By Frank Hansen

It’s been inspiring to join the hundreds of thousands marching in opposition to Israel’s attack on Gaza. At the beginning there were few Labour or trade union banners, but that is changing, as opposition to Starmer’s policy grows within the labour movement. Muslim voters – and Labour voters in general – are venting their disgust at Starmer’s one-sided support for Israel/US policy and his failure to demand an immediate ceasefire. The leadership is getting worried, not because they have any principles when it comes to imperialism (see Iraq), but because they may lose votes in key seats.

Blair suffered serious electoral setbacks due to the Iraq War and now Starmer has chosen to have his ‘war moment’ just before a general election. Labour is beginning to be torn apart and even the leadership now realise that the electorate may actually care about human rights and war crimes in Gaza. As Starmer backpedals and Wes Streeting miraculously discovers that Israel is going ‘beyond self-defence’, it is important to change Labour’s policy to one of solidarity with the Palestinians.

While much of the left supports a ceasefire and Palestinian self-determination, some are reticent and even opposed to linking this with the struggle of the Ukraine people against oppression. They refuse to recognise the similarity of these struggles for self-determination and fail to join up the fight against imperialism – whether it be western imperialism/Israel or Russian imperialism.

This week is the second anniversary of Putin’s terrorist onslaught against Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands have been maimed and killed and over 10 million have been forced to flee their homes. The indiscriminate attacks on civilians continue on a daily basis, as does the repression inside Russia against those who oppose Putin and the war, symbolised by the presumed murder of Alexei Navalny. The left needs to unite against the aggression of Putin’s reactionary, kleptocratic regime, which justifies its actions using lies, half-truths and Great Russian chauvinist ideology – see Putin’s ridiculous tsarist/Stalinist falsification of history in his interview with Tucker Carlson.

The need for solidarity with Ukraine is urgent and essential. There is a rally and march taking place on Saturday 24^th February 1.30pm from Speakers Corner. The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign are calling on the labour movement to attend this this event. “Two Years Strong – Ukraine is unbroken” is organised by the Ukrainian community in London including the Ukrainian left – the Union Federations and Social Movement and the Democratic Socialists of Ukraine. Please attend if you can.

Of course there are significant differences between Ukraine and Palestine in terms of their historical and political context, and the obvious fact that the Western powers supporting Israel are also currently standing with Ukraine – although this is beginning to waver.  Nevertheless, there is a key issue which links and unites these struggles  – the right of oppressed people to freedom and self-determination. 

The gross hypocrisy of the Western establishment in apologising for  Israel’s war crimes while opposing Putin’s is based on their own strategic interests, rather any real concern for the Ukrainian people. The key question for the left is whether the Ukrainians, like the Palestinians, have the right to self-determination and statehood without a major militarised power trying to oppress and terrorise them. Do they have the right to resist, stand up to war crimes and fight back? After all, the  tactics being employed by Netanyahu in Gaza – the incessant and indiscriminate bombardments, ultra-nationalist rhetoric, the falsification of history, the demonisation of resistance – are similar to those used by Putin in Chechnya and Syria and now in Ukraine.

In fact Gaza now resembles cities like Grozny, Aleppo and Mariupol after Putin had finished exercising his ‘right to defend Russia’ from ‘terrorism’ or ‘Nazism’ as in Ukraine. The level of destruction, the attacks on homes, hospitals, and women and children, plus the abduction of Ukrainian children, provides a very plausible case for genocide as in Gaza. 

In my view, the root of the confusion regarding Ukraine is that sections of the left have failed to grasp the impact that the collapse of the USSR has had on the fluctuating relationship between major powers. There is also a limited understanding of what has actually developed in Russia since 1990. As a result, a materialist approach to history has been replaced by theorising and using ‘facts’ and half-truths to justify a particular ‘line’. A very small minority seem to think that Russia isn’t an imperialist power and is waging a just war against Western imperialism.  Western Capitalism is basically the main, if only, enemy – anyone who stands up to them must be my ‘friend’ – for example, Iran, despite the oppression and massacre of the women’s movement there.

A more serious and influential current is represented by the Stop the War Campaign whose leadership have a ‘sit on the fence’, pacifist-type of approach. They oppose the Russian invasion, demand the withdrawal of Russian troops and call for a ceasefire. So far so good, but what underpins this is an analysis that, unlike Palestine, this isn’t really a struggle for ‘self-determination’ by the Ukrainians but an inter-imperialist ‘proxy war’ between Western imperialism and Russia.

The Ukrainians are reduced to the role of ‘proxies’ for the West – a bit like the West characterising groups in the Middle East who oppose Israel as ‘proxies of Iran’ – they are just being used and don’t really have any interests of their own. Stop the War oppose arming Ukraine – and call for an immediate ‘ceasefire’ and ‘peace talks’ – but, in the current situation, in whose interests would these be?

Once again the key issue is whether the Ukrainians have the right to self-determination. Certainly the founders of the USSR thought so as they enshrined it the Constitution. With the rise of Stalinism and the oppression of nationalities it became meaningless. However, with the breakup of the USSR, the Russian Federation formally recognised the independence of Ukraine in 1991. As part of this international treaty, which over 90% of Ukrainians voted for, there were no residual claims on its territorial integrity. What has changed since?

Western imperialism certainly does hold some responsibility for the problems that have occurred subsequently. For a start they encouraged Yeltsin and Putin to develop the type of extreme, free market capitalism that morphed into the oligarch/mafia regime that characterises Russia today. Putin was someone they ‘could do business with’ and they supported his undemocratic accession to power.

‘The Family’, the group of oligarchs that developed and thrived under Yeltsin, realised that he had to be replaced urgently as he was very unpopular due to the 1998 financial crisis and the impoverishment and chaos that shock therapy capitalism had produced. As Boris Kargarlitsky outlines in Russia under Yeltsin and Putin, they chose Putin as his successor on the basis that he seemed a competent ‘yes-man’. He was installed as Prime Minister and Yeltsin was then encouraged to stand down so that Putin became President without an election. 

Trotsky once described Stalin’s rise to power as a “grey shadow emerging from the Kremlin Wall” and something similar could be said of Putin, who was regarded by oligarchs like Berezovsky as a non-entity who could easily be controlled. Putin first emerged from being a middle- ranking operative in the KGB based in Dresden. With the collapse of the USSR, his rise to power in the new mafia/capitalist system – populated by many former Soviet bureaucrats – began in St. Petersburg, where he became a fixer and a contract dealer for Mayor Sobchak. He came to Yeltsin’s attention and was appointed head of the FSB (former KGB). As a result, when he came to power he had very strong connections among the St. Petersburg elite/mafia and the wider security services, police and army.

The problem ‘The Family’ had was that Russia still had a functioning – albeit flawed – ‘democratic’ system for electing the President and Putin was virtually unknown among the wider population. What followed was the launching of the second Chechen War and a massive propaganda and dirty tricks campaign – orchestrated by the FSB – which, according to journalist Anna Politkovskaya (subsequently assassinated), included bombings of apartment blocks in Russia. The aim was to whip up fear and nationalism and portray Putin as the strongman standing up to terrorism, before he faced an election in March 2000, which he then ‘won’.

Under his system, ‘democracy’ in Russia was steadily degraded over the next 20 years – involving total control of the media and judicial system, brutal suppression of any real opposition and nationalistic and reactionary culture wars. As Putin is about to face his next Presidential election, Russian ‘democracy’ is just an illusion.

Given the state of the Russian economy, Putin’s main ‘achievement’ was to stabilise the situation and develop a much stronger state apparatus. As Kargarlitsky points out, “the oligarchs had to be disciplined to preserve the oligarchic system, but the political leadership from now on had to belong to the people from the security apparatus.”

Oligarchs like Mikhail Khordorkovsky who didn’t accept these rules were imprisoned and expropriated, which enabled Putin and his cronies in the security forces to become major oligarchs themselves. Although some lucrative gas and oil companies remained or became state-owned, they were now run by the Putin clique who were able to siphon off funds as necessary. Rising oil prices enabled pensions to be paid and the  military system to be modernised. According to Navalny, corruption was now endemic throughout the state apparatus and Putin was one of the richest men in Europe.

The West continued to see Putin as a potential partner and backed Russia’s brutal war in Chechnya, later tolerating his intervention in other former Soviet states and even in Syria under the guise of the ‘war on terror’. However, as rivalries began to develop they also encouraged the eastward expansion of NATO – in fact Putin once said he might join it! However, these developments and associated rivalries after 2010, cannot be used to justify Putin’s war of conquest in Ukraine. Nor do they nullify the Ukrainians right to resist.

Gilbert Achcar’s recent book The New Cold War analyses the global order – or rather disorder – that has developed in the 21^st Century and is a useful guide to understanding the forces at play. It plots the rise of an  aggressive Russian nationalism and imperialism under Putin – partly as a product of Western policy and the world financial crisis of 2008, but also  in response to rising popular opposition inside Russia. As part of this process, Putin has attempted to rebuild a Great Russian sphere of influence based on tsarist history – denouncing the Leninist approach to self-determination in the process. As Ukraine began to slip out of Russia’s sphere, Putin opted for military intervention in 2014 – a full scale invasion followed in 2022.

Economically, Russia may be a considered a relatively minor imperialist power compared with the US and the EU. However, its oligarchs still have significant economic interests – industrial and agricultural – in Ukraine and other parts of the former USSR. Plus, Russia is a powerful nuclear state with a huge military machine which gives it the means to enforce its interests.

Much is made – especially by Putin – of the overthrow of Vicktor Yanukovych by the Maidan revolt of 2014, which is falsely portrayed as a CIA-inspired coup. As Gilbert Achar points out, in 2010 the Yanukovych government had passed a bill committing the country to a non-bloc policy while keeping open the prospect of joining the EU. This compromise seemed acceptable even to Russia, but what changed everything were large-scale, pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow in 2011-13.

“It was these protests that convinced Putin he faced a real threat from democracy washing over from Ukraine,” writes Achcar. Yanukovych ditched the draft association agreement with the EU under pressure from Putin. This is what really triggered the Maidan events of 2014, which were essentially a populist democratic revolt.

Putin’s response was to exploit and exacerbate the grievances that existed among some people in the Donbas and turn demands for more autonomy into a call for ‘independence’. The armed rebellion that followed was supported and financed by the Russian military and only succeeded as a result, for example in Crimea where Russian special forces actually led the ‘revolt’. As for ‘independence’, these areas have now been annexed into the Russian Federation and enjoy the same democracy and autonomy that exists for all Russians under Putin!

Stop the War fail to recognise that what is really driving the resistance in Ukraine is not Western imperialism, but the popular struggle of the Ukrainian people against the invasion. They ignore the fact that there is a left and a working class movement in Ukraine that is a key part of this struggle – while also having different interests from the Ukrainian government and the capitalist class. The only way that this resistance can be maintained is through economic support and, yes, the supply of weapons.

It’s one thing to demand a ceasefire in Palestine where the Palestinian people and its representatives are urgently calling for one, quite another to demand a ceasefire in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian people do not currently support this – simply because it would mean surrendering the east of their country and Crimea to Russian imperialism. Ultimately it is for the Ukrainian people not the British left to make this call.

The left needs to support oppressed people against imperialism in all its 21^st Century guises. Western support for Ukraine is based on strategic interests that can and will change – Orban has already tried to block EU funding and the Republican right in the US is denying Ukraine the means to resist. The possible re-election of Trump could lead to a deal with Putin being imposed on Ukraine. It is vitally important to build a solidarity movement with the Ukrainian people and those in Russia who oppose Putin’s war, just as it is to build solidarity with the Palestinians.  Already millions of ordinary people in the UK are concerned about these issues and there is strong support in the labour movement for both struggles.

What should really distinguish socialists from the Tories and Starmer is a consistent approach to opposing imperialism in all its forms and a determination to build solidarity with oppressed people. The left in Ukraine already realises this. The Social Movement which opposes the Russian invasion has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and humanitarian aid and has expressed its solidarity with the Palestinian people.

  Frank Hansen is a former Councillor in the London Borough of Brent.

Image: Flag of Palestine and Ukraine. Author: Jurta, licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.