Ukraine-Russia:
Politicians Talk Peace While Cannons Fire

Sep 15, 2025

This article is translated from the September 12 issue #2980 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.

Leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” the countries that claim to support Ukraine, flocked around French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the élysée Palace in Paris on September 4. They declared that 26 of them are committed to providing military aid to the Kyiv regime “on land, at sea and in the air.”

It is unclear whether this will satisfy Zelensky, who hoped his supporters would commit to sending at least 20,000 to 30,000 troops as a “security guarantee” in the event of a ceasefire with Russia. Only France and Great Britain have promised to send troops, but not that many. Other “volunteers” refuse to commit their ground troops, even if they promise to collaborate in some way in Ukraine’s defense.

On the other hand, Trump has every reason to congratulate himself. He has said repeatedly that the U.S. intends to withdraw militarily from Europe in order to concentrate its forces against China. The U.S. did everything it could to provoke this war between Russia and Ukraine. Now American imperialism has reaped substantial profits for its arms industries, oil and mineral corporations, banks, and so on. So, Trump thinks the war can end—even if this means leaving his European allies to manage as they can by continuing to aid Ukraine in its war. And Trump extends his magnanimous generosity to the point of offering to sell them 100 billion dollars worth of U.S. weapons to supply to Kyiv.

In other words, Washington wants to untangle itself from the conflict, while leaving second-rate imperialist powers like France, Great Britain and Germany to provide Ukraine with those famous military guarantees that were so much discussed in mid-August in Washington. But Washington wants to let U.S. capitalists keep profiting from the war.

In practice, this amounts to engaging Europe in what could be a continent-wide military conflict. Because—in actual fact instead of the hypocritical diplomatic language repeated this summer in the summit in Anchorage and the meeting at the White House—we are witnessing the continuation and acceleration of the escalation of war. Never before have so many Russian drones and missiles struck Ukrainian cities almost every night, including Kyiv and even, for the first time, government buildings there. As for Western arms deliveries to Ukraine — which are what increased military budgets in France and elsewhere are for — they continue to grow, as do the losses they cause. The Russian army loses 1,000 men each day to death or injury for the goal of advancing a mile in anticipation of post-war negotiations.

But it’s not all bad news! The chairman of American oil giant Exxon took advantage of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska to meet with the chairman of Russian giant Rosneft to discuss business. The aim was to start collaborating again to explore and exploit vast gas fields on the Russian island of Sakhalin. The war had put this project on hold. According to the Wall Street Journal, Exxon asked the White House for a green light and then got the Kremlin’s approval.

The fact that Exxon is preparing to refine Russian gas into billions of dollars hasn’t stopped Trump from ranting against European countries that continue to buy Russian oil. The fact is, in peace as in war, business is business in the capitalist world. And business needs its share of victims: Ukrainians, Russians, and others.