Putin’s hatchet man calls for Ukraine “to cease to exist”

By Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 13 April 2023, www.thecommunists.net

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and chairman of the ruling “United Russia” party, has published a statement titled "Why Ukraine will cease to exist? Because nobody needs it." It is a hotchpotch of bizarre claims and "Russkij Mir" chauvinism which demonstrates the ultra-reactionary character of Putin’s war against the Ukraine. ^[1]

According to the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, Medvedev explains in his declaration “why the Ukrainian state is not needed to Europe, the US, Africa, Latin America, Asia, Russia and, finally, Ukrainian people themselves.”. It is a kind of sweeping blow for which the former President and Prime Minister of Russia is well-known. [2] He claims that the "forced support of the Nazi regime under command of the American mentor has already created true financial and political hell for the Europeans."

He goes on that Ukraine is "also not needed to Asia," since Asian states see it on Russia’s example "how color [revolution] technologies are being honed in order to take down the largest competitor states," and "understand what fate has the collective West, led by America, has prepared for them in case of disobedience."

In a rather amusing note, he adds that "regular Americans have absolutely no idea, what ‘Ukraine’ is and where ‘it’ is located. Most of them wouldn’t even be able to immediately pinpoint this ‘state’ on the map."

More importantly, Medvedev emphasizes the well-known Great Russian claim that the Ukrainian nation does not exist and that a Ukrainian state is an invention of Moscow’s enemies. He calls the current Ukrainian state a "misconception, created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (…) Millions of our compatriots that have been harassed by the Nazi Kiev regime for years live here. It is them whom we protect with the special military operation, ruthlessly eliminating the enemy."

He suggests that there are only slightly over 20 million out of 45 million Ukrainians still left in the country, and the remaining Ukrainians "are forced to live in constant anxiety and fear" and "are willing to go anywhere."

This is an utterly stupid and cynical statement. First, as a matter of fact, there live about 35 millions in the Ukraine – nearly double as many as the Putin’s hatchet man claims. ^[3] Furthermore, it is certainly true that Ukraine’s population has dramatically dropped since 24 February 2022 since about 8 million have left the country – mostly women and children – and about the same number are displaced within the country. But what is the reason for this?! It is the war of terror which Putin has unleashed against the Ukraine! It is exactly that war for which Medvedev himself is co-responsible as a leading figure of the Putin regime!

At the end of his statement, Medvedev draws the conclusion from his bizarre ramble. "And this is why this sub-Ukraine is not needed for us. We need a Big Great Russia. (…) This kind of Ukraine is not needed to anyone on the plant. And this is why it will cease to exist."

The meaning of Medvedev’s statement

Medvedev’s statement is of interest not because of its intellectual depth but because its political meaning. This is, first and foremost, because of the authors high position in the Kremlin. Furthermore, it is not a drunken rambling spread on Twitter after midnight. TASS has dedicated a whole English-language article – longer than most other TASS press releases – in which it presents summaries (with large excerpts) of Medvedev’s statement. This fact alone reflects that Moscow agrees with the deputy chairman of the Security Council and considers it as important to spread his ideas to the global public.

Hence, both the high-ranking nature of the author as well as the prominence given to it by TASS demonstrate that the statement reflects the fundamental ideology behind Russia’s war in the Ukraine. This conflict is not a war “in defence of the Russian brothers in Donbass” or against “the NATO threat” – as the Kremlin and its supporters like to claim. It is rather a colonial war – ideologically based on the denial of the national rights of the Ukrainian people. It is an imperialist crusade aimed at the eradication of the Ukraine as a separate state and at the subjugation of the Ukrainians to “Big Great Russia.”

Medvedev’s denial of the national rights of the Ukrainian people reminds us to a recent statement of Israel's far-right National Security Minister Smotrich who recently claimed that there “isn't a Palestinian people”. [4] The Kremlin applies a very similar logic to the Ukrainians since denying their national existence creates the ideological basis for expelling and subjugating them. Let’s be clear: This is the ideology of genocide.

The ultra-reactionary denial of the national rights of the Ukrainian people is not an ideological excess resulting from the ongoing war. In fact, it is in accordance with the world view which Russia’s President Putin himself elaborated in his notorious essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in July 2021. ^[5]

Fighting against the social-imperialist “left-wing” parties which side with Russia

It is a shame that there exist a number of Stalinist, populist and social democratic parties which support Putin’s war against the Ukrainian people, or which are sympathetic to Russia as a supposedly non-imperialist “lesser evil” against the Western powers. Make no mistake, such forces are social-imperialist agents in the ranks of the working class and the popular masses.

Such Putinistas are no better than those “left-wing” forces in Western Europe which defend the right of the Zionist Apartheid state to exist (e.g. sectors of the LINKE in Germany, the so-called “Anti-Nationals” and “Anti-Germans”, etc.). [6]

Medvedev’s statement confirms the RCIT’s analysis of the colonial character of Putin’s war against the Ukrainian people. Contrary to the claims by Putinistas and semi-Putinistas, Russia is an imperialist Great Power – no better nor worse than its rivals in the West. ^[7] Authentic socialists oppose Moscow’s wars of aggression in the same way as they oppose all other imperialist wars. ^[8]

Likewise, we refute the reactionary thesis that the Ukraine would not fight for their national liberation but merely for interests of Western imperialism. Socialists should support the right of the Ukraine to get material aid (including weapons) from wherever possible. They should oppose any political conditions attached to such aid by Western governments. [9] Such a stance needs to be combined with a revolutionary defeatist approach against all imperialist powers – in West as well as in East. [10]

The RCIT calls all authentic socialists who share such an approach to intensify collaboration and to join forces in fighting for a consistent internationalist and anti-imperialist position. We have summarised such an approach in the slogan: Defend the Ukraine against Putin’s invasion! Beware of NATO and Zelensky – transform the resistance against the Russian occupation into a Popular War! Against Russian and against NATO imperialism!