This February 24, 2023 marked 1 year since Putin’s counterrevolutionary invasion of Russia into the territory of Ukraine. It is a fundamental conflict on the world political scene where, from the MIT-FI, the Chilean section of the LIT-FI, we have positioned ourselves for the victory of the popular workers’ resistance in Ukraine against Putin’s invasion.
By MIT-Chile
The Senate of the Chilean Congress agreed to receive this Tuesday, telematically, the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, in a joint session, to hear his message regarding the war that his country has waged against Russia since February 2022. However, the The proposal was repeatedly rejected by representatives of Apruebo Dignidad with the argument that international relations must be established by the President of the Republic or the Foreign Ministry.
The parliamentarians of Chile Vamos, promoters of the coming of Zelenski, speak with the hypocrisy of condemning the violations of human rights that have been seen during the course of the war after Russia invaded Ukraine, but they turn a blind eye to his own history: a right-wing coalition whose several of its components were active collaborators of the dictatorship and that had no problem applying the policies of hunger and repression under the military regime, just as today they have no qualms about justifying the deaths and mutilations after 18 October.
This would not be the first exhibition of the Ukrainian president in Chile. Two weeks ago, Zelenski participated in a telematic session with President Gabriel Boric. In that instance, Boric expressed his solidarity with the European president and declared that he will continue to support all efforts “to achieve the necessary peace”, however, this effort has no relationship with the Ukrainian people, let alone with the Ukrainian workers’ resistance; The condemnations and moral support of the Chilean government are words to the wind, because commercial relations and business between Chilean businessmen and Russian businessmen do not stop at all. While salmon, copper, seafood (products that are not accessible to the common people in Russia) are shipped from Chile, we import hard coal (a type of coal), ammonium nitrate (used to make fertilizers, matches or antibiotics) and Delivery of Russian origin YANGO, a subsidiary of Yandex, a technology conglomerate based in Moscow and which makes more than 50,000 deliveries per month in Chile, continues to operate in our country; counting among its clients retail sectors such as Hites, La Polar, Sparta etc. and that will soon be extended to Mexico and Bolivia.
But this hypocrisy is the same that the imperialist nations do with Russian capital, because Yandex itself, as a sample button, operates in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom without it being sanctioned in any country. The same cynicism with which NATO turned a blind eye to the seizure and annexation of Crimea and continues to do so. At the same time, they say they are sending weapons to the Ukrainian resistance, but they do not say that these weapons trickle in, because their interest is not to defeat Putin but rather to force him to negotiate an exit that could even mean the loss of Ukrainian territory.
But this cynicism also touches those who maintained and continue to maintain that Putin initiated a process of de-Nazification of Ukraine and an anti-imperialist and anti-NATO action, but in the face of these two assertions they forget the fact that Putin himself has financed the far-right campaigns in France like that of Marine Le Pen and the National Front with about US$11 million through the Russian bank: the First Czech-Russian Bank. The existence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine like the Azov Regiment in no way proves that the Ukrainian working class being massacred is neo-Nazi. The presence of extreme-right groups is very minor in the Ukrainian army. At the same time, in Russia there are innumerable neo-Nazi and extreme-right organizations, such as the Wagner paramilitary group itself, today a key player in the war on the Russian side.
They also omit the fact that Putin’s army has not fired a single bullet against any soldier of the imperialist powers, let alone NATO; since their main objective has been to fire against the non-regular Ukrainian army, since 70% of the troops are made up of the working class, whom Zelensky is more concerned with disarming, instead of expropriating the Russian oligarchs in Ukraine themselves.
In this war of national aggression, it is a crime to side with the aggressors, as is done by a large part of the Chilean left, such as the PC(AP), different sectors of the MIR, some groups called “anti-fascists” and Stalinists. It is also a serious political error to maintain neutral or pacifist positions saying NO to the War as if it were not the continuation of the class struggle, as the Communist Party of Chile or the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PTR) do, because That is concretely saying today to the resistance of the Ukrainian people, who at this moment and with arms in hand are self-organizing, to surrender on their knees in front of an invading capitalist nation.
Last but not least, Zelenski is not a representative of the working class and the people who are fighting on the front lines, but rather of the Ukrainian oligarchs who want closer relations with North American and European imperialism. While millions of workers give their lives at the front, Zelenski has been promoting reforms against the working class, with a labor reform and the privatization of companies. The Parliament and its government support the bosses who are reducing or not paying wages and rights to workers, as denounced by the Ukrainian labor leader Yuri Samailov.
Faced with this war of national aggression, we are not neutral or pacifist, we are as the International Movement of Workers – Chilean section of the International League of Workers IWL-FI for the victory of the Ukrainian working class:
For the expropriation in Ukraine of all the companies of Russian oligarchs that are still operating!
No less right to the Ukrainian working class that today is the motor of the resistance!
Let Chile break commercial and diplomatic relations with Russia!
For the defeat of the invading troops and the territorial integrity of Ukraine!
For an independent, free and sovereign Ukraine, ruled by the workers!