Ukraine: a bitter pill for the European imperialists, a delicious fruit for the American and Russian imperialists; while China is watching all along…

The path to a US-Russia agreement on the "Ukraine question," which has been in the air since Trump's election campaign, opened up less than a month after Trump took office in the White House, proving once again that it is only agreement or disagreement between Washington and Moscow that is decisive in both prolonging this war and ending it.

A BRIEF REMINDER OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR…

Three years ago, Russia's military intervention in Ukraine was intended to end a period when Ukraine was preparing for integration not only into the European Union, but above all into NATO. By halting this process of Ukrainian integration into the North Atlantic military forces, Moscow's imperialism posed the US and European imperialists with the problem of whether to go as far as a direct military confrontation with Russia in supporting Zelenskyy's Ukraine, or whether to refrain from encircling Moscow almost to its borders. That the United States and Europe have no intention of confronting Russia - whose nuclear forces they are well aware of - militarily was clear from the outset, but the objective of weakening Russia economically and therefore politically was thought to be achievable by other means; for example, through economic sanctions that were imposed just as soon as Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border, and through financial and military support for Ukraine in the war that has been under preparation since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The problem was to persuade Ukrainians to go to war with the Russians, not only on the political and electoral field (as witnessed by the «Euromaidan» demonstrations in the winter of 2013-2014 and the subsequent rise to power of Zelenskyy in 2019), but also on the military field, by deploying their own soldiers, their own proletarian labour force, their own population in defence of "Western values" and Euro-American interests. After the first month of the war, in early April 2022, the Ukrainian generals realized to such an extent that the Russian armed forces deployed in the field were difficult to stop and that the immediate future that loomed could be catastrophic not only and not so much for the population of the Donbas, but for the whole of Ukraine; so they pushed the Zelenskyy government to find a compromise with Moscow  to save the country from the disastrous consequences of a protracted war. For its part Russia continued to stress that the war was only a “special military operation” to defend the ethnic Russians of the Donbas and Crimea, who, despite the Minsk agreements backed by Merkel and Hollande, were the object of discrimination and violence from the Ukrainian government.

According to the international media, the immediate intervention by the UK's Boris Johnson, also on behalf of Biden, to prevent Zelenskyy from reaching an accord with Putin to end his”special military operation” was successful, as he was guaranteed all-round economic, financial and military support (as if he were a member of NATO), albeit without the foreseen direct intervention of NATO troops. Zelenskyy was apparently so well convinced by these promises that he counted on them, and for three years of war he constantly repeated the motto "until victory"; promises that European politicians continued to support until... the days before yesterday. Then came the US election, when Biden was thrown out of the game by his own health, and Trump, in his retaliation after winning back the White House, blew into pieces all the plans and perspectives that the Biden administration had orchestrated to... brought Russia to its knees.

Meanwhile, the states that have been actively engaged in the formulation of "peace plans" since November 2022 (starting with Ukraine of Zelenskyy himself, supervised by Biden, and on to Indonesia, China, Brazil, South Africa, etc.), have, in fact, demonstrated that they are obscuring, by their verbal rhetoric, which only serves to deceive "public opinion", the reality of the war conflict, in which much broader and "more important" interests are at stake: these interests are touching on the future arrangement of the imperialist powers in the face of a much more intense and "decisive" war conflict over the new world order, which all the main imperialist powers of the world, above all the United States and China, are inevitably going towards. The framework in which the new imperialist world order will be played out will certainly not depend on Zelenskyy's Ukraine, which will once again become –as it has since its independence in 1991 –one of the many pawns on the European chessboard, even though during these three years of war it has played the role of a bone of contention in US-Russian relations against its will, and considered itself to tip the balance in their relations. Today it is clearer than before – but we have already anticipated this in our articles– that the United States continues to treat Europe as a subordinate and not as an equal ally to be used on all occasions (peace and war); and that it is looking for all sorts of ways to break Russia away from its alliance with China and make it its own "ally" (as it did during and after the Second World Imperialist War in its joint rule over Europe); and that it is dedicating its plans for the future– economic, financial, political and military – to strengthening its position in a probable world war with China, since it is this imperialist power that America really fears. In his harsh and disrespectful manner towards friend and foe alike, Trump is, in fact, revealing what the decisive issues of the future really are for American imperialism: dragging Russia over to its side to cover the European war front means being able to devote the bulk of its forces to fight Chinese expansionism over the Pacific as far as Latin America and the Indian Ocean. That the interests of European imperialism are trampled underfoot by this plan matters relatively little to Washington: these interests have long been trampled on, since the post-World War II era, by their shackling in the Marshall Plan, in post-war reconstruction, in NATO, in the division of Europe – especially Germany – into a US-led West and a Russian-led East; and today by the withdrawal of the famous military and nuclear umbrella from European NATO members thereafter, letting them exhaust themselves and divest themselves of their weapons while financially and militarily supporting Ukraine in a war which, if the outcome were favourable to the West, would represent a victory for the Americans in the first instance, and conversely, if the outcome were favourable to Russia, would represent a virtual defeat for the European Union; either way, it will be a double "win" for Washington.

Why a double win for Washington? Because the numerous sanctions packages against Russia have done more damage to European economies than to Russia's (and not only considering the much higher prices of natural gas that no longer flows through Russian pipelines) because they have meant a not-to-be-missed advantage for American exports, such as liquefied natural gas, which Europe has had to resort to in order not to block its production wheels. This is not the first time that the US has used the weapon of fuel shortages in Europe to force its dependence on the US (1). Meanwhile, arms shipments to Ukraine have emptied European arsenals and forced EU countries to depend even more on the US arms industry to replenish their own armaments, giving the US another blackmail tool compelling Europeans to exhaust themselves due to their own rearmament. By largely ceasing to cover NATO's funding, the US is forcing European countries to substantially increase their GDP share allocated to NATO, which, while remaining firmly in the US's hands, is at the same time pushing the various governments to cut budget allocations for health care, public administration, social welfare, social assistance for poor families, etc., etc., just so that they can allocate hundreds of billions to rearmament.

All this is leading to a turn in the Russia-Ukraine war that is entirely in favour of the US and partly in favour of Russia, to the detriment of European interests, a turn whose consequences are affecting the EU without the EU having any possibility of altering its course. The European Union is an association of competing states which, although they have found in the euro and the 'common market' a number of facilitations for internal trade and the movement of capital there, have not found a single policy, a single military force, let alone a single economic structure; an association which aspires to be recognised as a single centralised state, which it is not and never will be. The power relations between states that have developed in the historical development of capitalism in Europe and the world are destined to be transformed not through economic or diplomatic agreements, but through economic and military confrontations. On its historical development curve, capitalism has developed unevenly in different countries and regions of the world. This does not mean that the economically backward countries of the early 20th century are doomed to remain backward forever, for capitalism, in creating new markets and making more thorough exploitation of old markets, merely develops capitalism even where it was previously almost non-existent or present in very backward forms. With the development of the capitalist economy, a proletarian class is created and developed, a labour force rescued from the backwardness of rural life and forced to be used in the factories not only of domestic capital but also of other countries. Just as capital circulates all over the world, so does the labour force of any nationality circulate all over the world, and by its struggle it constitutes one of the most pressing historical problems which the bourgeoisie has had to, must and will have to face. In the absence of the victory of the international proletarian revolution, when, on the wave of the victorious Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the international proletarian movement could (and one day will be able to) smash the capitalist economic system and its myriad contradictions and inequalities,  it has been possible in some areas of the world, for some countries, such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. (densely populated, with a large labour force, rich in mineral and natural resources, and driven by the same need as more advanced economies to develop their markets and production mechanisms) to achieve growth under the aegis of typical modern capitalism, and tend to imperialism. That is why not only the old imperialist powers, Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Russia, but also the new imperialist powers, since the 20th century the United States and in this century China, inevitably clash in a world market that never guarantees the full and satisfactory placement of all the commodities produced and all the capital accumulated.

The more capitalism develops, the more its contradictions develop and sharpen; the more capital concentrates, creating ever more gigantic monopolies, the more the factors for international confrontation accumulate. The world market suddenly becomes small, limited, commodities and capital no longer find a sale, economic crises become the norm, war with its destruction becomes the way out, and the more extensive the destruction, the more reconstruction will be a blessing for the strongest and best equipped capitalisms. Nationalisms, territorial sovereignty, democratic regimes, freedom of trade and enterprise, free movement of capital and people, the rule of law, all suddenly collides with the harsh reality of the dictatorship of capitalism: only force and violence count, and what is stronger and more violent than war? Where diplomatic and commercial agreements fail, blackmail and military force come in.

This is precisely the framework that emerged after the Second World Imperialist War, which for thirty years allowed Europe to produce, trade and exploit domestic and immigrant wage labour without any extraordinary economic and social upheaval; but after the general crisis of 1973-1975 and, above all, after the collapse of the USSR in 1989-1991, this framework has been transformed, thereby calling into question all existing inter-state relations and preparing the ground for those foreign policies of the various states which, in the historical heart of capitalism, that is Europe, are once again being inexorably turned into war acts.

…AND ESPECIALLY IN THE LAST 30 YEARS

The collapse of the USSR, the reunification of Germany and the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s definitively broke the commercial peace in Europe; this peace was "guaranteed" in a sense by the Russian-American joint domination over Europe after the Second World Imperialist War and by the very strong decline of the proletarian class struggle caused by the Stalinist counter-revolution with which the proletariat, not only in Europe but all over the world, was completely subordinated to the interests of capitalism. In the rest of the world, along with the economic development of capitalism in vast formerly backward areas, situations of strong inter-imperialist contradictions were re-emerging, with the old colonial powers in Asia and Africa being challenged in addition to these contradictions by anti-colonial struggles.

However, it was written into the history of the development of capitalist imperialism that with the economic recovery and expansion after the enormous destruction of the Second World War, all the characteristic elements of the economic-political and military contradictions between the old and new imperialist powers would return to the international framework of power relations.

It is indisputable that the United States of America – the real victors of World War II – which it emerged from with the maximum benefit, and which did not touch American soil and allowed Yankee capitalism to dominate the world with its industrial, financial and military might, made all the great countries of the world debtors; the United States had to, however, reckon that in due time, it would have to face other imperialist poles which had meanwhile been formed and developed over the decades, also with the help of American capital: in the first place a revived reunified Germany in Europe and Japan, and distant China was meanwhile poised to become an unstoppable superpower.

Leaving aside the myth of old Europe as the former ruler of the world, the fact remains that capitalist forces of the highest order are concentrated in Europe: in its continental space it represents not only a productive and financial force of great world importance, but also a market for all capitalist countries, large and small, including those outside Europe. The Second World Imperialist War, although the old Western powers, Great Britain and France, emerged from it victorious, along with Russia (by then fully counter-revolutionary), established the unquestioned supremacy of the United States to the extent that it subordinated Western Europe to its specific interests, which it had long shared with Russia as far as the eastern part of Europe was concerned. The Atlantic thus became, in addition to being the ocean that separates America from Europe, a bridge linking the United States and Western Europe in an alliance not between equals, but an alliance that sealed Washington's supremacy over London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome; an alliance that was also military, through NATO, which after the collapse of the USSR reached as far as Warsaw and then extended along a kind of long strip stretching from Helsinki south to Kyiv and Odessa.

Ukraine, which gained its independence in August 1991, could not remain a neutral land, neither in terms of the strategic interests of Washington (and London, its most reliable European ally), nor in terms of the economic and political interests of the European imperialist powers, much less Moscow, which in the course of twenty years found itself surrounded: in the west and in the Arctic by US-dominated Europe; in the east by China, which has once again become a "friend", but a treacherous one like all imperialist "friends"; in the east by Japan, a historical enemy and hitherto subject to Washington; and on the other side of the Pacific Ocean by the United States; in the south it has had to face, and still has to face, the perennial instability of the Near and Middle East, the ex-Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia, which are increasingly attracted by the European market and the dollar, and India, another Asian giant, more inclined to negotiate an alliance with Washington, to which it can give dominance over the Indian Ocean, than with Beijing or Moscow, with whom it is willing to trade, but with whom it is unlikely to tie its fate in a world war.

The European Union, led by France and Germany, has long sought to draw Kyiv into its economic and political structures, thereby attempting to protect it from Russia's attempts, declared or otherwise, to make it its conquered territory. The free and democratic elections that twice brought victory to Yanukovych – perhaps the only Ukrainian leader illusorily equidistant from both Moscow and NATO, yet portrayed as a puppet in the hands of Russia – were attacked by the European Union with the usual accusations of fraud and Russian interference; this stirred up a certain segment of the population to anti-Russian activity, as in the case of the Euromaidan protests of 2013-2014, whose protagonists included far-right ultranationalist groups, also responsible for the massacre of 2 May 2014 in Odessa during a demonstration supporting Yanukovych. After the fall of Yanukovych in February 2014, Kyiv launched a de facto «war» with the ethnically Russian populations of Donbas and Crimea, towards whom it took an increasingly discriminatory stance; Crimea declared its annexation to Russia in a referendum in March 2014, while the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence from Ukraine in May of the same year and came under Russian patronage. It was clear that only Moscow would recognise the annexation of Crimea, and that in due time, only Moscow would also recognise the independence of the two Donbas regions (officially in February 2022, a few days before the military invasion). For eight years since 2014, the so-called War in Donbas took place, in which pro-Nazi members of the Azov Battalion and other far-right groups, under the protection of the Ukrainian army, have distinguished themselves by assassinations and terrorist actions against Russian-speaking civilian population. A military clash could not fail to erupt given the conflicting political and economic interests between Ukraine, which intended to attach itself ever more closely to the United States and the European Union, and the ethnically Russian regions, Crimea and the Donbas, which intended to defend their nationalism and localism under the auspices of Russia. Democracy, freedom, national sovereignty are concepts behind which have always been hidden the bourgeois interests of various factions seeking to defend and expand the bits of power and the market; they have always been led in Ukraine by various billionaire oligarchs linked either to Moscow or to London and Washington.

The imperialist peace in Europe that resulted from the Second World War ended its long cycle of post-war financial economic expansion at the end of the twentieth century, with the beginning of a new cycle of inter-imperialist contradictions in Europe itself. If the nineteenth century was a century in which the contradictions between the European capitalist powers were concentrated in Western Europe, the twentieth century, owing to their global intensification, brought these contradictions to Eastern Europe. After having secured its domination of an already NATO-incorporated Europe, US imperialism necessarily advanced eastwards, inevitably clashing with Russian imperialism, which, since the collapse of the USSR, has been depriving it of its former satellites one by one, to the borders of the Russian Federation. After the incorporation of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic into NATO in 1999, Slovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria and Slovenia in 2004, Croatia and Albania in 2009, and small states like Montenegro and Northern Macedonia in 2017 and 2020, what is left outside NATO's clutches in Eastern Europe? It is Ukraine, given that Belarus was already heavily tied to Moscow, and in the Balkans, Serbia, the problematic Kosovo and the equally unstable Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are perennially plagued by intractable nationalist and religious contradictions.

In Ukraine in 2014, much more than in Yugoslavia in 1999, the fate of Russian and Euro-American imperialist policies was at stake. Both Moscow and Washington had little choice: either Ukraine was to break permanently out of Moscow's imperialist reach, for which political attempts such as Euromaidan could not – and indeed did not – suffice, and therefore at the same time the preparations were being made for war against Moscow, which did happen; or Ukraine itself, refusing to become a vassal of Washington and London, should have hastily taken refuge under Moscow's wing by virtue of its own linguistic, cultural, religious and historical affinities, which would have provided a solid foundation on which to build a less harrowing future prospect.

In reality, Ukraine had no other choice: the imperialists in Washington and Moscow had no intention of leaving the Ukrainian people – so much for democracy and territorial "national sovereignty" – to decide theur own future: they intended to seize the country in whole or in part, and leave it to armed confrontation to decide which scenario would come to pass.

THE WAR FOR PARTITION OF UKRAINE

An armed confrontation between NATO and the Russian Federation, i.e. between the two nuclear powers, was not coming up; that would have started World War III. Without NATO troops supporting pro-NATO Ukrainian troops against Russian troops providing support to pro-Russian Ukrainian militias, the war remained confined to Ukraine, but what was the predictable outcome? On the one hand, the partition of Ukraine, on the other, the weakening of Europe by the US, as we wrote in January 2023 (2).

Vilifying the enemy and presenting it as stronger and more aggressive than it really is is a propaganda ploy used by governments to pass off their warmongering policies as an urgent need for defence. The very fact that, in this clash of conflicting interests, the Ukrainian army was used as the sole «opponent» of the Russian army by European and American imperialisms on the collision course, showed from the very beginning that the interests that would have required the most drastic and general solution, which is a world war, were not at stake. As we have repeatedly stated, the Russian and Ukrainian proletarians were mobilized for a local war which had, on both sides, a twofold purpose: for Russian imperialism to forcefully enforce its control over the region of Ukraine – Crimea and the Donbas – which has always constituted a strategic outpost on the Black Sea, and to mobilize the whole country behind it supporting its imperialist interests; for European imperialism, and to some extent for the US, to encircle the Russian Federation from the south as well, and in parallel, on the side of Washington, to weaken the European Union so that it would become even more subordinate to the global interests of US imperialism.

Was the conquest of the whole of Ukraine or its Russian-speaking part a matter of life and death for Russian imperialism to the extent that it would risk provoking a world war? Certainly not, but as for any imperialist power, the domination or control of a strategic economic territory – and Ukraine is such a territory – is an important goal; to achieve it, especially if it is of equal importance to the vying imperialisms, force can be used, if political, economic and corrupting means would not suffice.

The tactic that Washington and London seem to have chosen was to push Russia into the first step, the invasion of Ukraine, and to make the Ukrainian army, its Nazi battalions and its population cannon fodder for the defence of Western imperialist interests. Of course, Washington and London had to find a government in Kyiv that would follow them and implement their strategy, and after several attempts they found it in the government of Zelenskyy, which has been in power since 2019.

In three years, the war, which according to media reports could have been stopped within a month or two of its start – as it appeared from the negotiations initiated between Zelenskyy and Putin in early April 2022 after long columns of Russian tanks were heading towards Kyiv–-, has, however, not stopped after the lavish promises of Boris Johnson (on behalf of the United States and NATO), specially dispatched to Kyiv, of strong economic, financial and military support from NATO countries «until very victory over Russia». To sum up, what is the situation so far?

Here are some data. Out of the total amount of around EUR 400 billion earmarked for Ukraine, the EU countries have allocated EUR 202.6 billion, the US has allocated EUR 119 billion; the largest financial allocations are EUR 27.2 billion from the UK, EUR 15 billion from Norway and EUR 12.4 billion from Canada. Of the EUR 202.6 billion, EUR 132.3 billion has been disbursed so far, coming from the EU, the UK, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, while the US has disbursed EUR 114.15 billion (3). As mentioned above, European countries have emptied a large part of their arsenals, not only of old armaments but also of armaments with advanced technologies: this puts them in great difficulty, especially since the new US President Trump has initiated the intention to drastically reduce the US financial commitments to NATO «for the defence» of Europe and to allocate most of its financial resources to the fight against the imperialist advance of China, thus shifting the centre of inter-imperialist disputes from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific.

But another fact, of particular interest to revolutionary communists and proletarians, is the very high scale of bloodshed in this war, both of Russian and Ukrainian proletarians. Different sources give rather contradictory figures, especially those of the Ukrainian and Russian ones, who have every interest in significantly reducing the number of their own dead and wounded; in any case, regardless of what is claimed by the big countries concerned and by the various media (Wall Street Journal, BBC, independent website Mediazona, New York Times, etc.), all the figures point to one million dead and wounded, more for the Russians than for the Ukrainians (4), not including civilian casualties. As always, in any bourgeois war, it is the proletarian masses who are forced to be slaughtered on various fronts, whether the war is fought by conventional tactics and means–- in the trenches or from house to house as in Bakhmut, Mariupol, Pokrovsk and a hundred other villages and towns – or by advanced technological means, from long-range missiles to drones destroying hospitals, schools, civilian buildings, farms, fuel depots or agricultural supplies, etc.

The systematic massacre of soldiers on both sides of the front is accompanied by another inevitable phenomenon: refugees abroad and internally displaced persons. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (5), to date, of a population of over 42 million, almost 11 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes; 6.9 million have fled abroad, 3.7 million are internally displaced within Ukraine; the majority, 76%, are women and children, while men are under martial law.

TRUMP, THE MAN OF IMPERIALIST PEACE

It is now evident and declared that Trump's policy is moving towards walking away from the US commitment to Ukraine that President Biden took on, preferring instead to restore direct relations with Moscow as the nail in the coffin not so much for Zelenskyy but for all European rulers. The agenda of «ending the war» has never been in the hands of Ukraine, or even in the hands of the EU, despite the conceit with which all European leaders have constantly blathered on about a «just» war and a «just» peace. The talk of supporting Ukraine until the Russians are expelled from Ukrainian territory, repeated over and over again both during the «counter-offensive» in autumn 2023, which was supposed to lead to an advance by Kyiv's troops to recapture the Russian-occupied provinces of the Donbas, and during the various attacks also on Russian territory and in the Black Sea, turned out in the end to be a gigantic mockery.

 Moreover, it demonstrated the criminal will to let hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians be massacred just so that the banner of nationalism could be proudly waved, committed from the first moment to the power interests of both national, European and US imperialism, which the pro-NATO bourgeois factions will profit from after the «end» of the war and after hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians will have been put on the scales.

Now it's a fact: Trump's first steps have taken the Europeans and Ukrainians out of the game quickly, paving the way for an end-of-war negotiation whose protagonists are only Trump and Putin, the White House and the Kremlin, and their specific imperialist interests. The European leaders, who were sure that, given the billions spent supporting the «Ukrainian cause» and the armaments provided, they would be able to be present at the negotiating table as a third actor and thus gain considerable economic and political benefits, had to swallow this bitter pill of being excluded from the final negotiations; they can only hope that in the shadow of the Russian-American talks some secondary advantage will also emerge for them, for example in the reconstruction of the country: it has been estimated that some 500 billion euros will be needed to rebuild homes, energy and transport infrastructure, services and restart the country's economy, and these billions will increase if the conflict continues (6).

Another little surprise that Trump left for the Europeans was to demand from Ukraine an exclusive concession for 50% of the “rare earths” in the Ukrainian subsoil. As is well known, the minerals contained in the so-called rare earths are indispensable for high-tech industries (computers, smartphones, batteries and high-tech energy technologies); the US interest is to increase its competitiveness with China, which currently controls 70% of the world's rare earth mining capacity and 90% of its processing capacity (7). Indeed, the Ukrainian subsoil is very rich in a number of minerals and metals that are indispensable to modern industry and require significant investment to extract and process; investment that only the major financial powers can afford, and this is what Trump is counting on, in addition to being the only one who can agree with Russia to “end the war” and decide to direct significant investment into Ukrainian territory. However, the areas with Ukrainian rare earths are quite scattered, and around 50% of them are in territories occupied by Russia, which already has this treasure in its clutches and is certainly not going to make it available to Trump and some Zelenskyy. The negotiations with Russia that Trump has in mind cannot miss this chapter, the conduct of which will certainly be to Zelenskyy's detriment, while the Europeans are, as has already been said, out of the game.

The «peace» that is looming, as we wrote in previous issue of our papers (8), is an imperialist peace:; that is, not a permanent peace that would make the factors that caused the conflict disappear, but a military truce, in which the causes of the conflict are «suspended» and room is given to more immediate interests linked to economic recovery and a less turbulent and fraught social reality, in which, however, accumulate those factors of imperialist rivalry which will inevitably return at a later stage to fuel unrest and military clashes.

What will happen from now on is more about how than when to end this war, and the how can only be imperialist, i.e. oppressive in all respects. The Ukrainian bourgeoisie leading Kyiv will suffer a debacle and will certainly want to heal itself – as is always the case with defeated bourgeoisies in war – on its own proletariat by exploiting and crushing it even more than before the war, under the pretext that "it is necessary to revive the national economy", not forgetting to stir up nationalist hatred against Russia and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The bourgeois peace will not be a real peace for either the Ukrainian proletarians or the Russian proletarians, even if the Kremlin drags them into celebrating a peace that will be passed off as a victory over Ukrainian Nazism and over Ukraine's integration with the enemy NATO.

The future for the proletarians in Ukraine and Russia can never mean peace and social welfare; their post-war period will be marked by exploitation and wage oppression as much and more than before the war, not least because they will have to face an economic crisis which the capitalist system is unable to avert except temporarily. Their future, like the future of the proletarians of Europe and America, will be particularly difficult because they have become too accustomed to relying on economic and social security, which was and still is based on the oppression of weaker peoples and countries by their own imperialisms; an oppression through which their own imperialisms have succeeded and still succeed in providing them with certain privileges (wages, housing, pensions, medical care, etc.) which the proletarians of the dominated countries can only dream of.

The way out of exploitation, misery, life insecurity and war is precisely the opposite of the collaboration between the classes which every bourgeoisie begs and demands of its proletarians: it is class struggle in defence of the immediate and future interests of the proletariat, the recognition of the class antagonism which is a reality for every bourgeoisie and every proletariat, and which the bourgeoisie constantly puts into practice in defence of its immediate and future class interests.

However remote this way may seem today, it is the only way that the proletariat can take in every country, and thus fight on the same terrain on which the bourgeoisie wages its struggle systematically and every day against the proletariat; it is the only way on which it is possible to build class solidarity among proletarians, the class solidarity that thwarts the plans of each bourgeoisie to drag them off into its own competitive wars and armed conflicts.

It will be the Americans and the Russians imperialists who will dictate the terms, it is they who will have to find common ground; and this can only be to the detriment of Ukraine, which will then be able to return to enjoying its «independence», «territorial sovereignty» and economic and «peaceful» reconstruction on a territory that will be truncated compared to 1991. It could conceivably end up like in 1953 between North and South Korea, when a red line was drawn that neither side was allowed to cross; more likely, however, it will take the form of an ever-ready-to-explode division that neither the Ukrainians in the Donbas nor the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the Donbas will accept, and where Russians could behave like Israelis in relation to the Palestinian territories. The Russian-Ukrainian peace will be a war truce rather than a period of peaceful development for both countries.

(1) On the subject of the shortage of oil and petroleum products, see «La 'bella epoca' dell’imperialismo USA» in Il programma comunista, no. 4, 1957.

(2) See «Ucraina, Corea del XXI secolo», Il comunista, no. 176, January-February 2023, and «La guerra in Ucraina serve agli USA per indebolire l’Europa», in the same issue.

(3) https://www.linkiesta.it/2025/02/aiuti-ucraina-dati-europa-italia-stati-uniti/, 19 February 2025.

(4) https://tg24.sky.it/mondo/2024/11/18/morti-guerra-ucraina-russia;  https://www.internazionale.it/ opinione/pierre-haski/ 2024/09/19/un-milione- vittime-guerra-ucraina; https://www.vaticannews.  va/it/ mondo/ news/ 2024-11/ucraina-mille-giorni-conflitto-numero-vittime-incertezza.html.

(5) https://www.unhcr.org/it/notizie-storie/storie/guerra-in-ucraina-la-risposta-umanitaria-dellunhcr/ z 21. 2. 2025.

(6) https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/2025/02/20/news/ucraina_ricostruzione_500_miliardi-15013239/

(7) https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/ 2025/02/10 /news/terre_rare_ ucraine_quelle_ immense_ ricchezze_  sotterranee_ che_fanno_ gola_ putin_e_trump- 14993264/

(8) Cf. «Russia-Ukraine War: Imperialist Peace on the Horizon…», Proletarian, no. 22, February 2025.

22 February 2025

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