The antiwar meeting of leftists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia in Minsk has been dubbed "the new Zimmerwald." In Zimmerwald, as you know, there was the anti-war Socialist Conference in 1915. But, as is known, the participants were divided into moderate and pacifist "Zimmerwald left" (Lenin, Zinoviev, Platten, Hoglund, Radek, Berzin, Borchardt, Nerman). 

The undersigned have decided to declare our position, which may be called the "Minsk left." The statement is open for signature.

The conference “Mutual Support and Solidarity of Post-Soviet Left in the Conditions of International and Interstate Conflicts” took place on 7-8 June in Minsk, where activists of communist and workers’ parties from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia took part.

Left forces from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus held a two-day antiwar conference near Minsk on June 7-8. The conference was organized by participants of the Internet-project “Prasvet” with a support of the webjournal Left.by 

The aim of the conference is to consolidate the coordination of internationalist Marxist left forces of three countries under circumstances of military-nationalist hysteria and the outburst of violence and repressions in Ukraine. The conference statement is open for signatures. These can be added in the online comments feature of the statement.

Resolution by the Danish revolutionary organisations Marxist Students and the Revolutionary Socialists.

Last night (2 June 2014) saw the founding meeting of the ‘Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine’ campaign, which was hosted by the Marxist Student Federation in SOAS, London.

The right-wing regime in Kiev is using war hysteria to bolster its support within the country – at least in the west – but news has been emerging of Ukrainian soldiers refusing to fight in the east, of their mothers and wives demanding they be brought back home. Here we republish an article by Andriy Manchuk in which he reminds today’s Kiev regime of how Tsar Nicholas II’s regime ended after whipping up war hysteria.

According to a report in the Volhynia Post, on May 27, soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 51st Brigade refused to be transported to Mykolayiv to fight the rebels. The soldiers refused to move and started to unload machinery and equipment. 

Further to the report we published about a mutiny of soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 51st Brigade, here are some additional news which indicate that the mutiny is spreading to the 2nd Battalion based in Rivne.

Further to our report on the strike of Donetsk coal miners against Kiev's "anti terrorist operation" we publish here an eyewitness account by Stanislav Retinskyi which was published in the Ukrainian left wing site Liva. The author talks to the miners and explains how they took the initiative themselves and what pushed them to strike.

Miners of the Donetsk region stopped work yesterday, starting an all-out strike in protest against the Ukrainian army’s continuing offensive and demanding an end to the “anti-terrorist operation” (ATO) in the region; several pits in the Donbas are taking part already and the strikes appears to be spreading to more mines. Meanwhile, spokesmen of the Kiev government and Ukrainian armed forces threaten escalation of the crackdown, with ATO press-secretary Alexei Dmitrashkovsky statingthat the operation will continue “until

May 26 was the bloodiest day so far in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” operation where Ukrainian forces used fighter jets and helicopter gunships to fight off rebels who had taken over the airport in Donetsk. This is the clear message the new president Poroshenko is sending to the Peoples’ Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The events that led to the holding of the latest Ukrainian presidential election started with a demand for EU-integration. So it is fitting that the election with the lowest participation (estimated at around 55% by the Ukrainian Electoral Commission) in Ukraine’s history was held on the same day as the EU elections, which had an even lower participation of 43%. The first round was won outright by oligarch Petro Poroshenko, scoring 54% with 80% of the votes counted. Yulia Tymoshenko was runner-up at a distant 13%, while fellow populist Oleh Lyashko took just over 8%.

We republish here the first statement of the left wing organisation Union of Borotba (Struggle) on Ukraine’s “elections of blood"

On May 20th, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest man and oligarch boss of the South East of the country had called for a mass mobilisation against the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic and for a united Ukraine.

We publish this article by Borotba leader Sergei Kirichuk which deals with the attacks against the Communist Party of Ukraine and calls for broad solidarity with all those suffering repression and right wing attacks.