SUNDAY night’s meeting between the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov and the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has shown conclusively the counter-revolutionary nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy and their dread of the working class.
In the words of Lavrov they ‘agreed to seek common ground to resolve the situation,’ including agreement to work with the Ukrainian government on implementing constitutional reforms and having ‘free and fair elections under international supervision’.
Lavrov made it clear that Putin wants to split Ukraine up into semi-autonomous federal states.
What has been conceded here by Putin is the right of western imperialism to intervene in the guise of ‘international supervision’, along with recognition of the right-wing coup orchestrated by the US and EU that ousted the democratically elected government of the Ukraine.
Putin is so desperate to cobble together a rotten deal with imperialism that he has conceded completely the legitimacy of this reactionary coup and the right of imperialism to walk in and effectively take over the west of the Ukraine.
Putin is clearly seeking a deal which would provide a reactionary utopia where part of the Ukraine is directly under the control of the West in return for worthless ‘guarantees’ that Ukraine would remain neutral and not become a staging post for Nato forces to directly threaten Russia.
What this attempt to reach an agreement leaves out is the very issues at the heart of the coup. That is, the catastrophic economic crisis in the Ukraine and the move to pressurise Ukraine to join the bankrupt EU, a move that was fiercely opposed by the powerful Ukrainian working class, not just in the east but throughout the country.
They knew full well that joining the EU would mean the destruction of Ukrainian industry, mass privatisation and the imposition of austerity measures even worse than those imposed on Greek workers.
With workers forming defence squads to protect their gains from destruction at the hands of the imperialist powers, Putin’s intervention was an attempt to put a lid on the revolutionary class struggle in the Ukraine.
Despite all the lessons of the past proving that there can be no agreement with imperialism, Putin is still trying to secure peaceful ‘partnership’.
Putin is more scared of revolution than he is of imperialism. His hatred and fear of revolution and his absolute dread of the class struggle has come through loud and clear.
In a speech to the Russian parliament in 2012 Putin expressed his hatred when he accused the leaders of the 1917 Russian revolution of being ‘traitors’ to Russia.
He singled out the leadership of the Bolshevik party, Lenin and Trotsky, as betraying Russia’s national interest by opposing World War I.
Putin went so far as to specifically deny that WWI was an ‘imperialist war’, thus openly supporting the slaughter of millions of workers in the war caused by the rivalry between European imperialist powers.
At the same time as Putin denounced the leaders of the Russian revolution, which established the Soviet Union, he called the breakup of the Soviet Union ‘the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century’ – he condemns the breakup of the Soviet Union while at the same time attacks the very party that established it!
All Putin’s attempts at getting a deal with imperialism cannot solve a single issue before the Ukrainian workers.
The world crisis is driving imperialism to attempt to restore capitalism in those nations it was deprived of by the victorious Russian Revolution.
This drive can only be defeated in the Ukraine by the working class throughout the country establishing workers’ soviets to defend all their gains.
Above all what is required is the building of sections of the Fourth International throughout the capitalist world and throughout the territories of the USSR, to organise the political revolution to overthrow the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy and to lead the socialist revolution in the capitalist world for the establishment of a world socialist republic.
