NO to Russian military intervention! No to the referendum trying to annex Crimea! Neither Russia nor the EU will be a solution for the Ukrainian people! No to the adjustment prepared by the EU-IMF-Obama!
1. After the popular revolt that toppled the reactionary and repressive pro-Russian government of Yanukovych, Russia under the mandate of President Putin, has intervened militarily the Crimea region, under the false pretext of “humanitarian defence” of Russian citizens. The pro Yanukovich regional government has called for a referendum, with the support of Russian troops and paramilitaries, for March 16 in order to annex Crimea to the Russian Federation. There is no humanitarian defence or a fair claim to self-determination, but rather that Putin seeks to divide Ukraine to put a wedge in the process of mass rebellion, to hold its important naval base of its war fleet in Sevastopol, with over 13 thousand soldiers, and defend the business of the Russian mafia entrepreneurs. This is why we call to reject such intervention and the attempt to annex Crimea. There were already demonstrations in Moscow against Russian military intervention that were repressed.
2. On the other hand, the government that temporarily took over in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and responds to the interests of the Ukrainian new rich oligarchy whom want to negotiate their business with the EU and U.S. governments and multinationals. They want to change a Russian plunderer by another “Western” plunderer. Hence now Obama and the EU, with the approval of the IMF, have granted a loan of 11 billion euros to “aid” Ukraine. Already the workers and peoples of Europe and of the world well know what this kind of “aid” does: wage falls and welfare cuts. It will mean more adjustments, poverty and pillaging for the Ukrainian people.
3. Hence, the revolutionary socialists, we say clearly that the workers, the youth and the people who fought for three months in the central square of Kiev and throughout Ukraine, must not be fooled by the new government or any of these alternatives. Neither agreeing with Putin and Russia nor agreeing with the EU-IMF and Obama will bring a solution for the social and democratic demands.
4. All of them are negotiating behind the backs of the working people. Nothing good will come from there. Putin seeks to press for a return to the agreement reached on 23 February between the U.S., Britain, Germany, Poland, Yanukovich, the political opposition and Russia itself. Agreement rejected by the masses in the central square of Kiev. The EU is interested in maintaining the gas business with Russia. While Obama needs to hold the political agreements with Russia against the rebel Syrian people and trying to silence the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East.
5. The cause of this conflict lies in the process of capitalist restoration in the former USSR, which has led Ukraine to decades of pillage and impoverishment of the majority while growing a minority of Ukrainian billionaires, among whom are both the pro-Russian Yanukovych sector and the liberal opposition headed by the billionaire Timoshenko. They have created the current division of the Ukrainian people that can even lead to a bloodbath or a new agreement. Both outcomes will go against all the Ukrainian working people.
6. Therefore, we reject the attempt to divide Ukraine which will only serve to continue plundering its wealth and oppressing its people. In western Ukraine it also weighs the disastrous legacy of Stalinism when, on behalf of a false socialism, the Communist Party bureaucracy oppressed the peoples of the former USSR. After World War II, Crimea was “Russified” by Stalin who expelled the native people, the Tartars, under the pretext of having collaborated with the Nazis when most of them had sided with the Red Army. It was just an excuse to send Russians troops to colonize the region, which was an autonomous republic within the USSR, since the glorious era of the Russian Revolution. The Stalinist bureaucracy sought to avoid the autonomy and right to mobilization of their people. Now Russia wants to build a false banner of autonomy to defend their new oppression with Gazprom and the Russian oligarchs.
7. The workers and the people of Ukraine must strive to avoid falling into this dramatic trap laid for them on one side by the EU-Yankee imperialism and on the other, by Putin and the new Russian capitalism. And to fight for the defence of a united and independent Ukraine which will only take place under a government of the workers and the people, to carry forward the social and democratic demands of the mobilization.
8. Neither the EU nor Russia will be a solution. Out with Russian military intervention. No to the attempt to annex Crimea. No to the annexation referendum. No to the division of Ukraine. No agreement with the EU or the IMF. We call on the peoples of the world to show solidarity with the just struggle of the Ukrainian people for their social and democratic rights, in the perspective of a separate resolution, of the workers and the people, without the EU or Putin.
International Executive Committee (IEC)
International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI / UIT-CI)
6 March 2014
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Originally published here