The Russian and Ukrainian Proletariat: Sacrificial Victims in the Clash of Imperialisms

The war in Ukraine Originated from the international economic and political crises of the capitalist mode of production which has pushed bourgeois states to rearmament and war.

If some skirmishes have happened in this part of the world and not yet in others, it is because war in Europe has been brewing since at least 2014. It began with the regime change in Kiev and later continued with the start of the war between Ukraine and the Donbass republics, which made Ukraine an area of contention between regional imperialist rivals.

In laying out the characteristics of the war in Ukraine, we have argued that since its outbreak the war was and is imperialist on both sides.

Ukraine is not fighting a war for its national freedom and independence. Rather, it has placed itself at the beck and call of American imperialism and, then, European imperialisms, both of which are using the conflict to strike at Russia.

For its part, Russia is waging a war in Ukraine in order to both conquer territory and wrest its neighbor from the Western sphere of influence. Redrawing the balance of power in Eastern Europe in its own favor.

On Ukrainian soil, a war is not being fought between only Russia and Ukraine. In fact, the real protagonists in this war are the American and Russian imperialisms. Europe also participates to some extent, with the enthusiasm of the British and Poles on the one hand. On the other the reluctance of the Germans, who had to adapt with American pressure.

The war itself was not only against Russia but also Europe, and Germany in particular. Contrary to its own national interests of maintaining excellent economic relations with Russia so as to ensure a supply of cheap energy products, Germany had to align itself with American dictates.

The only true casualty in this war, however, is the proletariat. The proletariat is always cannon fodder for imperialist wars. Even when not on the front lines, the proletariat still suffers the consequences of deteriorating living conditions and such other miseries. First and foremost to suffer, of course, have been Ukrainian and Russian proletarians.

The Situation on the Frontlines

In Ukraine, the conflict continues with its trail of massacres among soldiers, destruction of the cities, and misery. Millions of Ukrainians have been starving, cold and under shelling, or were forced to leave the country.

A war of unprecedented intensity since World War II is raging in the heart of Europe. It is driven by the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and the deployment of vast numbers of armored vehicles, aircraft, and missiles. The war in Ukraine has served as a testing ground for new supplies from the war industry, merging modern technology with the past, including the resurgence of assaults on enemy trenches. This has resulted in high casualties on both sides, the numbers in the order of hundreds of thousands, which the political and military leaderships of the countries involved keep obscure.

How it has now come to nearly three years of war. This can be explained by misplaced expectations that have motivated the real protagonists of the current war.

Somewhat reasonably envisioning a short war, Russia launched attacks in several directions. One of these attacks was directed toward the capital, Kiev. This was an attempt to bring about a quick fall of the Ukrainian government and its possible replacement with one better disposed toward Moscow. On the other hand, the United States, together with the British, vetoed the negotiations that Russia and Ukraine had initiated in Belarus and continued in Turkey. This veto partially stemmed from the resistance put up by the Ukrainian army, which as early as April regained control of the Kiev oblast and drove the Russians back to the northern border. It also came from the effort to inflict a heavy strategic defeat against Russian imperialism.  Expectations were that Russia would be economically crippled by sanctions and mired in a fierce war against an enemy heavily armed and founded by the United States and other allies.

The Russian push toward Kiev ended in early April. The offensive then focused on the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, as well as the Kharkiv oblast. It achieved a major success in May with the capture of Mariupol, which allowed the Russians to join the territories of Crimea and the Donbass together.

A crisis in the Russian advance into Ukrainian territory occurred in September 2022. A counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions overwhelmed the then-weakened Russian defenses and recovered territory from Russian armed forces.

However, the carnage that was the May 2023 capture of the important town of Bakhmut (which had a population of over 70,000 before the war) in the Donbass region demonstrated that Russia was still capable of sustaining a war effort.

In June 2023, a major Ukrainian counter-offensive began, which aroused great enthusiasm among Kiev’s allies.

The result was an enormous failure. The Ukrainian army failed to break through Russian defenses and suffered significant losses of men and vehicles on the ground.

Since December 2023, the Russian army’s advance has been slow but steady. They have taken one location after another in the Donbass. One strict example was the important town of Avdiivka, Which was contested until it finally fell to Russia in February 2024.

On August 6, 2024, Ukraine launched an attack on Russian territory in the Kursk region, aiming to ease Russian pressure on the Donbas front. Perhaps Ukraine also sought to use the captured territories as bargaining chips in a possible negotiation to exchange them for Ukrainian land seized by Russia.

This Ukrainian foray into the Kursk region achieved initial success. Since then the Russians have regained control of about 60% of the territory captured by the Ukrainian push.

For weeks now, the situation on the Ukrainian front has followed a pattern in which the Russian army advances across the front line, though this has been a slow process that has seen bloody massacres on both sides.

After the Nato comment in early December, according to top NATO sources, the pace of the Russian advance has been increasing. While previously “Russian forces were advancing by ten meters a day,” more recently they have been “gaining ground at the rate of ten kilometers a day”.

In recent weeks, Russia has taken other locations in the Donbass. This includes Toretsk, one of the main Ukrainian strongholds in the area (with a population over 30,000 before the war); Soon after moving to advance into the vicinity of another stronghold,Chasiv Yar.

Further southwest are Kurakhove, the village of Vremivka, and Velyka Novosilka.

Meanwhile, the assault on the important Pokrovsk junction continues.

In addition, the Russians have not stopped bombing “critical infrastructure,” particularly power plants.

The pace of the war suggests that the Russian army may continue its advance into Donbass toward the still Ukrainian cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

After three years of war, if left to the battlefields alone, no significant change should be expected – in the short-term – other than Russia’s advance toward the complete conquest of the Donbass. However, Trump’s inauguration has reignited negotiations. On Feb. 8 the American press reported Trump’s words:

“I talked with Putin, he wants to end the war.”

Imperialist Peace

Obviously the openness of a negotiation is not really due to the change of character in the White House. All heads of state play the part of a puppet moved by powerful social and economic forces. In this specific case it has already played its farcical role by initially promising peace in “24 hours” during the election campaign only –changing to peace in “100 days” once elected. 

The push for an agreement is rooted, both in the course of the war, and the broader context of inter-imperialist contention.

For the Western curators of Kiev, the situation on the ground is becoming more and more worrisome as time goes by. Despite the colossal influx of money and weapons from Western countries, Ukraine is struggling more and more to contain the Russian advance in Donbass. This negates any chance of regaining occupied territories.

The continuation of the war poses the problem of finding more cannon fodder to counter the Russian army. Already running the risk of a collapse on the frontlines, there is discussion of lowering the draft age from 25 to 18. This has not been totally ruled out because of the very low morale among Ukrainian troops and the widespread phenomenon of desertions.

The economic war with Russia isn’t going any better. Although weakened by 14 sanction packages against its economy, Russia has not suffered the meltdown Western capitals expected. Instead it found buyers for its raw materials in the East, enabling it to prolong the war effort.

In April 2022, the steadfast resistance of the Ukrainian army and the prospect of crippling Russia through sanctions led the Americans and British to order Kiev to continue its war with Moscow. However, those conditions have now changed from those key to securing a favorable outcome for Anglo-American imperialism.

The other factor that could form an agreement on the Russian-Ukrainian front must be understood in the context of the imperialist confrontation on the global scale. The real enemy of US imperialism is now China. The future that is being shaped is that of a general clash between these two great powers, around which opposing blocs will be formed.

The American attitude toward Russia must be framed in this context.

The previous US administration did engage in a confrontation with Russia, via Ukraine. Inflicting a heavy defeat on Russian imperialism would have further reduced its might, thus securing a NATO-friendly arrangement on the eastern front of Europe. The US would then be free to turn its attention to the quadrant they’ve termed the “Indo-Pacific.”

It is also possible that the US thought the best case scenario could be some sort of repetition of the best case scenario in 1989-1991. Bringing about a collapse similar to the USSR, including territorial downsizing, but never at the cost of compromising Russia’s counter-revolutionary role in the area. Such a result would establish in Moscow a political regime on the 1990s model. This would make Russia a docile friend to be hurled at China.

The war in Ukraine, however, is not heading toward a Russian defeat. Instead, it has led to closer ties between Russia and China. The prospect of further strengthening –even to the point of forming an anti-American bloc. This would be a serious threat to US global interests.

The change of administration in Washington could  lead to the abandonment of the prior administration’s path. By establishing a dialogue with Moscow, the US instead could attempt to distance Russia from Beijing.

Whatever the strategy imposed by Washington and, consequently, whatever Russia’s response will be, we should not expect the imperialistic clash on a world scale to ease off.

The very possibility of a peace or truce on the Ukrainian front, whatever its form, will be more likely to function as preparation for a larger-scale war. It will guarantee all contenders precious time to lick the wounds caused by their war efforts in Ukraine and proceed with vast rearmament plans.

One result of the war in Ukraine was also to reaffirm the alignment of European imperialisms within the predominant US one, the American position. Judging by what has happened so far, it will also assert itself in the European capital cities. Europe has been incapable of political and military autonomy–beyond the pro-European rhetoric, each state moving on their own. Nevertheless, all remain loyal to the United States.

Throughout all of this, Ukraine has played the part of the sacrificial victim. The Ukrainian bourgeoisie is selling the blood of its own proletarians to the West by sending them to die on the frontlines.

The proclamations of its leaders and their “plans” for peace are worthless.

They will simply have to obey Washington’s orders.

Meanwhile, the Americans have already presented the bill:

“I want the equivalent of $500 billion worth of rare earths,” Trump said, estimating the aid sent to Ukraine at $300-350 billion, which it will now have to repay.

Since the Russians also took Ukrainian subsurface resources with the conquest of most of the Donbass, the Americans also want to get their hands on Ukraine’s mineral wealth.

In this way, the bargain between the Russians and Americans appears in all its predatory nature. The former gets, along with the rearrangement of its own Western front. The latter receives the exploitation of the remaining riches of the Ukrainian subsoil. Setting itself up to further cash-in after bringing Europe’s energy supply to its knees by breaking the link with Russian supplies and selling its own at much higher prices.

Then again, Lenin wrote:

“The groups of capitalists who have drenched the world in blood for the sake of dividing territories, markets and concessions cannot conclude an ‘honorable’ peace..

They can conclude only a shameful peace, a peace based on the division of spoils.”

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died, not for the defense of their homeland against the Russian imperialist aggression, but for the interests of Western capitalists. Not for their national freedom from the Russian oppressor, or the other nonsense propagandized by the bourgeoisie. This same nonsense has also been decried by the myriad of “leftist” organizations as well as those falsely referring to communism.

On the other hand, Russian soldiers were not sacrificed in a supposed war against “Nazi-fascism,” as flaunted by Moscow and the remnants of Stalinism. Rather, they were expansionist aims and economic interests of bourgeois Russia.

On the bloodied battlefields of Ukraine, proletarians fall for a war that is not theirs. It is the proletarians that are really being assaulted, both by their own bourgeoisies and those of the other countries involved in the conflict.

Now the threat of a possible imperialist peace hangs not just over the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat, but the international proletariat as well. Such imperialist peace would only halt the war in Eastern Europe so that the imperialist powers could catch their breath and prepare for the next massacre.This future war will be of even greater proportions.

Only a proletarian uprising, with a strong movement of strikes in the cities and the organization of the soldiers on the frontlines, could stop the imperialist war and the equally nefarious prospect of an imperialist peace.

News From the Home Fronts in Ukraine and Russia

Unfortunately, the lack of class-based workers’ organizations and a true Communist Party capable of providing strong and resolute leadership leaves no alternative but a bourgeois solution to opposing the war. Nonetheless, opposition to the war persists in both Ukraine and Russia. It emerges despite the suffocating grip of brutal repression and rampant nationalist propaganda that oppresses Ukrainian and Russian proletarians.

In particular, internal discontent toward the war appears more widespread in Ukraine, and the phenomenon of desertions at the front is more significant.

According to Ukrainian state sources, over 17,500 new criminal cases for unauthorized unit abandonment or desertion were recorded in December 2024. This continued a trend from November, which saw nearly 19,000 cases.

This is nearly double the number recorded in October 2024. Yet in January 2024, such criminal proceedings were below 3,500.

From the start of the war in February 2022 to December 1, 2024, more than 114,000 criminal cases of desertion have already been registered.

As reported to foreign media by Ukrainian sources, the number of defectors in Ukraine may be around 200,000.

These numbers are so high that parliament was forced to pass a law addressing the issue. The new law allows those who have abandoned their unit or deserted to return voluntarily and serve without facing criminal penalties. It also extends the timeframe in which they can return to their units without legal consequences.

By now the training camps are composed almost exclusively of forcibly mobilized men. many captured on the streets. Many still who desert as soon as they get the chance.

The case of the 155th Mechanized Brigade, called “Anna of Kiev” is particularly scandalous. This unit was trained in France and was to be deployed in the defense of Pokrovsk. Before the brigade reached the hot front in the Donbass, 1,700 soldiers had already deserted. This is not to mention the dozens of desertions that had occurred during the brigade’s training in France.

Individual uprisings against the state and war have also become more frequent.

Although the scale of desertion raises concerns about the potential collapse of the Ukrainian army, there is currently no realistic way for this widespread and spontaneous rejection of the war to evolve into an organized movement. That is, laying arms down and abandoning the front to then turn those very arms against the bourgeoisie: transforming the war between states into class warfare.

That prospect is even more distant in Russia, although reports of defections also come from the Russian side of the front.

As for military conscription, the Russian regime has no difficulty in recruiting “contract soldiers” who are immediately sent to the front.

The situation in Russia is therefore quite different from the Ukrainian one, where bourgeois authorities have to catch men on the street to send them to slaughter.

In Russia, none of this is yet necessary, as demographics are clearly in its favor.

The harsh living conditions they face push thousands and thousands of middle-aged Russian men to the recruitment centers. They are crushed by low wages, steadily rising prices (9% inflation rate according to official figures), and huge interest rates on loans and mortgages. All the while, Russian workers are bombarded by relentless propaganda claiming that the “collective West” is to blame for this situation.

The situation is different, among young people undergoing compulsory service in the Russian army. Here, opposition to militarism is not insignificant.

Reporting on the completion of fall’s conscription, the Russian Defense Ministry, claimed a mobilization of 133,000 people that are presumably not sent to combat zones, annexed Ukrainian regions included.

Reality, however, shows a different picture from the government announcements. There are hundreds of detention cases and raids against conscripts. they have also significantly increased since the fall of 2023, with increasingly aggressive methods.

Thus in Russia too the bourgeois regime is performing a real manhunt, albeit on a smaller scale than in Ukraine. Conscripts are taken directly from their homes, caught in the street and loaded into a car and arrested in the subway. All taken to military registration and enlistment offices.

Relatives and lawyers are not allowed into the collection points, nor are ambulances. This is to prevent any recording of how conscripts are treated. Passports are taken away, and medical certificates are ignored.

Conscripts are forced –any means to wear a uniform.

They are beaten, threatened, and kept without food or water.

In many cases they are sent straight to the front after being forced to sign a contract.

Although class dominance is firm in Russia, reports coming out of the country show a situation in which there is some resistance from Russian workers to both military conscription and the Russian Capitalists.

In fact, according to labor unions, 294 collective labor disputes were reported in Russia in the 4^th quarter of 2024, while there had been 228 in the 3^rd quarter.

These disputes include both genuine strikes, albeit local and short-term, and completely “legal” attempts. Unsurprisingly, the latter fail to address the ongoing decline in living conditions and the delays in the payment of their already meager wages. Nevertheless, this is an indication that, despite the constant and ubiquitous nationalist and militarist propaganda that has appealed to much of the working class, the reality of capitalism forces workers to resist.

All of these labor disputes occur in conditions of relative weakness of workers’ organs. Such as the general repression of the unions. There are several cases of union organizers being subjected to criminal prosecution –not to mention the extremely moderate leadership of the unions themselves.

Against the Wars and Appeasements of Imperialism

The war in Ukraine is entering its third year. The calls from politicians and pen-pushers over the prospects of a diplomatic solution are as loud as ever.

Whether such a possibility materializes, and even if a truce is reached, any peace will retain an imperialist character. That is, it will be a moment of respite in preparation for the resumption of warfare.

No agreement can smooth-out the deep contradictions that have brought competing imperialisms into conflict over the territory of Ukraine. Nor can it eliminate the causes that make inter-state warfare inevitable among capitalist regimes.

Should an agreement be found, war will eventually return to that front. It will be in the context of inter-imperialist conflict, one that is step by step expanding on a global scale, involving both the major and lesser powers.

The possibility of a truce from the war should not fool proletarians, who will be dragged by their own bourgeoisies into the abattoir of war once more.

The only outcome of the imperialist war that favors the proletariat is not another imperialist peace. Rather this outcome would be revolutionary defeatism and proletarian solidarity across all fronts transform the war between states into a war between classes, leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat.