In Sweden a defamatory campaign has been launched in the media about the Left Party and its position in relation to the breakaway republics in Eastern Ukraine. We publish here an article by the Swedish Marxists of Avanti, which answers all these slanders. We believe this article is of interest to an international audience.

We here bring an interview with the Ukrainian left wing organisation Borotba discussing the situation in Ukraine today, one year after the Maidan movement and the fall of Viktor Yanukovych.

The so-called “Maidan revolution” was supposed to stand for democracy and Western values while fighting against corruption and the oligarchy. The actual result was that the reign of one group of oligarchs was replaced by another, and now, those who benefited from the change are fighting each other for the loot.

On Wednesday 18 February the rebel forces in the east of Ukraine arrived in the key town of Debaltseve, control of which they have wrested from pro-Kiev forces after having encircled them and demanded surrender of the town, this advance took place after a new ceasefire was due to come into force on Sunday 15 February.

The diplomatic negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have led to a cease-fire agreement which will be difficult to carry out on the ground.   We will return to this agreement and the different imperialist interests involved in a future article.   For the moment we are publishing this article which was written on 2 February, which deals with the military and political situation inside Ukraine itself.

A number of far right parties and individuals were elected to the Ukrainian Parliament (Rada) in the recent elections on October 26 in the lists of different parties or standing in single-mandate constituencies. Some are now part of the government majority and many have been elected to different positions in the parliamentary commissions.

Just a few weeks after signing the ceasefire with the rebel republics on September 5th, Poroshenko could be seen on CSPAN, asking a session of the US Congress for more lethal military equipment. It is becoming clearer every day that the ceasefire was a way of creating some domestic calm during the elections last month.

The expression “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” is the best way to describe the reaction in the Western media to the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Ukraine.

Dimitry Kolesnik is the editor of the Ukrainian left wing website Liva and a leading activist in the Marxist organization Borotba. He attended the World Congress of the International Marxist Tendency in August 2014 in Greece, where he was interviewed by Peter Mikhailenko.

On the eve of the NATO summit in Wales, the Ukraine crisis has seen an escalation in rhetoric. The same people who told us about Saddam’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” are now raising a hue and cry about thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Russian troops having invaded Ukraine and demanding swift action to counter them.

The Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko and the Ukrainian government have forcibly removed the remaining Euromaidan protesters, clearing away protesters’ tents and replaced them with an army recruitment office. Claiming the objectives of Euromaidan accomplished and the movement no longer necessary, Kiev is reigning in the movement that had brought them to power.

We are publishing the translation of an article by Svetlana Tsiberganova, a Borotba activist based in Donetsk. It deals with the reasons for the bankruptcy of part of the Ukrainian left that have capitulated to anti-communist liberal prejudices and Ukrainian nationalism.

We publish this resolution unanimously approved by the IMT World Congress (Greece, July 29 - August 3, 2014).

The death of almost 300 innocent men, women and children on a Malaysian airline flight has shocked the world. Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was travelling over the conflict-hit region when it disappeared from radar. A total of 283 passengers, including some 80 children, and 15 crew members were on board.

The Brazilian Communist Party and Esquerda Marxista have followed with concern the developments in Ukraine. It is yet another chapter of imperialist intervention in the country and of struggle between factions of oligarchs of the kind that have marked the history of Ukraine after the breakup of the USSR. These oligarchs emerged as a dominant group after having taken over, through shady manoeuvres and privatizations, the achievements built with much sacrifice by the Soviet people. Their actions have brought the country to its current state, on the verge of economic and social bankruptcy.