RESOLUTION AGAINST U.S.-NATO EXPANSION IN FORMER USSR & IN SOLIDARITY WITH PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE IN DONETSK AND LUGANSK
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. On May 9, 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Berlin and put an end to Adolf Hitler’s “1000-year Reich.” 0f the 80 million who died in that war, at least one-third were from the Soviet Union.
Today, for the first time since that bloody war ended, missiles and artillery rain down on towns and cities of the former Soviet Union. The men behind the guns are the direct political descendants of right-wing Ukrainian forces who allied with Adolf Hitler. This time the United States government and military are on their side. US- and NATO-funded mercenaries are shelling homes, schools and hospitals in Donetsk and Lugansk. Thousands, including children and the elderly, have been murdered or suffered serious injury. Hundreds of thousands are homeless.
In western Ukraine, elderly Soviet veterans, the heroes who defeated Hitler, are attacked and beaten. In Odessa, protesters and unionists have been burned to death by Nazi gangs. The U.S. and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia while the U.S. wages economic war against Russia, Venezuela and Iran by manipulating oil prices. The Cold War NATO alliance, far from dissolving, expands relentlessly onto the soil of the former Soviet Union, raising the specter of a new world war.
The bloody events in Ukraine are the direct result of the intervention of the U.S. and NATO powers, beginning with the right-wing coup of February 2014. The working class people of the industrial and mining region of the Donbass, the oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk, including the Donbass region, have taken up arms to defend themselves against the U.S.-backed chauvinist regime.
As with the wars in Iraq and Libya, U.S.-NATO intervention serves the interests of Wall Street banks and oil corporations who seek monopoly control of the world’s oil and gas reserves. The U.S. imperialist ruling class also seeks to force its West European rivals back into the subordinate relationship that existed during the so-called Cold War. And both U.S. and West European bankers seek to plunder Ukraine and all former Soviet republics.
Be it resolved that ILPS demands an end to U.S.-NATO aggression and expansion in East Europe and the former USSR. We demand an end to the U.S.-NATO mercenary war against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk. The people of that region, now called Novorossiya, have the right to self-determination and self-defense. We stand in solidarity with their struggle. For the safety of the world, we demand an end to U.S. and West European intervention in the region, the withdrawal of their military, intelligence and mercenary forces, and the dissolution of the imperialist NATO alliance.
We call on member organizations of the League to initiate, support or take part in solidarity actions with the besieged people of Novorossiya, as the people of Donetsk and Lugansk now call their region, and to organize an educational forum on this issue.
Approved at the meeting of the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) in Utrecht, the Netherlands, February 2015.
ILPS is an interntaional anti-imperialist alliance chaired by the historic leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Prof. Jose Maria Sison.
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