Message to Ukrainian Australians on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 19 February 2025

 

February 23, 2025, marks the 3rd anniversary of Russian imperialism’s illegal and unjust war of aggression against Ukraine. 

On February 25, 2022, we issued a statement condemning Putin’s invasion, saying “Ukraine has become the battleground of the rival imperialist blocs of the US-NATO-EU and of the Russian Federation. A struggle over imperialist spheres of influence is at the heart of the crisis. It arises due to the uneven development of the strengths and weaknesses of the powers and of their abilities to protect their respective spheres of influence.”

On the first anniversary of the invasion, we attended rallies of Ukrainian Australians and distributed a leaflet headed Russian imperialists – out of Ukraine!

After reviewing Putin’s “justifications” for his aggression, and the role of the US in creating instability in Ukraine as part of an expansion of NATO towards the east, we concluded “Ukraine for the Ukrainians, not for the Russians, and not for the US and NATO.”

We stand firm in our belief that, as Ho Chi Minh said of Vietnam, “nothing is more precious than independence and freedom”.

Today, fresh dangers face the Ukrainian people.

The Russian authorities not only continue their aggressive ad unjust war, but impose new repression on Ukrainians in Russia itself. 

Of the more than thirty Ukrainian cultural autonomies and organisations that existed in Russia at the end of the 2010s, only a few continue to function actively. Most of them exist solely due to their complete loyalty to the Russian state authorities.

In 2024, the Russian government initiated a bill to denounce the agreement with Ukraine that regulated the activities of information and cultural centers. This decision was the final blow to the National Cultural Center of Ukraine in Moscow - one of the last legal centers of Ukrainian culture in the Russian capital.

Activists who tried to continue working to preserve Ukrainian culture and identity are under constant threat of detention, fines, or other repressive measures. 
Our comrades in the Russian Maoist Party initiated a statement, “Solidarity with the Ukrainians of Russia” which was released on January 6, 2025 and signed by ourselves and 17 other Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations. They included our comrades in the Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine.

When it was announced that North Korea was sending troops to support Russian aggression, we released the statement “Condemn the DPRK’s sending of troops to the Ukrainian conflict” on 6 November 2024.

Now, a further complication has emerged with the election of Donald Trump.

Ukrainians must maintain their vigilance and not place any trust in the new US President.

He must not be allowed to do a deal with Putin at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

He has boasted that he will end the war in a day.

But he has also cited his own imperialist aims to absorb Greenland into the US, retake the Panama Canal from Panama, and make Canada the 51st state of the US. He has proposed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza for the sake of a US-led real estate development.

Nothing would suit him better than a deal with Putin based on a redivision of areas of influence and the seizure of territories not their own.

To that end, the February 7 “deal” presented to Zelensky by Trump, requiring Ukraine to grant the US the right to oversee Ukraine’s mineral resources, ports, energy infrastructure, and future economic projects must be rejected. The agreement would claim a larger share of Ukraine’s GDP, at $500 billion, than Germany’s post-World War I reparations under the Treaty of Versailles.

For our part, our focus as an Australian Marxist-Leninist Party is on winning our own anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

In this conflict, there is no “good” imperialism – neither Russian nor Western.

Ukraine needs to defeat the tiger that has burst in through the front door, while keeping out the wolves that lurk around the back door.

We hope that the Ukrainian working class will establish its leadership in the resistance and guarantee Ukrainian independence through a socialist state.

Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

-----

Go back