We reproduce here after the statement the IGCL published on our web site after the beginning of the war in Ukraine which introduced the publication of the ICT article : Ukraine : A nationalist Dead-End !.

The conflict between the pro-Russian and pro-European factions of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie is a dead-end and horrible trap for workers lured into it in the name of the struggle against corruption and dictatorship. This democratic mystification serves to mask imperialist rivalries pitting Russia against Germany with the European Union rallying around it. For Ukraine is, in turn, the object of a fierce struggle between the main imperialist powers. And they won’t hesitate to provoke and wage a ’civil’ war in the defense of their interests.

Above all, democratic mystification serves as an attempt to enlist workers into a conflict where they have everything to lose. They ’should include no support for any of the bourgeois factions who represent only different aspects of the spectrum of exploitation and oppression’ our ICT comrades write. But this is not enough to escape the trap, or to stop the slaughter that has already begun. Much less the threat of a bloodier massacre. As our comrades say, the only way for the working class to avoid this trap is by regrouping in workplaces, defending living conditions and fighting against capitalist exploitation, that is, engaging in the struggle against bourgeois political forces and against the state, regardless of whether it’s ’dictatorial’ or ’democratic’, pro-Russian or pro-European.

Which way forward for the workers in Ukraine? By the same path taken by their class brothers from Bosnia and former Yugoslavia who, themselves, had known very well the monumental powerlessness evident when faced with the bloody massacres provoked by the Yugoslav nationalist war in the 1990s. Today, they rise up and fight, united, across all nationalities, as a united working class, against capitalist exploitation and misery, in facing the devastation of the crisis, and against the ’democratic’ and nationalist governments! This is the only way forward!