium, he was getting billions in contracts with the Biden administration. We ought to deal with our oligarchs and let Russians deal with theirs.

All the hypocritical cries about Putin are cover for the capitalists who want Russia to be just like [the capitalists’] neocolonies in Eastern Europe. With “their [Ukrainian] blood and our bullets,” as the war criminal Oliver North put it, U.S. capitalists want to use the Ukrainian military as a battering ram to achieve their conquest.

Trump may have reason to believe that he can more effectively carry out the imperialist takeover of Russia by bribery and extortion rather than open war. For one, Trump hopes that Putin can convince a sector of the Russian capitalists to sell out their country to Goldman Sachs. He is also trying to take advantage of Russia’s desire for peace to win them away from an alliance with China, the center of the imperialists’ crosshairs. We hope that, for the sake of all the people of Russia and China, Putin will not fall into this trap.

Destroying U.S. workers’ lives to attack China – Biden and Trump unite

While the call to tax billionaires is right, it means nothing if U.S. tax revenue continues to be sucked up by the war machine.

Through the investment banks, the war-profiteers have infiltrated almost every sector of production in the U.S. Their influence has spread like a cancer to every corner of economic and social life. To facilitate the continued looting of the treasury by the war-profiteers, governments cut non-military spending. To block resistance to the cuts, they destroy unions and progressive social organizations.

It’s not only that Musk and Trump are rotten to the core or that they pursue bad policies. They represent the historical outcome of capitalism as it has developed in the U.S. towards increasing militarism, austerity and repression. Like any other capitalist government that turns toward fascism, the state relies increasingly on open white supremacy, gender oppression, anti-immigrant persecution, more police and prisons and the destruction of all civil rights in order to keep profits flowing.

More than ever, it’s guns or butter, warfare or health care. That means that supporting the foreign policies of either capitalist party as they back war or sanctions against Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, etc., is tantamount to supporting cuts, repression and poverty at home.

You cannot stand against the cuts to education and health care, national parks, the Veterans Administration, U.S. Postal Service and disaster relief while echoing the call for war in Ukraine and against Russia. The people of Russia can conduct their struggle where they are. Our struggle is here. We can start by demanding: U.S./NATO out of Eastern Europe!