The following statement was issued by the National Board of the Communist Party USA. February 25, 2022. 

The CPUSA calls on the U.S. people to demand the Biden administration change course immediately. War is never an acceptable solution and must be rejected in the strongest terms. Therefore, we also call on Russia to withdraw troops. All sanctions must be ended, and borders secured and respected.

The saber rattling, sanctions, and selling of “wolf tickets” in recent weeks, as the CPUSA National Committee meeting recently warned, have spilled over into open war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens catastrophic consequences.

There is no doubt that the longstanding attempt by U.S. imperialism and NATO to bring Ukraine into the military alliance has heightened tensions In the recent period, this effort, along with providing military supplies combined with Cold War rhetoric is a backdrop to the crisis. A lasting peace is not possible unless Ukraine remains outside of NATO. Russia’s ruling circles have their own national designs, and the outbreak of war will only make matters worse.

The present crisis has been long in the making. The historical context reaches back to the end of World War II, the Cold War, and the formation of NATO.

However, the issue roiling today’s strife is the fact that the presence of NATO and U.S. bases, military forces, and missile systems put Russia’s western border under continual threat. Over the past decade or so, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia. Romania, and Estonia have provided a home to these formations, maintaining a constant war footing. This is incomplete violation of agreements made at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not expand eastward.

NATO’s expansion now includes not only Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—by 2004 seven additional countries were added. NATO once numbered 12 members; now it comprises 28. Furthermore, the NATO military alliance is looking at Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine as possible future members.

Another factor to be considered in the current crisis is the fate of the four million Russians living in the areas of Lugansk and Donetsk, Ukraine. Agreements reached in 2014 with respect to their autonomy have never been implemented by Ukraine’s government.

These regions opposed the 20l4 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych. For their opposition in 2014, the separatists were attacked and killed by the Azov Battalion, a military detachment of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists — Bandera faction (OUN-B), a neo-Nazi outfit. Some sources number the casualties at 14,000.