Once Again on the Russia-Ukraine War

28 December 2025

Thank you for your reply, some of which I can agree with, particularly, "the U.S./NATO imperialists provoked the war." I appreciate that you took the time and thought to reply. Let me respond to where I question you.

You wrote, "In the Russia-Ukraine war, your starting point is to look to Russian military might to weaken U.S. imperialism." To correct you, my anti-imperialist starting point is to oppose imperialist intervention in other countries.

You write, "Ours is to place the Ukrainian and Russian working classes in the best position possible to challenge imperialism and overthrow both the pro-imperialist Ukrainian rulers and the Russian oligarchs. The workers have the power and interest to force a peace that safeguards the national interests of both nations, but your letter doesn't breathe a word about the working class." However, opposing imperialist intervention is the international working class approach.

You do not mention any actual anti-imperialist coalition of Ukrainian and Russian working class organizations. Therefore, that seems as a wish (also my wish), but it is not a reality. No such organization exists, or even seems on the horizon. That is a project for their working class organizations. For us in US, our work is to oppose the imperialist intervention taking place.

You say "You argue that the Russian war effort is an act of self-defense, claiming that the U.S. has been explicit about violating Russia’s self-determination, dividing it up and removing its elected government. But at no point in the war have U.S. forces breached Russia's national borders or threatened its independence." The US violates Russian self-determination by its thousands of sanctions on Russia, by arming Ukraine and fueling the war, by providing the Ukrainian government with the intelligence to launch drones and missiles inside Russia, and so on. Would you say that since the US has not actually invaded Venezuela, it is not violating its self-determination?

How can you say "the U.S./NATO imperialists provoked the war" but is not violating Russia's self-determination or "threatened its independence." How does US-NATO wage war on a country and not do that? It is impossible.

You also say nothing about Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea, all former parts of Ukraine that decided to separate and then become part of Russia. Are you not denying their right to self-determination?

You say, "You insist that the war in Ukraine is between U.S./NATO imperialism and Russia. However, the U.S. is not fighting on the ground in Ukraine." Again, in Nicaragua during the contra war, US troops were not fighting Sandinista troops. Does that also mean the US was not intervening, and that this was not a US war waged on Nicaragua? This strikes me as apologetics for US interventions in countries. But then you admit to US intervention a few sentences later: "the U.S. has failed in its original aim of arming Ukraine to weaken Russia" and that the US "is preparing to steal Ukrainian mineral assets." And you say "the U.S./NATO imperialists provoked the war", which is exactly what I say.

You say "Trump is not escalating, but moving to cut his losses". The US is not escalating and is not leaving; the US and NATO know they are losing the war. Their primary issue now is how to save face, and find a scapegoat to blame for their defeat. Trump seeks to blame Europe and Zelensky; Europe seeks to blame Trump.

"You portray a Russian triumph as progressive." Yes, a defeat for imperialist intervention and war is a victory for the peoples of the world. US defeat in Afghanistan by the Taliban did show the world a poor country could stand up to US invasion and drive them out, even while led by a reactionary leadership. That showed working people of the world it is possible to stand up to US intervention, to fight back and win. That is progressive. However, nowhere did I say "a Russian victory would substantially weaken the US empire." You are making that up.

You seem to think that if a Russian victory against US-NATO intervention is progressive, that therefore means the Russian government is progressive. I never said not, or anything about the Russian government. But this is not about the Russian government. It is about standing against imperialist intervention anywhere, which is an working class principle.

Thanks,
Stan

WV replies: The difference between us is not whether Marxists should oppose U.S. imperialism at all times, but how to stand against imperialism in the context of the war in Ukraine. Within the U.S., we raise the need for anti-imperialist working-class action to disrupt the U.S. war machine and cut off military aid to Ukraine. This is crucial to the international working-class approach to this conflict, although it is not the current reality. Nonetheless, we fight to the best of our ability to make it so, centrally by taking the obstacles to any such action head-on. We revolutionaries must not simply instruct workers to oppose U.S. intervention in the broad sense. The vast majority already oppose the war, viewing it as a distraction from fixing this country’s problems. The real question is what workers can and should do about it. We have to get across that U.S. workers have a stake in the war’s outcome. Our task is to expose the misleaders of the working class and instill an anti-imperialist attitude among workers that translates into action to stop U.S. intervention. This must be done in a way that doesn’t just give the ruling class a chance to pause, rearm and hit back harder, but actually degrades its capabilities.

But the story does not end with the U.S. working class. Russian and Ukrainian workers are actively firing upon one another, to the sole benefit of forces that want to exploit and oppress them. Marxists are internationalists. Our opinions about how to advance the anti-imperialist struggle cannot end at this country’s borders. We have to evaluate what outcome to the conflict would be most advantageous to the anti-imperialist struggle and push for it, by whatever means are at our disposal. Yes, the workers of Russia and Ukraine will be the instruments of their own liberation. But we certainly want to lend whatever hand we can to bring that about, not least because their liberation is intimately connected to the fight against U.S. imperialism.

So, under the umbrella of opposition to U.S. intervention in Ukraine, there are two fundamental attitudes a Marxist might take. One is yours, defense of the Russian side in the conflict (or however you might describe your position). The other is ours, defeat of both the Ukrainian and Russian regimes by their respective troops and other working-class forces. We have made various arguments, in the original article and two previous letter replies, to establish that a Russian victory in the war would not be progressive. It would not advance the anti-imperialist struggle, whereas the defeat of both sides would. By and large, you have sidestepped these arguments. This includes the observation that a Russian victory would not liberate the Ukrainian masses, but simply subject them to the tyranny of Putin. This outcome would only deepen divisions between the Ukrainian and Russian proletariats, whose unity in struggle against the U.S. is much needed. A Russian victory would foster national enmity on both sides and do nothing to deter imperialism. Yes, the Donbass has the right to national self-determination, but the Ukrainians have national rights too.

Your objections to our position are of a twofold character. One is to dismiss it on the basis that you can spot no evidence that Russian and Ukrainian workers are preparing to turn the guns around. We certainly do not deny this, although we would caution against making categorical judgments from afar. In any event, the issue is the desirability of the outcome, not the ease of bringing it about. After all, we are for working-class rule in the U.S. What seems more remote than this? The point is that all our activity has to be directed toward that objective or it will never become a reality. As Marxists, we determine what outcome to the war is in the interests of the international proletariat and proceed accordingly. As a case in point, we have translated some of our articles on the war into Russian for distribution abroad.

Your other line of objection to our position is to cite (false) analogies. Every war is not the same. Far from it. Marxists arrive at positions on wars after careful consideration of the national and international context, the nature of the conflict and its origin and development. These considerations are necessarily specific to the particular war. So, for example, Afghanistan is about as removed from Russia-Ukraine as one can get. Afghanistan is a horribly oppressed country and has zero capacity to put its neighbors under its boot; the U.S. military not only reduced the country to rubble, but also occupied it for over two decades. Nicaragua was a proxy war on both sides, a hot contest in the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and a civil war to stop a popular leftist insurgency at that, not a national conflict. Venezuela is a dependent country that the U.S. military directly invaded, however briefly, including commandos on the ground who kidnapped President Maduro and his wife. This limited-time military intervention was sufficient for the U.S. to strip Venezuela of sovereignty and take control of its oil and economic decision-making. In contrast, Russia is a major regional power; Ukrainian troops occupied a swath of its territory for over a half year, and Moscow is doing just fine. To be clear, we defended Afghanistan, the Sandinistas and Venezuela as the best means to advance the anti-imperialist struggle in each of those cases.

The truth is concrete. The kind of black eye and humiliation that the U.S. suffered as a result of its “forever war” and bungled exit from Afghanistan is exactly the sort of thing that will not happen in the case of the war in Ukraine, precisely because the U.S. military is not on the frontlines. With the U.S. and Israel having spent the last six plus weeks laying waste to Iran, it is more urgent than ever that anti-imperialist forces start landing some real blows for all of our sakes.