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Between partisans and loyalists, nationalists and mercenaries, all supplied by arms from imperialist instigators, the programmed assassination of proletarians is being planned, according to the same old script.

As communists and internationalists, we know from memory and from the science of history that in the age of imperialism class rule and oppression become more widespread and more intense. The economic crisis strews growing poverty and a trail of death amongst proletarians all over the world. War is the natural habitat of capitalism: indeed imperialism means more intense international competition, harsh trade wars and exportation of capitals which inevitably come into conflict with one another, control of the sources of raw materials and their transport routes and thus the attempt to exclude competitors, right up to the uncontrolled explosion of conflicts that are at first local and later, in perspective and in the presence of the necessary, favourable material conditions, worldwide.

“For a long time now, the lack of security measures in Turkish coal mines has been at the centre of polemics. Last year, 93 miners died in various mines across the Country. Last November, 300 miners shut themselves at the bottom of the Zonguldak mine, in the Black Sea region – where in 1992 an explosion had killed 263 men and in May 2010 30 more had died in the same way – in order to protest against the plant's insufficient security measures.Two weeks ago, the main opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu's Chp, asked in Parliament for an inquiry on security in the Soma mine itself. The proposal was turned down by the Akp, which has the absolute majority in Ankara's Great Assembly” (from the Italian daily “La Repubblica”, 5/14/2014).

The events that have been going on for months at the heart of Europe – Crimea’s detachment from Ukraine and its fake-democratic joining to Russia, tension on the border between the two States with consequent deployment of armies, the political and media clamour from all sides surrounding these events – show that under the pressure of the economic crisis the bourgeoisie is more and more frequently resorting to a card it knows only too well: that of nationalism.

As the war massacres in Syria continue and millions of refugees flock to all corners of the Middle East, adding to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian, African and Asian proletarians fleeing by land and sea in an attempt to survive, the situation in Ukraine has blown up under pressure from the imperialist powers, with all the contradictions it has been dragging along with it since the explosion of Russia (1989-91), but which are mainly due to material factors linked to its history and geographical, economic and strategic position. Born old and decrepit, with the illusion of being able to gain stable independence at a political as well as an economic level, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie has “settled down” in a territory that reaches across the area of Eastern Europe bordering on Belarus, Poland, Hungary Slovakia, Romania, Moldavia and Russia.