Zelensky Attacks Internationalists

Mar 17, 2025

This article is translated from the February 7 issue, #2949 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

Last month the heir to the KGB in Ukraine, the SBU, carried out a “special operation” in the regions of Kiev, Dnipro, Odessa, Poltava and Kharkiv.

According to the SBU, the operation was aimed at arresting individuals planning to set up “an insurrectionary movement” and “soldiers’ committees” to organize a collective boycott of the fighting among those mobilized and those who might be mobilized.

In a press release, the SBU announced that it had arrested five activists of the Workers’ Front of Ukraine (RFU), a far-left group known for defending communist and internationalist ideas. According to investigators, they allegedly acted on behalf of the Russian Federation by calling on the population to “rise up against the authorities and lay down their arms.” The SBU accuses them of having urged those liable for military service to refuse conscription and soldiers not to carry out orders from the command and to desert.

These defendants, who are aged between 20 and 32, have been imprisoned or placed under house arrest with electronic surveillance. However, despite what the Ukrainian special services claim, they do not appear to belong to the RFU.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the Ukrainian government has fabricated this case in order to frighten public opinion, as opposition to its war policy is gaining ground within the country. The consequences are very real for Zelensky when, almost every day, his troops have to abandon positions to the opposing side. The case of the 155th mechanized brigade, known as Anne of Kiev, is symptomatic. Deployed at the hottest point of the front, in Pokrovsk, and equipped with the latest war machinery, it was supposed to have 2,000 men, most of them trained in France. However, it recently came out that the unit has lost more than half of its personnel, between those who have not returned to Ukraine and those who refuse to fight on the spot.

At this rate, with weeks having been spent solely on negotiations regarding a possible ceasefire, Zelensky could find himself in a situation where he has little left to negotiate with Putin. Even if Trump is no longer boasting that he will “make peace in 24 hours,” even if it means forcing Zelensky’s hand, and if the war drags on, extending its procession of horrors, deaths and destruction on both sides, this is not necessarily good for the government in Kiev. It is even weakened by it, because NATO can flood it with weapons, but it still has to find the men to use them. And for them to accept it, they must at least feel strong popular support behind them. And that is no longer the case.

Zelensky is therefore trying to keep up appearances. Using a trick that he has been using and abusing for the three years that this war has been going on, he has just dismissed a string of generals. And since he hardly seems to believe that the population will hold them responsible for the situation, he is attacking the “enemy within.” In this case, it’s the RFU, which said at the end of February 2022: “Whoever the oligarchs are who win this war, the working class certainly has nothing to gain from it.”