Joint initiative by Ukrainian and Russian activists “Against the imperialist warof the oligarchs and capitalists!”

Young international activists from Russia and Ukraine, emigrants or refugees in Europe, met on the morning of Saturday April 20. At the end of their discussion, they decided to launch a “joint initiative of Ukrainian and Russian internationalist activists against war and exploitation”. La Tribune des Travailleurs has published their founding declaration (in Russian and Ukrainian). It was then natural that one of them, a member of the Alliance of the Russian-speaking Left in Germany, should take the floor to report on it at the French Workers’ Party (the Parti des Travailleurs) rally in tribute to the Paris Commune (1871).

“We, internationalist activists from Ukraine and Russia living abroad, address you. Each of us has our own political positions, our own organizations. We do not claim to be in competition with any other initiative.

“We have come together with the aim of helping to take concrete steps forward:

• against the imperialist war of the oligarchs and capitalists,

• for a fair and just peace in the interests of the working majority,

• in the interests of the peoples, not the mighty imperialist powers,

• for the fraternal union of the peoples of the former USSR and the world.

“We affirm that ‘The main enemy of the workers is in your own country.’

“Our aim:

• to support all forms of resistance to the war in both Ukraine and Russia;

• to organize solidarity with the resistance of mobilized soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian, with draft dodgers and deserters on both sides, with the struggle of the women – wives and sisters and mothers of soldiers – for their demobilization;

• to demand respect for democratic and workers’ rights in both Ukraine and Russia, to organize campaigns for the release of political prisoners and imprisoned anti-war activists;

• to strengthen ties and solidarity with workers, youth and their organizations in all countries.

“We stand in solidarity with the Russian political prisoner, left-wing sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who has said: ‘Fortunately, support for political prisoners is becoming a mass movement in our country. Thousands of people are writing letters to the imprisoned, collecting parcels, sending food and warm clothing to prison. We must unconditionally support all those who, without resorting to violence, defend their point of view and are persecuted for it’.

“We also stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian internationalists of Kharkiv, who have declared: “The glorification of war as an opportunity to strengthen the nation and purify it of all kinds of undesirable elements, which is going on in Ukraine as much as in the Russian Federation, was already the policy of the belligerent states during the First World War. As the current war differs little from that one, it may also end in the same way. To the new Tsars Vladimir, we wish a repeat of 1917!’”

Down with war and exploitation! Long live international solidarity!”