There is no large-scale, independent revolutionary military force in Ukraine capable of defeating the invading Russian military, at the moment, and materialists deal with what exists, or is in the process of becoming, not with idealist fantasies of what might be. Our demands and activity should certainly be geared to trying to change that material reality, but that is not done by pretending it is something it is not, and by then raising demands that, in practice, must have different interpretations and consequences.
The demand for defeat of the Russian invasion, in the existing material conditions, can only be understood as defeat by the forces of the Ukrainian state, and its NATO imperialist backers. That is simply campism, in which you have made yourself a tool of NATO imperialism. Its like in WWI or II, if you put yourself on the side of France against Germany, of the US against Japan/Germany and so on. That has nothing to do with Marxism even that of the Mensheviks in WWI, who, prior to the February Revolution, adopted the position of revolutionary defeatism.
In fact, for a revolutionary defeat of the Russian invasion, it requires not even tacit reliance on the forces of NATO imperialism, and of the Ukrainian state, but a militant opposition to it. The basis of a revolutionary defeat of the Russian invasion, requires not only the building of a large-scale, independent, proletarian revolutionary force in Ukraine, but its alliance with similar forces in Russia, working for the overthrow of the vile Putin regime, and the oligarchic ruling class that stands behind it. But, a failure of socialists in Ukraine, and in NATO countries to militantly separate themselves from their own ruling classes, completely undermines any such international solidarity and action by the working-class. As Trotsky put it,
"The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler’s regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers."
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