International youth for the liberation of Ukraine

Working class youth at the forefront

Young people from dispossessed working-class families are at the forefront of international
struggles against political, social and economic oppression; they play a key role in the fight
for democratic freedoms, as well as defending against the attacks of the ruling class on our
standards of living — lowering our standards of education, housing and working conditions.

The youth of Ukraine are not in an enviable position at all. Their internal fight for democracy
and against authoritarianism still rings hollow to this day: feelings of indecision and
insecurities regarding their future have been weighing on their minds for more than 30 years.
Their jobs are rarely enjoyable or well-paid, their education happens far away from their
campuses, and their aspirations are regularly destroyed by an imperialist Russia.

The youth of Ukraine today are seeing their lives and their cities being destroyed, and their
people being bombed and massacred by Russian troops. They are forced to neglect or give
up on their studies and life plans. Young Ukrainians are joining territorial defence regiments
alongside the rest of the working class, fighting on the front lines on the same basis as the
armed forces of Ukraine, even though Zelensky’s government has recently approved two
laws (laws 5371 and 5161) that allow worsened working conditions. This is clearly taking
advantage of the war to evade any possible opposition. Ultimately, the Ukrainian government
is weakening the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, as the resistance is primarily
that of working-class people.

In spite of the betrayals by their own government, workers and dispossessed youth are
going to war to defend the integrity of their country, their way of life and, ultimately, to defend
their right to political self-determination against Russian dominance. The dispossessed youth
of the rest of the world must ask themselves what their position should be on the Ukrainian
war.

What should be the position of young people internationally regarding the war in Ukraine?

The Ukraine war is a consequence of the invasion perpetrated by the 2nd strongest military
power in the world — the Russian army, led by Putin’s government — against a much
weaker country, historically oppressed by Russia. The historic oppression of Ukraine was
initially carried out by the tsarist Russian empire, with figureheads like Ivan the Terrible,
Peter I, Catherine I. Later, it was taken up by Joseph Stalin and the bureaucratic,
authoritarian regime of the USSR, which acted against the right to national
self-determination that the Ukrainians won during the Ukrainian revolution in 1917-1921. And
now it is Vladimir Putin, who has suppressed any number of ethnic minority groups: from
Crimean Tatars to Ukrainians and Chechens, and from Yakuts to Mari.

The Russian regime is playing an utterly reactionary role in Eastern Europe and Asia. Its
internal policy is aimed at atomising and depoliticising the society, purging the opposition
(including left-wing forces) and supporting organisations with blatantly ultra-right and even
fascist rhetoric. Not to mention the aggressive anti-LGBT propaganda on state channels and
its persecution of LGBT people. At the same time, with its foreign policy the country
enthusiastically supports or openly participates in the suppression of popular and workers’
protests, which has been seen repeatedly in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Chechnya, etc. The fact
that Russia opposes itself to the United States does not make it a progressive, democratic
regime.

The front line of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s claws has been, and always will be
nourished by the student movement. Students were present in the fight for Ukraine’s
independence that culminated in the student Revolution on Granite, the Orange Revolution,
and allowed the transition to democracy to properly begin. They were also present in the
Revolution of Dignity (also known as the Maidan Revolution), which solidified Ukraine’s
economic and political breakaway from Russia. The Maidan revolution, sadly, came at a
cost: Russia saw it as the last straw, and decided to annex Crimea and start a war in
Donbass. By 2022, Russia wasn’t satisfied with the status-quo, so they began a full-scale
invasion of Ukraine to impose their political and economic interests over the will and
resistance of the Ukrainian people — which remain very strong.

Every nation should have the right to defend themselves against oppression, to defend their
culture, language, political self-determination and national sovereignty. It is not Ukraine that
is attacking Russia, it is Russia that is destroying a country, as they did in Syria. Because of
this, the youth of the world must support the Ukrainian resistance and the defeat of the
Russian army. We cannot fall for Putin’s propaganda about the “denazification” of Ukraine:
the infamous Azov Battalion consists, at best, of 2500 people (the lowest account says there
are only 900) while today there are more than 700,000 people enlisted in the Ukrainian
resistance.

Young men and women, students and workers, comprise a considerable part of Ukraine’s
armed forces, particularly the territorial defense. Although the state exempts university
students from conscription, many students participate voluntarily in the armed resistance.
The historic struggle against Great Russian oppression is, ultimately, a struggle for Ukrainian
liberation and independence against any form of imperialist domination. That is why the
Russian army must be defeated.

How should we support Ukrainian fighters?

The current Russian strategy is a massive use of heavy artillery. The Ukrainian people want
to fight but they don't have the necessary weapons to destroy Russian artillery and planes,
so it is a matter of life and death that the Ukrainian people get the weapons they need.

This is why the most important method of supporting the Ukrainian resistance is by
demanding the unconditional supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine. That is the only way they
will be able to win the war. Any other position, such as pacifism, or support only in the
abstract, means practically denying the right to self-defense, and contributes to the Russian
victory. The Ukrainian people have already taken on the task of defending themselves, which
has kept the war going until now. But in order to win this war, it needs material support,
specifically heavy weapons.

Defending Ukrainian resistance does not mean supporting NATO or the Zelensky
government.
American and European imperialism, despite promising weapons, do not send what is
needed, and take the opportunity to justify their own re-armament. At the same time, EU
hands are stained with Ukrainian blood, as they finance Putin's military campaign by buying
gas and oil from Russia, and continue to appropriate Ukrainian wealth through foreign debt.
NATO and the EU do not want a total victory for the Ukrainian resistance, they instead
pressure Zelensky to accept dividing the country with Russia, according to an imperialist
partition of the territory.

NATO denying necessary armaments for the Ukrainian resistance leaves Ukraine in harm’s
way. European governments have only taken the (superficial) position of support they
currently hold because the Ukrainian masses have resisted from the beginning, and because
the masses internationally are against Russian aggression.

At the same time, Zelensky took advantage of the war to attack workers' rights and the rights
of young people, both in general and particularly those who were on the frontline. They have
just passed 2 laws that, on the one hand, create a new form of labor contract deregulating
the limitation of working hours, and on the other hand allow capitalists to ignore workers’
rights in companies with more than 250 employees. Capitalists are also being permitted to
dismiss any workers who have gone to the front lines to defend their country.

The situation for students is no better: the Ukrainian state still forces students to continue
paying for their education, even though in many places it is not taking place, and anywhere
else it lags far behind the pre-war level. It has become more and more frequent for students
at the front to receive letters from their educational institutions stating that they will no longer
be able to continue their studies due to problems with the university administration.
Meanwhile, the deputies increase their own salaries, showing that the Ukrainian people
cannot trust either the Zelensky Government or the parliament.

The need to carry out a major international youth campaign in support of Ukrainian
resistance and self-organization.

Young people are the generation that will live in this world for the longest, but we were never
given a chance to decide how it works or to attempt to change it. In addition to fighting for
our democratic rights, we must also build a world different from the one we were born into.
May it be a world of liberation for young people, students, and workers.

But to build a new world we have to be clear: ultimately, neither NATO, nor Russia, nor any
bourgeois government will guarantee the rights and lives of young people and workers if that
goes against their economic and political interests; on the contrary, they will attack them, as
we are currently seeing day after day. We can only guarantee our political independence by
taking the struggle into our own hands and advancing our political self-organization, as the
Ukrainian youth, students and workers are doing.

Today, the primary task for young Ukrainians looking for the right to political
self-determination (and many other rights) is to defeat the invading Russian troops. That is
why we must carry out an international campaign of solidarity, bringing together young
people from around the world who wish to support the Ukrainian resistance. Young people
who are for the defeat of the Russian troops, for the unconditional delivery of weapons to
Ukraine, and the cancellation of foreign debt.

We, supporters of the Ukrainian youth and working class, demand the unconditional
shipping of heavy weapons to Ukraine!