Ukraine Resists Putin’s Advance

What Putin expected to be little more than a cakewalk is becoming increasingly complicated for the Russian troops who invaded Ukraine on February 24. Far from being seen and treated as “liberators,” as Moscow’s propaganda announced, the Russians are being strongly resisted by the Ukrainian army and civilian militias. Amid hardship and destruction, images show how Ukrainians are organizing the defense: taking on weapons, training, digging trenches, and producing Molotov cocktails…[1]

By the IWL-FI

Translated from the Spanish version

Putin, irritated, redoubled the attack on Ukraine. On Saturday 26th he ordered an all-out offensive “in all directions” on Kyiv claiming that the Ukrainians refused to negotiate. The condition for that negotiation, on the Kremlin’s part, was that the country they are invading “lay down their arms.” That is not an offer to negotiate. It is demanding unconditional surrender.

By Saturday night, Kyiv was preparing for the invaders’ final assault. Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky announced that the enemy would try to take the capital and it would be a “difficult night.” But Kyiv did not fall. It resists until now, against all odds. The key to understanding this lies in the enormous combat readiness of the Ukrainian people, which surprised Putin and even Zelenskiy himself. Their bravery has moved the whole world with countless displays of courage in the face of an infinitely superior enemy. Ukraine stands up defiantly to Russia.

Civilian militias organize in Kyiv and other cities, many of them women

In the afternoon of March 1st, the Russian Army alerted the population in several areas of Kyiv to leave their homes in the face of imminent shelling. They blew up the television tower, killing at least five people [2]. Explosions were registered in several points of the capital.

Russia bombs the TV tower in Kyiv

The Ukrainian government on Sunday reported some 352 civilian deaths and 1,684 wounded since the start of the invasion, including fourteen children. There are about one million internally displaced persons. More than 660,000 people were forced to leave the country, mostly to Poland, Hungary, and Romania, fleeing increasingly powerful Russian attacks [3] without discrimination between military targets or civilian areas.

Over 600,000 Ukrainians flee the country in dramatic conditions

In Kharkiv, the second-largest city in the country, residential districts have been shelled and a missile hit the Regional Administration building.

The Russian army continues to advance towards Kyiv. Satellite images show that a convoy of more than 60 kilometers made up of Russian military vehicles is heading towards the city of 2.8 million inhabitants. The bulk of Russian ground troops are less than 30 kilometers from the capital [4].

In addition to the siege and shelling of Kharkiv and the siege of Kyiv, the Russians are attacking from the south, where they seized Berdiansk, on the Azov Sea, and are trying to seize Mariupol, where Ukrainian resistance is tenacious. Putin is apparently planning a pincer to envelop the Donbas, consolidating a corridor from the Crimean peninsula, which he annexed by force in 2014, to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine has aroused an enormous feeling of solidarity towards the brave Ukrainian people, who launched a broad anti-war movement against Moscow’s intentions. Over the weekend, dozens of mass demonstrations against Putin and in favor of Ukraine took place in different cities in Europe and abroad. Thousands marched in Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, Paris, London, and Sydney. Protests also took place in São Paulo and Santiago de Chile. The repudiation of Putin was also felt in Eastern Europe, as in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, or in Warsaw, the Polish capital. However, the most resounding protests were in Moscow, in the very heart of the aggressor country, where discontent is growing against the Russian dictatorship, which arrested more than 5,000 anti-war demonstrators.

Over 100,000 people protest in Berlin

Shamefully, a part of the left, especially the philo-Stalinist left, positions itself with Putin and reproduces the lies of his propaganda, thus collaborating with the massacre of the Ukrainian people.

It is urgent to organize, in all countries, a campaign of solidarity with the Ukrainian people to broaden the condemnation of the Russian invasion. We call on all socialists, democrats, defenders of the free self-determination of the peoples, to join the struggle for the defeat of Putin and the defense of the sovereignty of Ukraine.

For the defeat of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine!

Take the United States, NATO, and European Union talons out from Ukraine!

For a unified Ukraine free from Russian oppression!

Dissolution of NATO!

Dissolution of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization military alliance of the Russian state with the former Soviet republics), which has been used to crush popular uprisings and prop up submissive oligarchs, as in Kazakhstan!

Notes:

[1] See some of the footage from civilian mobilizations here