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Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine one year ago today hoping to capture it in a few days — then spent the last year turning its southeast into a bloodbath. Even if the current military stalemate is broken, the divides created by the war won’t heal soon.
Lionized as a nationalist hero in Ukraine, Stepan Bandera was a Nazi sympathizer who left behind a horrific legacy.
States at war generally adopt interventionist economic policies to mobilize resources and manpower. Ukraine hasn’t followed suit, instead pursuing dogmatic free-marketeer measures that suit Western creditors more than its own population.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has produced a moment of unity in the West — and helped Washington reassert its leadership in NATO. With no peace in sight, the war has provided the opportunity to rebuild America’s tattered “informal empire.”
Use of the US’s unprecedented weapons supply to Ukraine has not been properly tracked by the Department of Defense — and the country has a history of alleged misuse, loss, or selling of munitions.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the EU granted asylum to millions of Ukrainian refugees. However, international students and other non-Ukrainians caught in the conflict have struggled to receive similar protection.
One year after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is backsliding away from democratic freedoms and liberal pluralism.
Donald Trump is demanding $500 billion in mineral riches from Ukraine in exchange for supporting its war effort. The bid to loot Ukraine’s resources makes a mockery of calls to defend its national sovereignty.
Although Ukraine is hobbled by the debt it owes its international creditors, Canada’s support for the country does not include any debt relief. It does, however, include guns and even more loans.
Four years into Russia’s invasion, Taras Bilous — a socialist serving in the Ukrainian army — reflects on exhaustion, negotiations, and why a bad ceasefire could be a boon for the far right.
The Minsk Agreements were meant to ease conflict in the Donbas, only to be torn to shreds by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A diplomat involved in the Minsk process tells Jacobin why it failed, and what chance diplomacy has of de-escalating the war.
Throughout the Russo-Ukrainian war, each side has cast its enemy as heirs to the Nazis of World War II. In Ukraine, this has fueled comfortable myths about the nationalists of the 1940s, whose role in the Holocaust is routinely ignored.
The borders of Ukraine are no more arbitrary than those of Poland, Greece, Italy, or Germany.
The only clear beneficiaries of the current proposal for military aid to Ukraine are US weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon — and both parties seem intent on passing it.
At the turn of the last century, Ukraine’s labor movement was subject to tsarist domination and divided along linguistic lines. The revolutions of 1917 inspired calls for self-determination and the formation of a common Ukrainian identity.
Even before Russia rained terror on its cities, Ukraine was a poor country with limited economic sovereignty. Today, Ukraine’s creditors should free it of its debts, allowing it to rebuild on the basis of self-sufficiency and democratic choice.
Whether the Ukraine war brings on a global catastrophe will hinge in large part on whether Washington decides to back a Ukrainian effort to retake the Crimean peninsula.
It’s impossible to say for certain what could have stopped Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But it is possible to situate the war in recent historical context and game out its geopolitical and economic consequences, including the effects of heavy sanctions.
Liberal internationalism is just another shade of US imperialism, dressed up in the language of democracy. But leftists have to do more than criticize: we must develop a viable alternative that prizes international collaboration and demilitarization.
The latest escalation in the Ukraine crisis requires us to hold two ideas at the same time: that Vladimir Putin bears much responsibility for the immediate crisis, and that the long-standing US refusal to accept limits to NATO expansion helped bring it about.