Martin Suchanek
The Anchorage Summit on 16 August was a triumph for Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump, whose prize was to be a ceasefire in Ukraine, came away empty-handed.
Not only did Trump roll out the red carpet for Putin but he effectively agreed Putin’s red lines; the hostilities will go on until Ukraine accepts terms agreed by the United States and Russia.
The terms Trump conceded are not simply gifting Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia, but also potentially handing over the parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson districts not yet occupied by its forces. The European Nato states say they will not recognise Russia’s territorial gains, illegal under international law, but they would have to accept them de facto.
Ukraine’s Nato membership is off the table, rejected as it is by the USA as well as Russia. There would be an immediate lifting of sanctions and a normalisation of relations, opening the way to unspecified economic ‘deals’. The diplomatic and political ‘isolation’ of Putin (EU policy for years but never really achieved) was once again undermined by Trump in front of the whole world. The implication is that if Ukraine will not accept them, then Trump will make good his threat to ‘walk away’.
The biggest obstacle to the immediate implementation of such a deal is Russia’s imperialist appetites. The Kremlin’s reasoning is simple: why freeze the front lines now when they can conquer even more territories by winter? Ukraine is lacking logistical and manpower reserves and funds. The US, having already forbidden the use of its long range weapons against crucial targets inside Russia, is now intending to cease all arms deliveries, obliging European states to buy weapons on Ukraine’s behalf—Trump’s idea of a ‘good deal’.
Thus, the policy of the EU and the Western Nato allies at the moment is mainly to put the best face it can on a losing game. Merz, Macron, Starmer as well as Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were ready to accept this at the recent meeting with Trump in Washington. These shabby heroes were satisfied when Zelensky was not humiliated in the Oval Office, as he was in February.
But the Ukrainian had to repeatedly thank Trump for his support, with Merz, formerly a Trump critic, singing his praises. The ‘coalition of the willing’ around Britain, France, Germany, which had promised to assure Ukraine’s security in a supposed replacement for Nato’s Article Five promise to come to the aid of an attacked member state, were also unable to get Trump to endorse it or Putin to accept it, thus rendering it worthless.
Geopolitical chess game
Unlike the Europeans, the US is happy enough to trade Ukraine’s sovereignty and security in the pursuit of a strategic, geopolitical calculation. It wants to lure imperialist Russia away from its alliance with China. For that, Trump is prepared to endorse Putin as a leader of a great power. As for the three-way leaders’ meeting, mentioned after Anchorage, the Russian president is in no hurry to arrange it. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s cities continue to be bombed nightly, and Zelensky faces the unenviable task of trying to sell such a deal back home.
Russia can play for time, and so can the United States. Faced with this, Ukraine has few options. The EU powers and Britain are being made painfully aware of their own military and geostrategic dependence on the USA. Hence the abject pleas to ‘Daddy’, as Rutte called Trump, not to abandon Ukraine and to allow the Europeans to enforce ‘robust security guarantees’.
The only thing that is clear is that talk of ceasefire and peace negotiations could drag on for months. Basically the USA, like Russia, continues to pursue the goal of enforcing a dictated peace in its own interest. That would mean a sharing of influence over a devastated Ukraine, with Russia holding the conquered territories while the USA and the EU exploit the west of Ukraine economically.
As the Alaska summit showed, none of the great powers is prepared to change course, at least in the short term. This could only change if Russia openly and completely rejected the geostrategic goals that the US is pursuing. That is unlikely. Although it is not in Putin’s interest to drop his alliance with his ‘great friend’ Xi Jinping, why say so when he can continue to fool Trump into concession after concession?
Ukraine, but also Germany, France, Britain and the EU are officially acting as if none of this were the case. They happily clutch at any statement by Trump, or any other member of the US government that suggests a harder line towards Russia. Such zig-zags by no means indicate a change of US policy. At best, they are only a reminder to the Russian leadership not to overstrain the patience of the world’s largest economic and military power.
Any peace dictated by Trump and Putin, which includes the division of the country, would mean a heavy defeat for Ukraine, above all, for its workers and peasants. It would also, indirectly, mean a heavy defeat for the Russian working class, which would face a politically strengthened Putin regime, at least in the short term. It would also constitute a defeat for the entire international working class. A reactionary, imperialist cessation of hostilities, agreed by a Ukrainian government, would not be a prelude to lasting peace in Ukraine or internationally.
The country would be partitioned and its national right to self-determination trampled underfoot. Even for the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking populations who fear Ukrainian nationalism, Russia’s victory would only bring an extension of Putin’s Bonapartist dictatorship and oppression.
Moreover, with or without security guarantees for Ukraine, it would lead to further rearmament by Russia and the European Nato countries, massively strengthening militarism and imperialism in both camps, and eventually turn out to be a prelude to another, possibly even direct war between the rival powers.
Prospects for Ukraine
Despite the obvious international context of increasing inter-imperialist rivalry, the war over Ukraine has never been predominantly a proxy war between the great powers. It remains, first and foremost, the legitimate defence of a semi-colonial country against an imperialist invasion. The leadership of that war, Zelensky and the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, however, have led the country’s workers and peasants into the trap of political, military and economic dependence on the West, subordinating their interests to those of their allies.
Zelensky has to downplay the differences with the USA, put a good face on a bad situation, and sell rare earths and other natural resources to the USA, contrary to the Ukrainian constitution. He has also banned opposition parties and organisations and undermined trade union rights. As a result, Ukraine is objectively in an extremely difficult situation. Under this leadership, it can do little to thwart a ‘peace’ deal imposed by Russia and the USA.
As long as the war continues, the self-defence of semi-colonial Ukraine remains justified. At the same time, revolutionaries must warn against any false hope in their Western allies, not only against Trump’s deceptions, but also against all illusions in Germany, Britain and the EU.
Above all, an on-going struggle in Ukraine must oppose the sell-out of the country and fight for the expropriation of all privatised and sold off companies, for the cancellation of debt and reconstruction of the devastated cities and battlefields under workers’ control. All anti-working class and anti-union laws must be fought and repealed, all restrictions on democratic rights ended, especially against opposition parties and Russian-speaking minorities. In short, the working class must act as an independent force, and build a new revolutionary party, giving no support to Zelensky or any other bourgeois force.
In the Russian-occupied territories, the fight must be waged as part of a more general struggle against the Putin government, Russian imperialism and for a new Russian workers’ revolution that recognises the right to national self-determination (including the right to secede).
In the West, we must defend Ukraine’s right to self-determination, and to receive the weaponry and finance it needs for this. At the same time, we must reject conditions that Nato places on its support and also its huge rearmament schemes. Already there is talk of re-introducing conscription.
In the event of a ceasefire, revolutionaries must reject any stationing of Western troops in Ukraine. These would not only act as a bargaining chip in deals with Russia. They would also serve to defend Ukraine’s incorporation into Western capitalism against possible unrest by the working class and peasants against exploitation by their corporations.
Ukraine’s right to national self-determination will ultimately be realised neither by the West nor by the Ukrainian bourgeoisie. Rather, this requires the joint struggle of the Ukrainian, Russian and Western European working classes against their bourgeoisies and the imperialist order, and for workers’ governments and a socialist Europe.