Australia-Ukraine Solidarity Statement of Principles
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Ukraine has the right to independence and sovereignty.
Ukraine has the right to defend itself from foreign aggression.
Ukraine has the right to obtain the weapons needed to defeat Russian aggression.
Condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine but opposition to support of Ukraine’s right to self-defence, does not advance a just peace: it undermines Ukraine’s struggle and weakens the resistance to far-right extremism and aggression everywhere.
Russia is an imperialist power that represents a real and present danger to Ukraine’s existence as a nation and to peace and security in Europe.
All imperialist and neo-colonial aggression, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the American subversion of left-wing governments and movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, its aggression against Iran and other countries, and Israel’s demolition and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the destabilisation of neighbouring countries, are all examples of aggressive imperialist power that must be condemned and resisted.
Campism, the view that condemns only US imperialism and ignores the imperialism of Russia or China or the viciousness of regimes like Iran’s, is intellectually, morally and politically bankrupt. It is a view that serves only the interests of political and business elites in countries that don’t happen to be directly engaged in US imperialism. It certainly does not advance the interests of the ordinary people in these places who are victims of those forces which campists either outright support or make excuses for.
Those who are deaf to the voices of Ukrainians, and who dismiss the conflict as just an American or European proxy war, channel Russian propaganda about Ukraine and become the unwitting tools of Russian aggression.
Putin’s Russia joined by Trump’s America, represent the central axis of an international far-right extremism, the central tenets of which are ethno-nationalism, Christian extremism, white supremacy, opposition to democracy, and sexual and cultural diversity. Supporters of, or apologists for, Putin’s regime cannot, therefore, in any sense be left-wing. At best they are components of a red-brown movement which should be rejected by all leftists.
Australia-Ukraine Solidarity unconditionally supports Ukraine’s existential struggle against the Russian invasion, but particularly supports Ukrainian trade unionists, socialists, feminists and other leftists in their struggle for an independent, socially just and progressive Ukraine.
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