Statement by CC CPRF Chairman Gennady Zyuganov
On February 24 President Putin took a decision on conducting a special operation in Ukraine. Its declared aim is demilitarization and denazification of that country and protection of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
The government coup of 2014 in Ukraine was carried out with the support of the USA and the European Union. It brought to power extremely reactionary forces saturated with the poison of Bandera Nazism and Russophobia. The burning alive of people at the Odessa Trade Union House was a grim symbol of the anti-people intentions of those who had seized power. They embarked on a course of breaking ties with Russia and segregating the Russian population. The people of Crimea and Sebastopol responded by returning to their home harbor. The people of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts chose the path of independence. The attempts of Bandera followers to “pacify” the DPR and LPR claimed thousands of lives.
To put an end to hostilities in Donbass a compromise was reached in the shape of the Minsk Agreements whereby the DPR and LPR could remain part of Ukraine enjoying broad autonomy. However, Russia’s attempts to secure compliance with the agreements failed. Other measures were urgently needed in order to protect 800,000 Russian citizens and prevent a genocide of civilians in Donbass.
Adding drama to the situation was the fact that the Bandera government in Kiev was ever more actively seeking Ukraine’s admission to NATO. The country’s territory was becoming a bridgehead for deployment of armaments of the USA and its allies. NATO presence in Ukraine offered fundamentally new opportunities for launching a nuclear missile strike on our country. These hostile actions were backed by an unprecedented propaganda barrage on the people of Ukraine, our brothers and sisters. The West’s preparation for a major war in Europe threatened death and destruction to the populations both of Russia and Ukraine.
All these years the CPRF has been guided by the ideas of historical friendship and brotherhood of our peoples, exposing the Fascist nature of Bandera ideology and demonstrating the undemocratic character of the Kiev regime. We defended the right of Donbass people to life and dignity, Russian language and culture and recognition of their newborn statehood. Communist volunteers were fighting in the trenches on the line of fire and dying from shelling by Nazi units. The CPRF had dispatched to the DPR and LPR 93 convoys of humanitarian aid and for years implemented the Children of Russia to the Children of Donbass program.
Realizing the reasons of the special operation in Ukraine, the CPRF calls on the Russian authorities to scrupulously take every measure to protect the civilian population, including from possible provocations of Nazi bands. We deem it very important to carry out the plans of demilitarization of Ukraine avoiding casualties among Ukrainian servicemen and rendering every kind of assistance to those who lay down their arms. We call on all the political forces in Russia to press into service the mechanisms of people diplomacy for the sake of the centuries-old friendship between Russians and Ukrainians. The peoples of our two countries should be deeply aware that the population of Ukraine has been made hostage to NATO expansion and targets of unbridled Bandera propaganda.
The CPRF is convinced that the defense of the national interests of Russia is not confined to diplomatic and military-political measures. There is a growing need for major changes in the life of our country. A decisive pivot toward protecting the interests of the broad masses of the people is becoming a matter of Russia’s historical survival.
A fundamentally new model of economic and social life is needed in order to overcome socio-class cleavages and unite society in the face of diverse threats. This model should serve not the enrichment of financial speculators, but recovery of industry and agriculture, the development of science and education, support of healthcare and culture. In the face of Western sanctions we need effective import-replacement, dedollarization of the economy, and an end to the flight of capital out of the country. These steps can only be truly effective in conjunction with nationalization of strategic spheres of the economy, the use of the vast natural resources in the interests of all citizens and state planning of the economy. It is only in this way, remembering the great experience of the Soviet Union, studying the experience of modern successes of China and other countries that Russia can be self-sufficient, protected and confident of its future.
The best way for the authorities to adopt a new course is to urgently implement a complex of measures including a return to the Soviet pension-age scale, preservation and strengthening of local self-government, renunciation of forced vaccination and the electronic concentration camp, an end to political reprisals against communists and other representatives of the patriotic left.
Citizens’ trust in the electoral procedures must be strengthened in order to make the political system more stable and democratic. To this end it is necessary to stop once and for all the attempts to introduce remote electronic and three-day voting, to promote and implement a thorough overhaul of the electoral system.
The CPRF expects that in the context of growing external threats the leadership of the Russian Federation will follow the course toward ensuring all-sided and genuine national security. It is our conviction that this can only be guaranteed by a radical change of the socio-economic course and implementation of measures that form the basis of our program Ten Steps Toward the Power of the People.