Special coverage: Understanding Putin's war on Ukraine
[Editor's note: A new book compiling some of the original interviews LINKS has conducted with socialists from Ukraine, Russia and beyond have now been published: Ukraine Resists! Left Voices on Putin’s War, NATO and the Future of Ukraine. It is available to purchase from Resistance Books in paperback or PDF format.]
Since Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal has sought to carry a range of views from the socialist left to help understand the significance of this event. Particular attention has been paid to the voices of Ukrainian and Russian leftists who are at the forefront of resisting this invasion.
Below is a regularly updated compilation of links to articles we have published, ordered into categories and listed from most recent to oldest. We have also included links to some older articles that provide important historical or theoretical context (for example on the debate over Russian imperialism and assessments of events surround the Maidan revolt in 2014 and subsequent anti-Maidan revolt in the country’s east).
Ukrainian left speak
- I’m a Ukrainian leftist. This is why I support Boris Kagarlitsky
- De-occupation of Crimea: Crimean Tatars and the Path toward Decolonization
- Commons: A Ukrainian left-wing collective intellectual
- The far right in Ukraine: An interview with Taras Bilous
- Ukraine: 'Russia is giving carte blanche to the far right'
- Solidarity, decency, socialism: In memory of Marko Bojcun
- March 8 in the second year of war: Experiences and visions of Ukrainian feminists
- A Ukrainian socialist lays out the aims and struggles of her country’s left
- To rebuild, Ukraine needs just social policy
- Ukraine: The left view on the prospects of peace negotiations
- ‘People in liberated Kherson are greeting Ukrainian soldiers in Russian’: Hanna Perekhoda on Ukrainian identity, language and Donbas
- Resistance and Solidarity. The Left Volunteer Movement in the Russo-Ukrainian War
- (Video) Ukrainian and Russian academics discuss the war
- A Ukrainian Left under construction on several fronts: The national conference of Sotsialnyi Rukh/Social Movement
- Ukraine: The Tsar is naked - Interview with Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) activist Denis Pilash
- Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement): The war and the future of Ukraine and the left movement
- Ukraine and its language in the political imagination of the Russian empire
- Questions about Ukraine
- The superfluous people of Eastern Ukraine
- Ukrainian socialist Taras Bilous serves in the Territorial Defense Forces. He’s also fighting the Western Left’s stereotypes.
- Vladyslav Starodubtsev (Sotsialnyi Rukh): ‘Today, people are not just fighting for Ukraine but to destroy the Russian regime'
- ‘Putin’s attacks on Ukraine’s agricultural sector are deliberate’: An interview with Mykhailo Amosov (Ecoaction, Ukraine)
- Ukraine: Unions strive to keep Ukraine’s mines running, protect civilians and appeal for solidarity
- Eastern Europe’s tragedy: How the spheres of influence policy amplifies reaction
- (Video) Ukraine: Revolutionaries at war
- The war on Ukraine: An interview with a Ukrainian socialist
- Ukraine: Trade union and human rights activist from Donbas — 'When there’s a problem, people come to us'
- I’m a Ukrainian socialist. Here’s why I resist the Russian invasion.
- (Video) Ukrainian women’s voices from the warzone
- Ukrainian feminist Viktoriia Pihul: ‘Our main goal now is to win this war’
- Ukraine’s geopolitical precarity: A historian's perspective
- Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine: Human rights, democracy and civil society
- Ukraine: “The right to resist” – A feminist manifesto (+ Russian feminists in solidarity/Ukrainian feminists under Western Eyes)
- Ukraine’s recovery must benefit the people. The West has other ideas (Plus 'New labour code is a threat to Ukrainian workers')
- Inside the Ukrainian resistance: Interview with Alona Liasheva and Denys Pilash
- Ukraine: Humanitarian aid is not enough
- Meet the Ukrainian leftists resisting Putin’s war: Interview with Sotsialnyi Rukh's Nataliia Lomonosova and Oleksandr Kyselov
- Workers are defending Ukraine. The Ukrainian state is not defending workers’ rights (Plus Vitaliy Dudin on 'The war on workers')
- The war in Ukraine, international security, and the left
- Social Movement (Ukraine): What’s going on in Ukraine and why left solidarity is important
- Self-determination and the war in Ukraine
- Resisting the war to push for a more egalitarian world: An interview with Ukrainian socialist Denis Pilash
- Real peace in Ukraine will only come after change in Russia
- Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties? (plus statements by Sotsyalnyi Rukh)
- Ukraine’s government dismantles labour rights during the war (plus statement by Sotsyalnyi Rukh)
- Video: Ukrainian Left – Fight Russian invasion and say No to NATO
- Ukraine: “Stopping the war is the absolute priority”
- ‘We need a peoples' solidarity with Ukraine and against war, not the fake solidarity of governments’
- US-plaining is not enough when it comes to war on Ukraine. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes
Russian resistance to Putin’s war
- (Statements) Freedom for Boris Kagarlitsky! Freedom for all Russian political prisoners!
- Russian socialist Ilya Matveev: ‘Prigozhin’s coup attempt has exposed Putin’s vulnerability’
- 'Prigozhin's March': What was it all about?
- Who wants to be Mussolini? Right-wing populism Russian-style
- Boris Kagarlitsky (Russia): A plea to my Western progressive friends — Stop helping Putin with your conciliatory and ambiguous statements
- ‘Putin's regime is not subject to evolution’: An interview with Russian socialist Ilya Budraitskis
- Boris Kagarlitsky: The tragedy of war
- ‘This war is taking place for the same reason as all of Moscow’s wars of colonisation — the former colony does not want to remain a colony’: An interview with Feminist Anti-War Resistance (Russian Federation)
- (Video) Boris Kagarlitsky: How will the war in Ukraine end?
- War and resistance under Putin: An interview with Russian Socialist Movement's Kirill Medvedev
- Call for solidarity actions with anti-war and anti-fascist activists in Russia
- The resistance movement is being built on a scorched field: Conversation with DOXA, oppositional Russian media
- Putin's Russia: War fatigue sweeps the ranks
- (Video) Inside the aggressor: Resisting Putin's 'mobilization' for the war in Ukraine
- “The whole world is becoming more like Russia.” A conversation on deglobalization in the wake of the war in Ukraine with Boris Kagarlitsky
- Protest and exodus: Has the Putin regime pushed its citizens too far?
- Dagestan: 'In almost every village someone was killed'
- War and resistance in Putin’s Russia: An Interview with Ilya Budraitskis
- Posle (Russia): Not a single soldier for the criminal war!
- Video: Ilya Matveev on Russian imperialism
- Russia: 'Putin doesn’t know any war except class war'
- Boris Kagarlitsky: How will the war end?
- Russian socialist dissident Boris Kagarlitsky on Putin’s growing domestic crisis: ‘People will not fight for this regime’
- Stupidity, treason, or business as usual? The system is working in Russia
- (Video) Boris Kagarlitsky: Russia, not NATO, started war; capitalists on all sides fuel the fire
- Russian socialist Ilya Matveev: ‘Putin’s war on Ukraine is not about security, it is about imperialist interests’
- Remembering the Crimean War: Russia and the West have been here before
- Putin’s war is driven by domestic politics: Interview with Boris Kagarlitsky
- Rubles, sanctions, and oil: Fighting the economic war
- Everlasting War: From Putin to Peter and back again
- Inside the Russian resistance against Putin’s war
- Russia: Students against the war (Part One)
- Russia: Students against the war (Part Two)
- Russian ‘left’ split over Ukraine War (Plus statement by Opposition current in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation)
- Putin's war in Ukraine: The dialectics of victory and defeat
- Russia: Learning solidarity together
- Social sources of political polarization in Russia
- Against Putin’s War in Ukraine: An interview with Ilya Budraitskis
- A tremendous resistance: Feminists in Russia against the war and patriarchy
- Russian Socialist Movement: “The only way for Russians to end this war is convince soldiers to stop fighting”
- Russia: Putin is not only waging war on Ukraine, he is also destroying Russian society
- Interview: Russia’s feminist resistance to Putin’s war on Ukraine
- What is happening to the Russian consciousness?
- The dangerous tide of Russophobia (plus Richard Seymour on 'The Belligerati'/'An epidemic of dehumanization')
On the one year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion
- Entendiendo Ucrania: A Spanish-language website for understanding Ukraine
- Full-scale freedom to Ukraine: A statement from Russian anti-war activists and their allies on the anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine
- Social Movement (Ukraine): Statement on the one year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion
- Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine: One year into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine
- Russian Socialist Movement — We Say: War on War!
- Zakhar Popovich (Social Movement, Ukraine): A year after invasion, 'Ukraine needs allies, not talk of neutrality'
- Putin's war: A tragedy for Ukraine and Russia, a gift to US imperialism
- Key issues of the war in Ukraine one year on
- Boris Kagarlitsky (Russia): On the first anniversary of the war — How much longer can this go on?
- Razem (Poland): Statement on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation
- International Socialist Tendency statement on the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine
- Is there an end in sight? The Ukraine war one year on
- Fourth International: For the right of Ukrainians to decide their future! Complete withdrawal of Russian troops! Stop the war!
- The invasion of Ukraine one year on
- Socialist Party of Malaysia: The Russian invasion of Ukraine — One year on
- Ukraine and the ‘neutrality’ of the anti-NATOists
Assessing the character of Russia’s war on Ukraine
- The German left debates Putin’s war
- Canadian left responses to war in Ukraine: A provisional balance sheet
- The war in Ukraine: Four reductions we must avoid
- Sweden: Assessing Socialistisk Politik and Internationalen’s position on the Russo-Ukrainian war
- Russia’s war on Ukraine and the European lefts
- South Africa: Internationalism and the Russia-Ukraine war – the hypocrisy of (some of) the left
- Nordic Green Left: Solidarity with Ukraine
- “Ukraine Resists!”: New book challenges prejudices and misconceptions regarding Putin’s war on Ukraine
- Russia's war on Ukraine: The surprising pervasiveness of American arrogance (plus response: The surprising pervasiveness of pro-war propaganda)
- Spanish state: A ‘pacifism’ that helps Putin
- Russia's war on Ukraine: The surprising pervasiveness of American arrogance (plus response)
- Jeremy Corbyn in Budapest: 'There has to be a cease fire followed by serious negotiations about what the relationship is going to be like between Russia and Ukraine'
- Anti‑War Committee of Kyrgyzstan: 'History is full of examples of victories of anti-war civil movements'
- What is the European left saying about the Ukraine war?
- Russian imperialism and the invasion of Ukraine
- Norway: The Red Party supports Ukraine's fight for freedom
- Setting the record straight: Ukraine, Russia & imperialism
- From Ukraine to Palestine: The poisons of denialism
- Is US aid to Ukraine really 'unprecedented'? New studies destroy the myth propagated by supporters of Western and Russian imperialism
- Putin's war: A tragedy for Ukraine and Russia, a gift to US imperialism
- Consistent anti-imperialism and the Ukraine war
- There really is a proxy war in Ukraine: Ignore it at your peril
- Myths and facts about the war in Ukraine
- No arms to Ukraine? The Russian invasion and the task of US socialists
- Howie Hawkins (Ukraine Solidarity Network US): ‘The anti-imperialist position is to support the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people’
- Ukraine aid and anti-imperialism
- Ukraine: We need to talk about Volodymyr
- Russia's invasion of Ukraine: a response to Renfrey Clarke
- Imperialism and the invasion of Ukraine
- Supporting Ukraine's right to self-determination: The historical example of ‘poor little Belgium’
- Ukraine, Russia, imperialism and national self-determination
- The gigantic destruction of Ukrainian society
- Ukraine: Divisions among the left
- Q&A: Navigating the left’s Ukraine debate
- Ukraine, self-determination, and the national question
- Clarity on Ukraine
- Five wars in one: The battle for Ukraine
- Putin's invasion must be condemned: A response to 'Theses on the war in Ukraine'
- Theses on the war in Ukraine
- Support Ukrainian resistance and disempower fossil capital
- Socialist Alliance (Australia): Russia out of Ukraine, No to NATO
- Ukraine war: Negotiations only way forward
- Ukraine and the peace movement
- France: The left must abandon its silence on the war in Ukraine
- Ukraine war, imperialism and the left: An interview with British socialist Phil Hearse
- To undermine NATO retrenchment, the left must fight to win the peace
- Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the Japanese Communist Party's position
- Capitalist crisis, imperialism and the road to war in Ukraine
- Means of destruction
- How should socialists respond to Russia’s war on Ukraine
- Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine sends ripples across globe
- Solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance
- The Ukraine war will end, but how?
- War in Ukraine: Solidarity with Ukrainian resistance, against all imperialisms
- Ukraine: Matrix of war
- Four points on the war in Ukraine
- Internationalist manifesto against the war in Ukraine
- Simon Pirani: ‘Our movement needs a different politics that is concerned with Ukrainian and Russian people not governments’
- The great power grab: Imperialism and the war in Ukraine - a discussion between Alex Callinicos and Gilbert Achcar
- Manifesto: Feminist resistance against war (plus comments by Catherine Samary)
- European Network Solidarity with Ukraine and against war
- The war in Ukraine and the dilemmas of the western left
- Why blaming NATO is not westsplaining
- Six FAQs on anti-imperialism today and the war in Ukraine
- Ukrainians fiercely resist brutal Russian invasion
- NATO, imperialism and the war
- Why Ukraine is a Syrian cause
- Against war in Ukraine and the new imperialism: A letter of solidarity with the oppressed
- Ukraine: Fog of War
- The debate on the left over whether to raise the issue of NATO expansionism in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Putin, the Russians, and the Ukrainian War
- Ukraine and the left
- A memorandum on the radical anti-imperialist position regarding the war in Ukraine
- Fourth International: No to Putin’s invasion! Support to Ukrainian resistance! Solidarity with Russian opposition to the war!
- A view from Cuba: Ukraine to the Limit
- David Harvey: Remarks on recent events in Ukraine — An interim statement (and responses by Hall, Kalb & Cullen Dunn)
- Noam Chomsky: US military escalation against Russia would have no victors
- LeftEast condemns Putin’s imperial war against Ukraine
- Statements: Asian socialists condemn Russia's war on Ukraine, NATO expansionism
- Ukraine: Who is perverting history?
- Russian bombs over Ukraine
- Talking about Ukraine while ignoring the Ukrainians
Imperialism today
- Twenty-first century imperialism, multipolarity and capitalism’s ‘final crisis’
- A view of anti-imperialism from the periphery
- Sonny Melencio (Party of the Labouring Masses, Philippines): ‘We oppose the US and China’s preparations for war’
- Russia in global competition: How capitalism stifles democracy in Russia (and everywhere else)
- NATO’s hegemonic formula: Weapon of power, matrix of management
- 21st century imperialism: A debate within the Pakistani left
- Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation: Draft resolution on the international situation
- The changing shapes of imperialism after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine
- Against multipolar imperialism: Toward socialist multipolarity
- (Video) The crisis of hegemony, imperialism, and challenges to world security
- Towards a new permanent global war? NATO’s 'new strategic concept
- The imperial system in crisis
- After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- NATO: From bad to worse
- Ukraine: The return of Francis Fukuyama
Debating Russian imperialism
- Russian imperialism and its monopolies
- Is Russia ‘sub-imperialist’?
- The war in Ukraine and Russian capital: From military-economic to full military imperialism
- The class conflict behind Russia’s war
- Russian imperialism: Economically weak, militarily strong
- Is Russia an imperialist power? Part I: Non-hegemonic gestation
- Is Russia an imperialist power? Part II: Lenin’s legacy
- Is Russia an imperialist power? Part III: Continuities, reconstructions and ruptures
- Is Russia an imperialist power? Part IV: Benevolent glances
- The conquest of Ukraine and the history of Russian imperialism
- Statement from Russian and Ukrainian socialists: Against Russian Imperialism
- Is Russia imperialist?
- Russia in the world
- The Myth of “Russian Imperialism”: in defence of Lenin’s analyses
- A return to the question of whether Russia is imperialist
- Perpetrator or victim? Russia and contemporary imperialism
- The 'Russia is imperialist' thesis is wrong
- Are Russia and China imperialist powers?
Global impacts of Ukraine war
- Nordic left discuss security policy in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- Joey Ayoub: 'The fall of Putin's regime could lead to the collapse of Assad and the Iranian regime'
- Sweden in NATO — And then what?
- Ukraine, Lula's peace plan and the global fight against the extreme right: An interview with Brazilian socialist Israel Dutra (MES/PSOL)
- Tobias Drevland Lund (Red Party, Norway): ‘We need a Nordic Defence Alliance that can stake out a third position between Russia and the US’
- Global post-fascism and the war in Ukraine
- Kazakhstan: Interview with Zhanar Sekerbayeva
- Western capital, warmonger Putin and the climate policy disaster
- Russian colonialism, Eastern Europe and global anti-colonial struggles
- What’s wrong with Ukraine’s wartime diplomacy in the Global South
- The West against the rest? The EU, the Ukraine war, and its collaterals
- Malaysia: Stop the war in Ukraine! Give peace a chance!
- (Video) Solidarity with Ukraine from the Global South
- President of the Party of the European Left: 'Long live the common struggle against war and fascism!'
- Christian Zeller: ‘Ukrainian resistance has forced Germany to reconfigure its position towards Russia’
- Zofia Malisz (Razem, Poland): ‘There are several imperialisms at play in our part of Europe and we cannot afford to take one side over the other’
- Belarus: The Belarusian Green Party on from street protests to circle activism
- The limits of western economic war with Russia and the failure of climate policy
- Russian nationalism, NATO, and the threat of nuclear annihilation
- Socialist Alliance (Australia): Reject the war drive on China: For a foreign policy based on justice, human rights and climate action
- Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict: The West’s double standards and Moscow’s weak hand
- By targeting Russia and China, the United States seeks to continue dominating the world
- New reality? Europe and the war in Ukraine
- Swedish left’s perspectives on the war in Ukraine
- Strategic ambivalence or disguised conflict? China’s reactions to Russia’s war on Ukraine and to Covid
- NATO expands – Kurds betrayed
- Norway left party Rødt MP: 'We need to stop the war and bring Putin to justice'
- 'We have to be honest on Russia's aggression': Former Die Linke (Germany) MP on where and when wrong turns may have been taken
- Red-Green Alliance: 'The Danish government has used fear of Russia's brutal war to rush through major policy changes'
- Ukrainian refugees, anti-immigration politics, and the limits of solidarity in Slovakia
- Left Youth of Finland: 'The most significant consequence of Putin's war in Finland has been the question of NATO membership'
- A war in our own backyard: How the attack on Ukraine impacts neighbouring Moldova
- Germany: We still need anti-imperialism — Why Die Linke shouldn’t abandon a principled anti-war stance
- Britain: What sort of anti-war movement do we need today? (Plus response from Stop the War Coalition)
- Nordic left parties: Russia must withdraw immediately
- Bulgaria: Between pro-war consensus and the need for an anti-war movement
- European left solidarity with Ukraine
Cancel Ukraine’s debt
- Credit won’t work: Why Ukraine’s state debt must be cancelled
- Ukraine’s first assailant—international lenders
- Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM): People around the world demand IMF to cancel Ukraine’s unjust debt
Historic background
- Russia in global competition: How capitalism stifles democracy in Russia (and everywhere else)
- Not one inch, unless it is from Lisbon to Vladivostok: NATO-Russia mythmaking and a reimagined Kyivan Rus
- (Dossier) The US SWP and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937- 1945) — On US intervention and material aid to China
- From mobilization to revolution: World War I in three slogans
- Did Lenin create Ukraine? On the right of nations to self-determination and Marxism
- On Chechen resistance and postcolonial solidarity
- The complex history of eastern Ukraine
- Interview: On “The Tragedy of the Ukrainian Working Class”
- The Russian statelets in the Donbas are no 'People’s Republics'
- The oligarchic rebellion in the Donbas in 2014
- The Donbass in 2014: Ultra-right threats, working-class revolt, and Russian policy responses
- The tragedy of the Ukrainian working class
- How Ukraine won its independence, in Soviet times, and the lessons for today
- Volodymyr Ishchenko: Ukraine's Maidan mythologies
- Ukraine: 'Before Maidan, Ukraine was more democratic', says Volodymyr Ishchenko
- Ukraine: A year after Maidan, 'nothing has changed for the better'
- Boris Kagarlitsky: Rebel eastern Ukraine republics between war and elections
- David Mandel: Understanding the conflict in Ukraine
- Ukraine dominates discussion at Party of the European Left’s summer university
- Ukraine’s fractures: Interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko in 'New Left Review'
- Discussion: Fourth International needs to oppose the war and austerity drive against Ukrainian people
- Fourth International statement on Ukraine: 'Popular movement and imperialisms'
- Boris Kagarlitsky on Ukraine: A country that might have been
- Boris Kagarlitsky on eastern Ukraine: The logic of a revolt
- Boris Kagarlitsky: Crimea annexes Russia
- Murray Smith on what Russia is doing in Ukraine
- Ukraine: Positions of the European left (2014)
- Ukraine: The left and the movement to overthrow Yanukovich: two interviews
- Ukraine: Russia or the European Union? Reject a choice between ‘lesser evils’