The 18th World Congress of the Fourth International took place in Belgium from 23 to 28th February. The wide-ranging discussion covered the international situation in all its aspects from the structural polycrisis in its environmental, economic, social and political aspects to the movements of resistance, and the need to build and strengthen our own International. One particular point of debate was how as internationalist revolutionary Marxists we express our opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and our solidarity with the resistance of the Ukrainian people to this invasion, to the neoliberal policies of the Zelensky government and to neoliberal militarization.
We publish here the resolution presented by the majority of the outgoing IC, approved by the congress by 95 votes in favour, 23 against, 3 abstentions and 5 no votes, and the alternative resolution presented by a number of delegations rejected 31 for, 80 against, 9 abstentions.
1. In February 2022, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an attempt to turn the country into a Russian satellite. This attempt has caused hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded already. But the regime in Moscow has long been characterised by expansionist Greater Russian imperialist ideology, which sees superpowers as endowed with the right to extend their zone of influence by all means possible, challenging established norms of international law and legitimising a new era of imperialist redistribution. Thus, for the Kremlin, the daily increasing human cost of this aggression is no reason to cease it, and further intensification is instrumental to terrorise the Ukrainian people into submission.
2. What was supposed to be a "special military operation" to bring down the Kyiv government in a matter of days has turned into a three-year entanglement in full-scale war. This development was unexpected not only for Putin but also for the Western powers—Biden even offered to help Zelensky evacuate. It is precisely the determination and resilience of the Ukrainian resistance that has thwarted Putin's plans to this day.
3. The invasion of Ukraine was not only an attempt to reassert the role of Russia in the capitalist competition but also a deliberate attempt to tighten control over Russian society and crush all dissent. Anti-war activists have been prosecuted and sentenced to long prison terms on trumped charges. Socialist organisations, such as that of our comrades in the Russian Socialist Movement, have been forced to disband, and their members have had to flee. While feminists continue to mobilise, they do it under constant pressure with threats of imprisonment for even uttering the word "war".
4. As internationalists, we defend Ukraine's right to self-determination and their right to resist the invasion. People's movements are an integral part of this resistance, waging a struggle on two fronts: against the occupants and against the Zelensky government. In this unequal fight, we stand together with other progressive forces in the country. We urge all internationalist left to develop political and material solidarity with trade unionists, feminists, and social and democratic activists in Ukraine. Just as the Fourth International has been doing this since the beginning of the aggression within the framework of the "European Network of Solidarity with Ukraine" (ENSU/RESU) and together with the Ukrainian left-wing organisation, Sotsialnyi Rukh.
5. Once again, we underline that we have no illusions about the nature of Ukraine’s regime. Their government is right-wing and neo-liberal, not shying away from mobilising fear to stay in power. It is just as keen to satisfy domestic capitalists as to reassure the Western powers of its ability to adapt to their demands. Its anti-social and anti-democratic policies are counter-productive in terms of defending Ukraine. They oppose the needs of its working classes, provoke their resentment, undermine social trust, and, as a result, the government relies on increasingly authoritarian measures. This makes standing with the Ukrainian wage earners and their organisations all the more important. We cannot abandon them when they desperately need solidarity, especially if our vision of emancipation is that of a struggle from below, where the people rise to fight, independant from the government and the great powers.
6. Russia's attack on Ukraine is part of the global crisis of capitalism, increasing inter-imperialist tensions, and the rise of the far right and militarism. The Russian regime has been interfering in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, backed Bashar El Assad's reactionary regime, and has been increasing its involvement in Africa. The United States is maneuvring in South America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa, keeps arming Israel and supporting all its aggressions. France, for its part, is trying to hold on in Africa, too and is repressing the Kanak independence fighters. That is not to mention how Putin’s war of aggression generally revitalised NATO, previously declared “braindead,” and allowed major Western powers to strengthen and expand it.
7. By invoking the Russian invasion, Western governments pretend to be powerless to support those hit by inflation and increasing energy costs, thus tacitly undermining the solidarity they appeal to. In the meantime, right-wing forces are increasingly targeting Ukrainian refugees or pitting them against other migrants.
8. Admittedly, the support that the USA and Western governments are giving to Ukraine is not based on anti-colonial viewpoint given how they enable Israel's colonialism to go unchecked. Western imperialist powers are using the war to try and weaken their Russian rival while at the same time using Ukraine's need for aid to impose their own stranglehold on the country. However, this is no reason when the Ukrainian people, in their hour of need, deserve all the means necessary to defend themselves, to refuse such means, or for us to sabotage their provision.
9. Now it is up to the left to mobilise and demand that support to Ukraine's people is given unconditionally, instead of being tied to implementing and deepening neoliberal measures. This is why we call for the immediate and full cancellation of Ukrainian debt, respect for labour law, and maintenance of public services, the expropriation of big capitalists, and the fight against corruption to aid the Ukrainian people and oppose imperialist power.
10. Today's globally increased arms spending shows that more than ever, we must campaign against the insane programmes of mutual strategic rearmament, particularly nuclear, against the arms trade, which is very often directed towards dictatorships, and for democratic control (nationalisation) of the arms industry - at the same time as we support the right of colonised peoples to defend themselves, including by arms.
11. As we write these lines, Russia is launching new attacks. The destruction of whole towns, infrastructures and ecosystems serves to impose the hold of Great Russian imperialism, as are the abduction and deportation of children, the destruction of Ukrainian culture, and the suppression of freedoms in the occupied zones. Putin is open about his demands punishing Ukraine for stubbornness: recognition of the illegal territorial acquisitions; replacement of Zelensky's “illegitimate and Nazi” government; drastic reduction of the Ukrainian armed forces; non-membership of NATO.
12. It is clear that part of the far right in the West would prefer an agreement with Putin that would enhance their shared ultra-reactionary agenda, and that would leave Ukraine powerless and divided, reduced to a neo-colony of Russia. The government of China provides concrete support to the Kremlin while presenting demands for Ukrainian surrender as proposals for negotiations. A section of the European and US ruling classes may also be tempted at some point by a peace that would give Putin some satisfaction but would also restore trade relations with Russia and China.
13. Trump now considers the Ukrainians to be responsible for the war. His predatory, mercantilist stance, demanding "repayment" for past aid to Ukraine through the seizure of the country's mineral and rare earth resources, and other privileges to come, is a particularly brutal and odious illustration of this logic.
14. Parts of the self-proclaimed anti-war left agree with this and are prepared to leave Ukraine at the permanent mercy of the Russian regime, either out of anti-U.S. campism or pacifism. We believe that any 'peace' based on such conditions and imposed against the will of the Ukrainian people will only be the prelude to more occupation and violence in the future. Now, it is time for the left to build its own credible strategy on security based on popular participation and control. This has become more crucial than ever in the face of the inter-imperialist “deals” struck between Trump and Putin.
The only lasting solution to this war can be reached through:
- non-recognition of annexations and the complete withdrawal of Russian troops;
- subjecting any negotiations and agreements to the democratic control of the people;
- ensuring Ukraine's ability to defend itself against any future imperialist encroachments.
A lasting peace is possible only when it is based:
- on the right of Ukraine and its constituent minorities to freely determine their future and develop their cultures, independent of external pressure, the interest of the oligarchs, neoliberal ruling regimes or extreme right-wing ideologies;
- on the respect for political, social, and labour rights, including the right to strike, peaceful assembly, and free elections;
- on the right of all refugees and people displaced by the war to return home or settle in the countries where they currently reside;
- on having Putin’s dictatorship dismantled and all political prisoners and prisoners of war free.
We see our fight against the war in Ukraine as part of a struggle against militarism and imperialism. The fight against the war and for international solidarity requires:
dismantling all NATO, CSTO, and AUKUS military blocs;
establishment of a system of international relations based on equality of all nations, control from below, open diplomacy and condemnation of all forms of imperialist and nationalist aggression;
- cancellation of the Ukrainian debt;
- the creation, under the control of Ukraine’s citizens, of a fund for reconstruction, defence and the improvement of living conditions, financed by exceptional taxes on the profits of Western capitalists who conducted business with their Russian counterparts and the profits of arms companies and other war profiteers, as well as by the expropriation of the fortunes of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
28 February 2025
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Alternative resolution Ukraine
In order to have a useful solidarity orientation towards the working people of the region and to maintain our tradition of anti-imperialism and class independence, the war in Ukraine must be understood in its geopolitical and historical context on the basis of a rigorous materialist analysis of the facts that have led to it, in order to avoid mischaracterisations and hasty conclusions. Based on these premises, the aim of this resolution is to develop an alternative orientation to the one that our current has held since 2022.
Since this resolution was originally written, dramatic developments have confirmed our general analysis. On 12 February, Trump had a phone call with Putin and announced that peace talks would begin. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio then met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergie Lavrov in Saudi Arabia in order to start the process of carving Ukraine up. Both the Ukrainian government and the EU were humiliated by being left out of the process.
Trump incredibly blamed Zelensky for starting the war. He demanded 50% of Ukraine’s raw materials, without even offering any security guarantee in exchange. He repeatedly refused to promise UKrainian involvement in the formal peace talks which are set to begin. The US, together with Israel and Russia, voted against condemning the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
It is a picture of the new world order envisaged by Trump - where the post WW2 so-called ‘international rules based order’ is to be torn up. Trump appears to be driven by two calculations - primarily as part of a pivot to focus on the US’ most significant rival, China, and secondarily as a way of meeting the expectations of his electoral base.
If concluded, this will be an inter-imperialist peace, just as the war was, as well as being a legitimate Ukrainian struggle against aggression, an inter-imperialist proxy war. It will be based on a large give-away of territory to Russia and rare earth resources to the US.
The fact that it is likely that the US administration's new position will lead to the end of the war only underlines the proxy character of this conflict. Without US active support, regardless of the personal preferences of Zelensky and the government, they will not be able to continue to fight. They will likely be forced to go along, despite objections, with a humiliating peace.
The idea that in response to this development we should place demands on the Trump administration to continue to send arms to Ukraine is absurd. It would line us up with the more hawkish section of the capitalist class in the west.
Instead, while denouncing the unjust carve-up of Ukraine by the US and Russia, we need to focus our agitation on support for the people of Ukraine with working class methods. We should redouble our call for a cancellation of Ukrainian debt. We should actively oppose the attempts to steal the natural resources of Ukraine by Russia and the US. We should seek to deepen our relationships with Ukrainian trade unionists, left activists and others. We should seek to build movements against the process of European militarisation which is now likely to be further accelerated.
The long dynamic of stagnation that has been dragging on since the Great Recession of 2007-2008, which began in the major imperialist centres, the added impact of the pandemic and the changes in the international correlation of forces resulting from the displacement of the major centres of value production to the South and the East, as well as the exhaustion of the dynamics of financialisation as a mechanism for recovering profits with little or no accumulation... have opened up two underlying dynamics at the global level:
(a) a sharpening of inter-imperialist tensions.
b) a growing political instability resulting, in general terms, from the interaction of the following vectors: a strengthening of the radical right, a crisis of the political management forces and the fragmentation and global weakening of the left, from social democracy to the revolutionary left.
In relation to the first dynamic, there are today four major hotspots of inter-imperialist tension (Palestine and the Middle East, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, Taiwan and Southeast Asia), and two open wars in full escalation (Israel's war - with American and European support - against Palestine, Yemen and Lebanon and its attacks on Syria and, above all, Iran and three years of war in Ukraine since its invasion by Russia and a NATO proxy war against the Russian Federation). Several diplomats, analysts and activists are warning of the risk that the current escalations could push in a double direction: a convergence of open conflicts and the risk that they could ignite all areas of tension, leading to a global conflict with a high risk of the use of nuclear weapons.
In this resolution we will open the focus in space and time to address the causes, nature and possible outcomes of the war in Ukraine, as well as affirming the anti-imperialist commitment, the anti-militarist line and the internationalist solidarity with the Ukrainian and Russian working classes of the Fourth International.
Opening the focus
The current tension in the world has to do with the attempt by the West, mainly the US, to prevent by commercial, financial, political and military means the decline of its power in the world. Washington's disastrous ongoing war since the end of the Cold War, which has resulted in some 4 million dead and 40 million displaced people in the arc from Afghanistan to Libya to Iraq and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, has to do with the neo-con conception, common to Republicans and Democrats, of world domination alone formulated in 1992 and practised ever since. The rise of China, the reaction of Russia and the increasing alienation of the global South, i.e. the majority of the world's population, have long pointed to growing tensions in the world.
The American priority for Europe, well known and documented, was to separate Germany from Russia and to prevent the integration of the European Union into the Eurasian geo-economic conglomerate whose main driving force is Beijing (this conception was clearly incorporated in the documents adopted by the NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022). China is the EU's largest trading partner. Russia was its main energy partner. The US is severing both relationships. Russia's has already been achieved and at best the rupture will last a few decades (the attack on Nord Stream in the North Sea symbolises very well what is at stake). China is more difficult, but it is also making progress (AUKUS, growing collaboration between NATO and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, etc.). The result will be, already is being, a growing subordination of the EU to the US, a severe economic recession in Germany (directly impacted by the energy disconnection from Russia and the ongoing tariff war with China), a rise of the extreme right and the deepening of the political crisis in the EU opened more than a decade and a half ago by the Euro crisis, the political and social crisis in Mediterranean Europe, the Brexit, and the criminal policies of repression of immigration.
Characterising the conflict
On the left, there has been a twofold tendency to simplify the causes and nature of the war in Ukraine. Some reduce it to a national liberation struggle against an ‘unprovoked’ invasion by an authoritarian regime. This view is not far from the initial discourse of not a few NATO and EU officials, who insist on demonising Putin and portraying him as a madman intent on rebuilding what Reagan called the Soviet ‘empire of evil’ and conquering all of Eastern Europe. Others speak of an inter-imperialist clash without further ado (the discourse of much of the BRICS and of Stalinist or Mao-Stalinist formations nostalgic for the USSR), ignoring the Russian invasion and disregarding the right to self-determination of peoples, thus trying to justify and excuse Putin's decision.
In order to correctly characterise the ongoing conflict it is inevitable to understand that there is a dialectic between the two dynamics (national oppression and inter-imperialist clash). But the dynamics of the war have undoubtedly imposed a change in its dosage, insofar as the will to resist of a majority of the Ukrainian population at the beginning of Putin's invasion has been progressively subordinated to the aims, methods and political-military direction of the powers that support Kiev against Russia. At the same time, the stagnation of the military situation in the framework of a long war of attrition has since favoured growing disaffection, alienation and increasingly anti-war attitudes among growing swathes of the population (such as the massive flight of conscripts and the no less massive desertions of Ukrainian soldiers, disbelieving in the illusory promise of victory).
While there is no doubt that the Russian Federation is solely responsible for a condemnable and criminal invasion, like all imperialist aggressions, it is patently false to claim that it was ‘unprovoked’.
Looking back in anger
It is necessary to recall a few facts to set the context of the invasion of 24 February 2022:
-The Cold War was never fully closed after the collapse of the former USSR and the Eastern Bloc more than thirty years ago. The conversion of entire fractions of the former bureaucracies to ethno-nationalism in order to stay in power, as was already the case in the former Yugoslavia, the intervention of the great powers to operate a neoliberal and mafia capitalist restoration and to encourage clashes for their own benefit has been a constant since the 1990s in Eastern Europe.
-It is impossible to understand the current conflict without seeing the trauma of the decomposition of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the countries of the East, the dialectic of the armed conflicts that have taken place in the world since the end of the Cold War (NATO's attacks on the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya or the two American invasions of Iraq. In all cases except Afghanistan these were states traditionally allied with Russia), as well as the extension of NATO without and against Russia and the enlargement of the EU towards Eastern Europe, aspiring to this capitalist, neoliberal and increasingly despotic supermarket the countries of the former Soviet sphere of influence.
The material basis that explains the great antagonism between a NATO hegemonised by the US and Russia is the nature of Russian political capitalism, which, since the early 2000s, is no longer permeable to the penetration of the interests of transnational globalised capitalism, and tries to secure the interests of its own oligarchies on the basis of an authoritarian and anti-worker bonapartist power that seeks to safeguard its traditional zones of influence and its extractivist rentierism.
- Nor is Putin's imperialist and militarist reaction understandable without taking into account that what has broken out in February 2022 is the conclusion of a dispute for influence in Ukraine between Russia on the one hand and the US and the EU on the other. As recently as the 1990s, during Bill Clinton's presidency, Ukraine was the third largest recipient of US aid, only behind Israel and Egypt. A war foretold by many analysts, not for years, but decades in some cases.
-It is also important to remember that the invasion ordered by Putin in 2022 would have been impossible had there not been civil war dynamics in Ukraine since 2014, initiated after the overthrow of Yanukovych and the subsequent Russian occupation of Crimea, dynamics undoubtedly amplified and deepened by Russia's covert intervention and the military (we are talking about 3 billion dollars in military assistance between 2014 and 2022), financial, and technical support of the US and other NATO countries to Kiev in the inter-Ukrainian conflict (in the words of Stephen Kotkin, ‘Ukraine is not in NATO, but NATO is in Ukraine’). The lack of political will to implement the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements (‘they were for gaining time’, in the words of Angela Merkel) also opened the door to the Kremlin's turn to coercive diplomacy in autumn 2021, when, as is now public knowledge, it demanded a commitment from NATO not to integrate Ukraine, which was rejected by the military organisation in full awareness of the consequences of such a refusal.
All the actors in the conflict have trampled on the right of self-determination
While all the imperialist powers involved in the Ukrainian conflict invoke, in one way or another, the right of self-determination, they have all trampled on it (something similar happens, incidentally, with the ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-Nazism’ invoked by both sides, when, as is well known, both the Russian and Ukrainian governments rely on far-right forces and currents to stimulate militarism in their respective countries).
Putin's neo-Tzarism has obviously trampled on Ukraine's right to self-determination, a reprehensible ‘invention’ attributed to Lenin's malice, even if it then organises ‘referendums’ of little legitimacy in territories such as Crimea (despite the fact that a majority of its population was probably in favour of the 2014 annexation due to the enclave's specific history) or none at all in the areas it occupies in the Donbas.
Neither has the nationalist regime in Kiev, between 2014 and 2022, respected the cultural rights of Russian speakers and their will to achieve political autonomy in Ukraine (not to mention the right of self-determination of the Dombas).
But Western imperialism did not respect Kiev's self-determination either when it sabotaged the pre-agreement reached at the Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey in April 2022 (because the war had not yet served to wear Russia down militarily enough, as Boris Johnson would argue), nor when they tell Ukraine what to attack, when and with what weapons, totally subordinating Ukrainian decision-making to their own interests. Western governments do not care about the economic and demographic ruin of Ukraine, which has already lost a third of its population, a whole generation of maimed youth, hundreds of thousands of dead, orphans and widows, as well as a fifth of its national territory. The sole aim of Western imperialism has been to wear Russia down.
Dynamics, implications and risks of the conflict
-None of the proxy wars of the Cold War were fought in the North, let alone on the borders (and even within the borders) of a great power like Russia. Today the debate is whether or not to attack a nuclear power with long-range weapons in the face of evidence that Ukraine cannot win a conventional war of attrition... or else recognise reality and the ‘defenders of Ukrainian self-determination’ end up forcing Zelensky to negotiate. In the Cold War there were nuclear arms limitation treaties, today that has been systematically sabotaged, first by the United States and more recently by Russia. This has led to a scenario that is probably more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, where the Monroe Doctrine, which prohibits the presence of interests, allied regimes or military bases of other great powers, not on the borders of the United States, but in the Americas as a whole, was applied.
-It is also worth recalling that the initial enthusiasm of Western foreign ministries for the prospects opened up by NATO's proxy war against Russia on the back of Ukraine led not a few of their exponents to cherish the prospect of a Slavic Afghanistan (to use Hilary Clinton's expression), which would bleed Russia dry to the point of forcing regime change in Moscow. Biden, Von der Layen, Borrell and Stoltemberg repeated ad nauseam that the war crimes committed made negotiations impossible and that Russia's total defeat must be forced. In view of what has been tolerating to Netanyahu on a daily basis for more than a year now, the hypocrisy of Western imperialism is utterly scandalous.
While this has been the case from the beginning, it is now increasingly clear that this war cannot be concluded with a total military victory by either side without transforming the conflict into a direct inter-imperialist war with a very high risk of the use of nuclear weapons, which by its very nature, obviously, no one can win. It is therefore quite conclusive that fuelling the conflict with Western weaponry (first small arms, then armour, cluster bombs, fighter planes and medium- and long-range missiles) has contributed to escalating and prolonging the war, multiplying deaths and destruction and bringing us dangerously close to a world war. The recent ‘plan for victory’ being presented by Zelenski in Western chancelleries is quite explicit in seeking ‘victory’ by committing NATO to open war against Russia. Indeed, one of the great dangers of this war is that passive nuclear deterrence is being eroded and the great risk is that Putin will decide to replace it with active nuclear deterrence (read use of some tactical nuclear weapon to restore his credibility), something that cannot be completely ruled out (the insistence by Western politicians that ‘the Russian nuclear threat is a bluff’ is very irresponsible and dangerous, something that is unfortunately also thought by people on the left).
All available information suggests that Russia is slowly and not without difficulty winning a terrible war of attrition with huge casualties on both sides, has been able to resist economic sanctions and has strengthened its geopolitical and geo-economic ties with China. In building a war economy and coping with the impact of sanctions, Russia has not only strengthened the repressive aspect of its authoritarian Bonapartist regime (remember that Putin is a moderate, considering that the Kremlin is full of people demanding nuclear strikes on Paris, London and Washington...), but has been forced to engage in a process of reindustrialisation that is allowing for significant economic growth rather than the collapse sought by Washington and Brussels. While this favourable conjuncture for Russia may very quickly suffer if there is a reduction in the price of oil (a gender operation by Saudi Arabia to weaken Russia and Iran is not out of the question), it seems that the war has driven a geopolitical and geo-economic structural change of as yet unknown scope.
-Information is also emerging that points to Ukrainian authorship of the Nord Stream sabotage with the assistance of one or more NATO countries in the action (and undoubtedly with Washington's authorisation, if not direct involvement in the attack), dispelling initial accusations of alleged Russian authorship.
On European militarisation
The ‘Europe of defence’, an old EU project that has been promoted and legitimised thanks to the war in Ukraine, not only translates its desire to reinforce its ‘hard power’, especially in the melé to control resources in Africa in the dominant extractivist logic, but also aims to consolidate its role as a vassal force supplementary to the United States in a project of global imperialist domination that does not seem viable, given the correlation of forces. At the same time, Europe's military build-up is a flight forward, reflecting the disquiet generated among its leaders by the internal crisis in the United States.
-The Putinist invasion has allowed NATO to expand into Finland and Sweden, adding new tensions with Russia and ending a long history of neutrality for these countries (which partly cushioned important tensions during the Cold War). All of which had to be done on the condition that Sweden agreed to facilitate the extradition of several Kurdish militant refugees to the Scandinavian country and that NATO looked the other way while the Turkish Erdogan regime launched a full-scale invasion of Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan - a war that has, incidentally, gone completely unnoticed in the Western mass media. As is well known, NATO has been defending democratic values in Turkey today since the Cold War, just as it did when it hosted Salazar's Portugal and the colonels' Greece in the past.
In its relationship with Russia, the EU has not had diplomacy for many years. It has a ‘human rights policy’, i.e. the selective political use of human rights to put pressure on its adversary. It has an image policy and cultural war propaganda: just look at the abundance of Russophobes to whom it awards its literary and citizens' prizes, from the neo-con Anne Applebaum, to the Ukrainian writers Serhij Zhadan and Andrei Kurkov, whose main merit is cultural racism against everything Russian, to the detested French President Emmanuel Macron, who is crowing about sending French troops to Ukraine. It also has a policy of sanctions, which at the moment are turning against it, and finally it has a military policy. The Brussels world has all this, but it has no diplomacy. Statements such as that of the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, that ‘the situation will be decided on the battlefield’, show a purely military logic.
There is a structural link between European militarisation and European and NATO military intervention in Ukraine. On the one hand, the militarisation of the continent is related to the very needs of military intervention and the growing European involvement in the conflict. On the other hand, the war in Ukraine creates a pretext to accelerate and reintroduce a more far-reaching strategic agenda of European militarisation and has created a political climate in which it is very difficult to fight it. It is therefore contradictory to formally oppose the militarisation of Europe while supporting the growing and endless military intervention in Ukraine, when Ukraine is the main driver of militarisation on the continent.
A catastrophic war for the peoples of Ukraine and Russia
-This war has been catastrophic from every conceivable point of view: for the level of death and destruction (some estimates speak of almost a million deaths), for the militarist and reactionary spiral it has spread among the great powers, for the immense destruction of resources it entails in a world that must invest massively in energy transition and urgent climate stabilisation measures... In short, because it has fuelled the dynamics of fascisation typical of ultra-nationalist spirals, both in Russia and Ukraine, but also in Europe and the rest of the world. Feeding the current war and supporting NATO interventionism leads to an endless escalation in which only increases the spiral of death and destruction in Ukraine, with no prospect of a real outcome, and the risk of the situation getting out of control and the spread of the conflict to third countries.
The only solution for Ukraine's self-determination is negotiations to end hostilities and for Ukraine to return to neutrality and renounce NATO membership.... Had the March-April 2022 negotiations not been sabotaged, nearly three years of war would have been avoided and hundreds of thousands of lives saved... and Ukraine's negotiating position would have been much more favourable immediately after Putin's initial assault on Kiev was repelled. Now, when even NATO, through Rutte's mouth, recognises that the war can only be concluded at the negotiating table, having nurtured it for years for the sole purpose of using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder in its proxy war against Russia, it is going to see far more damaging negotiations for Ukraine. Nor can it be ruled out, as signs are beginning to show, that NATO will negotiate behind Ukraine's back when the military organisation comes to the conclusion that it no longer needs its services. There are plenty of precedents for this in history and it was perfectly foreseeable from the beginning of the war.
The martial law imposed by the Zelensky government, which has outlawed parties, persecuted activists and imposed ultra-liberal shock therapy on the population, also allows him to prolong his rule without going to the polls. His fate is tied to the support of Western powers and it is no longer evident that a majority of the Ukrainian population is in favour of continuing the war. A poll by Ukrainian media outlet ZN in June 2024 claimed that 44 per cent of the population supported immediate peace negotiations.
Given the situation in the Middle East, and bringing up Zelensky's statement that Ukraine aspires to become ‘A Greater Israel with a face of its own’ and that ‘security’ will be the great asset (indeed, Ukrainian troops have participated in almost all of Washington's military adventures since the 1990s, including Afghanistan and Iraq) and central theme in post-war Ukraine, it is important to remember that the use of the suffering of innocents has served before to legitimise the creation of gendarme-states totally subservient to imperialist interests. Just as the ‘holocaust industry’ has served the criminal interests of Zionism, it is not out of the question that the Kiev regime will capitalise on the current suffering of the Ukrainian people to legitimise the creation of a new Israel in Eastern Europe, making its antagonism with Russia its great economic, political and military asset. The founding of the state of Israel also initially confused large sections of progressive opinion, served to wash away Europe's guilty conscience over the Judeicide and allowed the discourse of the ‘only democracy in the region’ and ‘civilisation against barbarism’ to be agitated... with results that are well known eighty years later.
The tasks of revolutionary Marxists
The war in Ukraine has galvanised a whole series of reactionary tendencies that were already present in the European Union, the United States and Russia: the rise of militarism, the expansion of NATO, the increase in military budgets, the reconfiguration of the military industry, it has helped to bury the environmentalist agenda, it has fostered national unity around ‘democratic’ defensism, ethno-nationalism and has accelerated the authoritarian turn in all countries.
In this sense, the international Fourth International is committed to promoting processes of organisation and struggle against these tendencies, nurturing and participating in the movements against war, militarisation and for denuclearisation. The new internationalism must begin to organise against the interests and policies of the bourgeoisie in each country. Taking up the slogans ‘War on war’ and ‘The enemy is at home’ is essential for the working class to be aware of the dangers to which the current inter-imperialist dynamic is leading us, and thus to take up the best traditions of the workers' movement against warmongering and militarism. In this sense, the Fourth International will propagate the following demands:
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Immediate peace without annexations and the withdrawal of Russian troops.
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Demilitarisation and denuclearisation of the borders. An end to arms shipments by imperialist countries.
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The right of return of all war refugees, including insubordinates and deserters from both countries.
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Immediate amnesty for political prisoners, restoration of the right to demonstrate, assemble and organise and an end to emergency legislation in both Russia and Ukraine.
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Reception of refuseniks, deserters and refugees from both sides without bureaucratic and legal obstacles in the countries where they decide to settle, if necessary.
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The expropriation of the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who have used ethno-nationalism to stay in power and send the proletarians of both countries to the slaughter.
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Abolition of the Ukrainian foreign debt and an end to the economic and financial colonisation of Ukraine by international capital, as well as the neo-liberal and anti-working class measures of the Zelensky government.
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Dissolution of all military blocs (NATO, CSTO, AUKUS, etc.).
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Right of self-determination of the Dombas and Crimea.
The Fourth International is also in solidarity with the
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dissident social, trade union and political organisations persecuted and/or directly hit by the effects of the war in both countries, especially our comrades of the Russian Socialist Movement and Sotsialnyi Rukh in the Ukraine.
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With the fight against their own bourgeoisies in Ukraine and Russia. No to agreements with imperialism in Ukraine, no to militaristic projects in Russia. For internationalist fraternisation and an end to the conflict, without revenge and without plundering.
Solidarity with the Ukrainian and Russian working class, stop the war and the suicidal militarist spiral!
28 February 2025