Labor Resolution on Ukraine: Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign

WHEREAS Putin has openly declared that Ukraine has no right to exist, and his war crimes there include:

• committing mass torture, murder and rape.
• kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children whom he forcibly brought to Russia.
• bombing Ukrainian infrastructure and the Ukrainian population as a whole. And

WHEREAS this is part of a pattern. Putin has:

• carried on a war in Chechnya until 2009
• invaded Georgia in 2008
• interfered in Ukrainian politics from the very start
• intervened with ground troops and bombing of civilians to prop up dictator Assad in Syria (2014 and onward)
• annexed Crimea and started a war in Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014
• sent Russian troops into Belarus in 2020 to crush the pro-democracy rebellion there

He has proven that if he succeeds he will not stop with the invasion of Ukraine. All of history shows such dictators cannot be stopped by kind words and “negotiations”. And

WHEREAS Ukraine has a small but vibrant independent union movement (https://www.kvpu.org.ua/en/). Those unions are struggling for worker rights against the Ukrainian employers, against government anti-worker policies, and against Putin’s invasion. If that invasion succeeds, the free and independent unions will be crushed, along with any hope for democracy. And

WHEREAS the Putin regime has built links with extreme right, nationalist, and anti-labor forces. In the U.S. attendees at the racist America First conference in 2022 chanted “Putin, Putin, Putin”.

If Putin’s invasion even partly succeeds, it will strengthen these forces in the United States and around the world.

And while the great majority of the Ukrainian people have shown their determination to fight the invasion, they need arms to do so. For whatever motives, the United States is helping provide those arms. The far right - Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Rand Paul and others - are mounting a campaign to oppose this.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we, the labor movement of the United States, must unequivocally support our Ukrainian sisters and brothers in their fight against this invasion. They cannot do so without arms. We support the United States providing all the arms Ukraine needs with no strings attached. We call for the removal of all Russian troops from Ukraine and for no Russian annexations of any part of that country.

The labor movement must oppose all imperialist invasions, no matter who is the invader. The Ukrainian people’s struggle is our struggle.

Reasonable people can disagree about many things.

But here are two things we can all agree about:

1. People in Ukraine can and should determine their own futures.

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