the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 3, 2025
When Ukrainian president Zelensky came to the White House, he was berated by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Vance said Zelensky was “disrespectful” because he didn’t tell Trump “thank you” as the U.S. government was demanding a deal in which Ukraine would hand over much of its mineral wealth. This confrontation played out in front of TV cameras, perhaps intentionally.
Trump claimed that he is all about stopping the war in Ukraine and bringing peace. He says that taking Ukraine’s mineral wealth is repayment for all the money the U.S. government gave to Ukraine during the war. But, in fact, very little of this money actually ended up in Ukraine. Most of the money ended up in the pockets of U.S. weapons manufacturers who built the weapons shipped to Ukraine.
What Trump is doing has nothing to do with peace. It has everything to do with money and profits. Today Trump is trying to cut a deal with Putin to share the wealth of Ukraine between U.S. capitalists and Russian oligarchs. He is also trying to keep competitors, like European capitalists, away from this wealth. The wealth in Ukraine that Trump wants for U.S. capitalists includes many minerals and metals that are essential to industry and manufacturing. Ukraine has very rich agricultural land that U.S. capitalists are already getting their hands on.
Trump is certainly going in a different direction on Ukraine than Biden. Biden’s bloody policy of war killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. Trump’s deal to end the war will strip Ukraine of its wealth and impoverish the Ukrainian people. Trump is picking up from where Biden left off; at its core, it is the same fundamental policy. Both of them have wanted to advance the interests of U.S. capitalists and U.S. imperialism, whatever the situation is.
The war in Ukraine was used by Biden and the U.S. government to weaken Russia. When Putin ordered the Russian military to brutally invade Ukraine, he was reacting to threats from the U.S. government and NATO, who have stationed troops, warplanes and missiles right up to the Russian border. The U.S. surrounded Russia by throwing lots of money at former Soviet states to pull them into NATO and the European Union and away from Russia. The U.S. supported the ouster of a president in Ukraine who was friendly to Russia. The U.S. was training Ukrainian military forces before the war started, and U.S. generals helped direct the war after it started.
For three years, the Biden administration sent weapons to Ukraine to keep the war going. So, when Trump claims that Ukraine should pay for its war against Russia, he has it backwards. This was a U.S. war against Russia, using the Ukrainians as its proxies and cannon fodder.
The U.S. government also applied economic sanctions to weaken the Russian economy. These sanctions also weakened the economies of European countries who are competitors of U.S. capitalists.
The war in Ukraine has meant carnage and destruction for millions of people in Ukraine, and in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, soldiers and civilians, Ukrainian and Russian. Several million people have been displaced from their homes. These people are the victims of the war.
But for U.S. imperialism, the Ukrainian and Russian people are just the pawns. U.S. imperialism, whether represented by Biden or Trump, uses any means against any peoples in the drive for profit of U.S. capitalists. Sometimes that means pushing a war, as Biden did in Ukraine. Now it may mean cutting a deal with Putin, as Trump is doing, a deal which will mean exploitation for the Ukrainian and Russian people.
U.S. imperialism, with the strongest military and the dominant economy in the world, tries to impose its order on the rest of the world. In doing so, U. S. imperialism, in the face of a long-standing capitalist economic crisis and competition between capitalist states, is driving the world toward more wars and bigger wars. We are headed for more poverty for the working peoples of every country, whether in Ukraine, Russia, China, Europe or the U.S.
What all working people in every country have in common is that this capitalist system is against our interests. And we have in common that the working class has the collective power to get rid of this capitalist system.