To understand the current US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine, it is critical to review the background and implications of the 2014 far-right coup in Kiev, which overthrew the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. The coup was openly supported by US and European imperialism and implemented primarily by far-right shock troops, such as the Right Sector and the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party.
The coup was the temporary culmination of long-standing efforts by US imperialism to install a puppet regime on the borders of Russia and brought the world a major step closer to a war between the largest nuclear powers, the US and Russia. The regime change prompted the outbreak of an ongoing civil war in the east of Ukraine, between Russian-backed separatists and the US-backed Ukrainian army, that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and displaced millions.
In the US, the coup was a catalyzer for an ever more aggressive campaign against Russia and a significant shift to the right among layers of the upper middle class. US imperialism and NATO have funded the Ukrainian state and far-right forces with billions of dollars.
The German ruling class seized upon the coup as a pretext for aggressively stepping up its campaign to remilitarize and justify the crimes of fascist forces. For the first time since the end of World War II, representatives of a German government were seen on photos with avowed Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
Internationally, pseudo-left forces such as the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the US, the New Anti-capitalist Party of France (NPA), and the Russian Socialist Movement (RSM) supported the coup, falsely proclaiming it a “revolution.” The ICFI and WSWS alone advanced a principled, socialist opposition to this imperialist operation, warning the working class of its dangerous consequences. This topic page brings together key statements by the WSWS and ICFI on the coup, its implications, and the history of the fascist forces that were now brought to the fore as key props of imperialism.
This is the text of the speech given by David North to open the International Online May Day Rally hosted by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the WSWS on Sunday, May 4.
Link to audio
What has seemed unthinkable since 1945 has come to pass: while the US and Germany ruthlessly destabilized Ukraine, fascists have become the decisive force on the ground.
The crisis that has erupted in Ukraine following the right-wing coup engineered by the United States and Germany and the intervention of Russia into Crimea has created the most dangerous international confrontation since the end of World War II.
In 1997, former US security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski published a book entitled The Grand Chessboard that attracted considerable attention and treated America’s strategy for global supremacy. By chessboard, Brzezinski meant Eurasia, the enormous land mass comprising two continents and containing the majority of the world’s population.
The leaked tape of a phone call between the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine provides an unvarnished expression of the gangster methods employed by US imperialism.
One hundred years after the outbreak of World War I and 75 years after the start of World War II, the imperialist system is once again threatening humanity with a catastrophe.
On September 13 and 14, the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party) held a Special Conference Against War in Berlin. The following resolution was adopted unanimously by the delegates.
The same ruling circles, banks and corporations that unleashed two world wars are seeking to reprise their heinous crimes.
The German government’s aggressive action in Ukraine and the propaganda campaign accompanying it were carefully prepared over an entire year.
The February 2014 coup formed an important chapter in the prehistory to the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. However, ultimately, it was only part of a broader, worldwide eruption of imperialist aggression after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy. This timeline documents thirty years of unending imperialist wars that led up to the eruption of conflict between the imperialist powers and Russia in Ukraine in February 2022 and the response of the Trotskyist movement to these wars.
The February 2014 coup was accompanied by a sharp shift to the right of the ruling class internationally and, in particular, in Germany. Here, the same month that admirers of Nazi collaborators entered the Ukrainian government, a German professor, Jörg Baberowski, publicly declared that “Hitler was not vicious”. The German section of the ICFI, has spearheaded the fight against the return of German fascism and the historical falsifications advanced by its contemporary defenders.
Honouring war criminals and Nazi collaborators, promoting fascist militias, mafia-like fights between oligarchs, corruption and massive social inequality are the most prominent features of Ukrainian “democracy.”
For the first time since 1945, an avowedly anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi party controls key levers of state power in a European capital, courtesy of US and European imperialism.
The same ruling circles, banks and corporations that unleashed two world wars are seeking to reprise their heinous crimes.
Service’s public lecture was canceled and moved to a secret location from which all critics were barred.
Rossoliński-Liebe’s biography of Bandera provides irrefutable evidence for the horrific crimes and fascist outlook of Stepan Bandera, who is now widely glorified as a “hero” by the Ukrainian regime.
While Ukrainian fascists like Stepan Bandera are today glorified by the Ukrainian government and its NATO backers, the atrocities his followers perpetrated are deeply engrained in the consciousness of the Ukrainian working class.
The alliance between Canadian imperialism and Ukrainian fascism is most strikingly embodied in the person of Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. The granddaughter of a prominent Ukrainian Nazi collaborator who was provided refuge in Canada following the Third Reich’s downfall, she is the leading anti-Russia war-hawk in the Trudeau Liberal government.
The role that Snyder is playing in justifying the imperialist proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the alliance of US imperialism with the Ukrainian far right make it imperative to investigate his book more closely.
No aspect of contemporary politics in Ukraine or any other country of the former Soviet Union or, indeed, world politics, can be understood outside the context of the 1991 dissolution of the USSR by the Stalinist bureaucracy. The world Trotskyist movement provided a unique and far-sighted analysis of this momentous development. This topic page presents the most important documents of the intervention of the ICFI in the crisis of Stalinism and its response to the restoration of capitalism.
The “Open letter on the future of Ukraine” issued by Western academics and foreign policy operatives is a vile defense of the ongoing far-right protests in Ukraine.
The NPA’s support for a putsch it admits is led by fascist groups constitutes irrefutable proof of its passage into the camp of the blackest political reaction.
The struggle against imperialism, fascism and war requires the revolutionary mobilization of the working class on the basis of an international socialist program. Support for the Russian nationalist forces in eastern Ukraine plays into the hands of the fascist forces in Kiev, which are supported by the NATO powers.
In April 2019, the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky is elected president in a massive rebuke of the far-right 2014 coup. While he appeals to anti-war sentiments in the population, Zelensky maneuvers between the imperialist powers. When he tries to to broker a deal with the separatists in East Ukraine in collaboration with Germany, he confronts mass protests by the far-right. Moreover, he gets almost immediately embroiled in the US impeachment crisis. In March 2020, following the failure of the Trump impeachment by the Democrats, and amidst significant pressure from the far-right, Zelensky reshuffles his cabinet in March 2020, bringing in a large number of officials with close ties to the US that will play a critical role in the escalation of the anti-Russia war drive in the coming two years.
Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyi won the Ukrainian presidential elections Sunday in a massive repudiation of the incumbent president and the imperialist-orchestrated coup that brought him to power.
The public display of the prime minister’s ties to neo-Nazis is a calculated threat to the working class amid preparations for privatizations and ongoing fighting within the ruling elites over foreign policy.
The public hearings on impeachment have brought to light bitter recriminations within the US ruling elite sparked by the failure of its anti-Russia efforts in Ukraine.
With the firing of the cabinet, President Zelensky is preparing a massive assault on the living standards of the Ukrainian working class.
The move of the Ukrainian government follows a series of anti-Russian political crackdowns and military buildups that have exacerbated the threat of a full-scale war.
Neither Washington nor Brussels, which have been economically strangling Ukraine for decades, has ever cared about the well-being, dignity, or sovereignty of its people.
More than a quarter-century after the dissolution of the USSR, emigration continues unabated in Ukraine as workers flee poverty and war.
Despite little health or legal protections, Ukraine’s migrant workers are being forced to search for work in Europe’s farms and factories to avoid unemployment and social destitution.
The policies of the Zelensky government threaten the working class with a social and medical disaster of immense proportions.
Amid growing strikes of miners and other workers, the IMF is using the corruption of the Ukrainian oligarchy to push for social cuts.
