February 25, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
This whole situation perfectly represents the world of imperialist bandits. After three years of war provoked by Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and after the enormous sacrifices made by the working classes, Trump telephoned Putin to start so-called “peace” negotiations. They would leave Russia with the one-fifth of Ukrainian territory it occupies, without any consideration for the feelings of the Ukrainian people. Even Zelensky, a representative of the wealthy capitalists of his country, was sidelined. The U.S. and Russia held talks without him!
Warmongers and war profiteers
We’re still three years into bombing raids, trench warfare and massacres. Three years of destruction, displacement inside the country and exile for over eight million people. In all, we’re probably talking about hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. Tens of thousands of these are Ukrainian civilians. The country’s poorest people live without water, electricity or heating, under a martial law that prohibits any strike or demonstration in opposition to Zelensky. Zelensky, who, while spreading illusions about the effectiveness of Western weapons in resisting Putin, has continued a policy of attacks on workers. As to the Russian Federation, a million or more of its citizens opposed the war and suffered repression or exile. U.S. leaders and their NATO allies have provided Ukraine with military and financial aid only to the extent that they expected a return on investment.
NATO allies but competitors
Through Trump’s voice, U.S. imperialism is signaling an endgame already announced by Biden. Its economic sanctions have weakened Putin, while allowing him to remain a pillar of the imperialist order in his region of the world. Europe has been cut off from Russian gas and other commercial and financial ties with Russia, condemned, among other things, to buying more expensive U.S. gas. European Union states have been encouraged to bleed their populations by increasing military budgets… largely for the profits of U.S. arms dealers, who are the world’s leading producers and exporters. Trump is even demanding of Zelensky the right to exploit the country’s mineral wealth. This opens the way to reconstruction and profits!
Warmonger Macron heads for Washington
Like other European leaders who were not invited to the meetings between the United States and Russia, French president Macron is offended and has found a way out: championing a so-called “Europe of Defense.” A Europe that currently buys 63% of its weapons from the U.S.! At a meeting of French party leaders, Macron proposed raising France’s military spending from 2.1% to 5% of GDP. And, with little regard for others’ lives, he plans to send troops to Ukraine to “guarantee peace,” i.e., the partition that Trump and Putin will have bargained for. It’s all great theater, but it is set against a backdrop of nationalism and militarism promoted by reactionaries on the right, far right, and even the left: the French Socialist Party applauds! It’s a policy that must be fought.
Workers of all countries, unite!
Unfortunately, the Ukrainian working classes were unable to organize their own defense against Putin, and to rely on their ability to find allies on the side of Russian workers. Nor have the latter found the path to an internationalist policy to prevent war. No such path has yet emerged elsewhere to oppose the policies of Biden, Trump, Macron, and their kind. However, this would be and will be the only response possible to the destruction of land, peoples and democratic rights by imperialist thugs around the world, in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa and everywhere else.
