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.

The first time I saw a comparison of the war in East Ukraine with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was three weeks ago in an article by the liberal journalist Vitaly Portnikov in portal Facets pv. Today, this analogy is already established in the Ukrainian and Russian liberal mainstream. "Israel and the Ukrainian regime -are seen as the embodiment of European civilization, light and goodness. Palestinians and eastern Ukrainians are terrorists, "quilted", "scoops", and can only understand the language of bombs and missiles."

Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has announced that: “Ukraine will experience the largest privatization plan in its history” in the name of fighting corruption.

On July 8, the Ukrainian Minister of Justice filed a lawsuit in the Kiev District Court to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU). This is the last step in a growing campaign in the last few months to prosecute anyone organisation which raises its voice against the interim government and its “anti-terrorist operation” in the East.

We have received the following appeal, signed by Mikhail Alexeevich Krylov, Representative of the Independent Donetsk Miners’ Trade Union. Krylov was co-chairman of the City Strike Committee in Donetsk during the big miners’ strikes in 1991 and later on in the 1990s. He is now the head of the Independent Miners Union of Donetsk, which organises over 1,000 mine-workers.

A trade union conference was violently attacked by fascist thugs on June 26 in Kiev. The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine was holding its congress and was due to elect the union leadership, when it was interrupted by a violent attack by “Right Sector” and “Social-National Assembly” neo-nazi thugs, as well as the Maidan self-defence militia.

Disastrous conflicts such as civil wars are often remembered for their perpetrators in the form of leaders and generals. It is often forgotten the influence of the media in creating war hysteria. In the conflict in Ukraine, the media’s influence has played a critical role in justifying the actions of the oligarch rulers in Kiev; especially among the masses in Western and Central Ukraine.

In response to the call made by the International Marxist Tendency in solidarity with the Ukrainian workers and their organizations, Esquerda Marxista and the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) held a rally in front of the General Consulate of Ukraine in São Paulo.

On June 7 and 8, left and Marxist forces from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine participated in an anti-war conference near Minsk. The conference produced a statement signed by its participants under the title of "Stop the War in Ukraine". We publish here the text of the speech by Artem Kirpìchenok, from the Russian section of the IMT, and his report of the conference. Since its publication, the statement has come under criticism from a

A Russian comrade of the IMT, Artem Kirpichenok, delivered a speech to the recent conference on “Co-operation and Solidarity of the Post-Soviet Left in Conditions of Ethnic and National Conflict” held in Minsk, highlighting the solidarity campaign which the IMT has been involved in promoting.