The WSWS continues to receive submissions from all over the world in support of the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk, a Ukrainian Trotskyist who was imprisoned by the secret service (SBU) of the far-right Zelensky regime for his socialist opposition to the war. We are publishing a selection of these statements below.
To get involved with the campaign, submit a statement, sign the petition and make a financial contribution, visit wsws.org/freebogdan.
Linda, United States
Bogdan has done nothing wrong. He is the voice of many who want an end to the atrocities of the Ukrainian government and its repression of the common people. I call on the authorities of the Ukrainian government to free Bogdan at once and stop the police repression and war!
Nikolai, Russia
The glorification of Nazi criminals in Ukraine is an insult and outrage to the 60 million victims of the Second World War and hundreds of millions more people who died for freedom, equality and brotherhood around the world. This must end!
Efrain, Peru
Down with the false charges!
Arnaud, France
I’m not a Trotskyist, but I am opposed to war and the arrest of Bogdan Syrotiuk, as well as Julian Assange. I am opposed to the persecution of all figures who fight against US and European imperialism and the Zionists, that harm humanity.
Cursed be war and its perpetrators!
Andrew, Australia
Free the young freedom fighter Bogdan from the Ukrainian jail cell. Make some noise and tell Bogdan he is not alone and our best thoughts are with him. Start a campaign by sending pictures of us reading Marxist books in unusual places showing our support for his political work and that Marxism is alive and well in the WSWS.
We should picket the embassies and tell the bureaucrats that Bogdan must be free. Follow the path of 1917 and make a socialist stand against imperialist wars and recolonisation.
Rankothge, Sri Lanka
I am opposed to the arrest of people like Bogdan, who advocate for the people affected by the war, and express ideas against the war.
Katherine, United States
I stand with Bogdan Syrotiuk, Julian Assange, the students protesting on campuses across the world, and for the truths that they are shouting. Silencing them will not change the truth about the imperialist and capitalist destruction of lives, our environment, our freedom of speech, our right to live a safe, healthy and just life.
It is time for the working class to stand up and shout even louder. Do not underestimate the strength that we have both in numbers and in the experiences of lifelong struggles and the will to survive them. The time to effect real change is now.
Free Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Jan, Czech Republic
I demand an immediate, unconditional and peaceful release of Bogdan Syrotiuk from prison!
Basil, Ireland
It’s only by the efforts of those who fight against war and for peace that we in Europe even know of the Zelensky regime’s repressive and fascist character, as exemplified in how it targets and frames opponents of its NATO-backed war such as Bogdan.
Free Bogdan now!
Iwan, Netherlands
Bogdan Syrotiuk must be released immediately! His persecution by the Ukrainian regime and the silence in the West exposes all support by the ruling class and media in the West for so-called “democracy” and “self-determination” as the obvious pretext for their age-old, bloodstained imperialist strivings. The horrendous numbers of sacrificed war victims clearly shows their hostility for the international working class—in Russia and Ukraine, as well as in the West itself.
Free Bogdan Syrotiuk now!
Octavian, Romania
The political frame-up of Bogdan is preposterous. David North’s article exposes the omissions and mischaracterizations of Bogdan’s political activity which can be viewed by anyone on the World Socialist Web Site; that he is fighting for the unification of the working class in Ukraine and Russia against their respective capitalist classes that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Any doubt on the political integrity of Bogdan would be dispelled by the fact that the Putin regime has not uttered a word in defense of Bogdan. The oligarchy in Russia would be perfectly satisfied to see Bogdan rot in the dungeons of Zelensky’s fascist regime. The greatest enemy of the Russian capitalist class is the Russian working class; greater than the capitalists in the imperialist centers of US, Germany, France, UK and their allies. The persecution of Bogdan serves not only the interests of the Ukrainian capitalist class, but also the Russian capitalist class. Workers all over the world must come to the defense of Bogdan and demand his release from prison and an end to his persecution.
M, Britain
Clearly this is a political frame up aimed to silence anyone brave enough to oppose the fascist regime in Ukraine. Bogdan, a dedicated Trotskyist, has sought to expose the lies peddled by Kiev and it’s NATO backers. Neither for Russia nor NATO or Kiev, but for the independent unification and mobilisation of the Ukrainian, Russian and international working class, against war and capitalist dictatorship.
Bogdan is a brave and dedicated internationalist and deserves the support of the entire international socialist movement. This political frame up must be opposed and Bogdan immediately released.
John, Britain
Bogdan must be supported at all costs and his release gained. The only criminals are the US-backed Ukrainian fascist regime.
Sanjaya, Sri Lanka
The arrest and persecution of the Trotskyist fighter Bogdan is an assault to the working class who are mobilizing globally against imperialist war and social counterrevolution. The capitalist ruling class and the imperialists have no right to arrest genuine fighters for socialism and their charges are bogus. Bogdan is a political prisoner for whose freedom the working class, youth and all those who defend democratic rights should mobilize and fight.
Working people must fight against this imperialist assault and for the immediate freedom of comrade Bogdan.
Volodymyr, Canada
Free political prisoner Bogdan Syrotiuk! Solidarity with the workers of Ukraine! The political repression of the Kyiv junta must stop.
Pierce, United States
The Zelensky regime’s atrocious arrest of a man fighting for a just cause must not be ignored! Full solidarity with Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Felix J., Boston, United States
To honest people everywhere.
One month ago, I learned that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had arrested a young Ukrainian socialist, Bogdan Syrotiuk, and put him in jail in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. He was accused of being a traitor to Ukraine and of supporting Russia and Putin in the current war. Under the existing wartime conditions, he is in grave danger of being railroaded to a life sentence under cruel conditions, prejudicial to his already ill health.
I am well acquainted with the history of Ukraine, since I was born and spent my childhood there. I am a Ukrainian Jew, and my father, because of being Jewish, spent three years in the Rumanian-German labor camps, until the Red Army liberated him in 1944.
Ukrainian nationalism—as well as the Jewish variety (Zionism), or the Russian and American varieties—played and continue to play a deeply reactionary role within each of these countries. Ukrainian nationalists in 1918 surrendered Ukraine to German and Austrian occupation and pillage. In 1920 the nationalist Symon Petliura sold the Ukrainian people to the Polish Pilsudsky regime. In 1941, Stepan Bandera and the nationalist OUN assisted the German Nazis to conquer Soviet Ukraine and for the next three years participated in all the crimes of the Nazis.
The Soviet totalitarian dictatorship had nothing to do with real socialism or communism, in fact, it was a nationalist reaction to the International socialism of Lenin and Trotsky. Both the Kyiv and the Moscow oligarchs, who run Ukraine and Russia respectively, have identical origin: the Stalinist bureaucracy that ran the Soviet Union until 1991. By 1991 the Stalinist dictators of the Soviet Union had decided to use various nationalisms (Ukrainian, Kazakh, etc.) to destroy the degenerated workers state and revert to many smaller national capitalist states. This betrayal by the so-called “communists” has led to the present catastrophe of national, religious, ethnic and cultural conflicts throughout the former Soviet Union.
The present day oligarchs—Petro Poroshenko and Igor Kolomoisky in Ukraine, Alisher Usmanov, Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Potanin in Russia, Aras Agalarov in Azerbaijan—all have little in common with their workers in Kyiv, Moscow or Baku, and everything in common with American billionaires like Elon Musk and Larry Ellison. All of them grow rich by extracting surplus labor from their workers, by paying as little as possible in wages, by reducing pensions and medical care, by neglecting and killing off their surplus populations.
The former Stalinist functionaries (Leonid Kravchuk in Ukraine, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin in Russia, etc.) became the executive heads of small and large ex-Stalinist republics, all of which are undemocratic police states. Over the past 33 years these countries have destroyed their industries, plunged their populations into deprivation and dog-eat-dog capitalism, maximized their exports, skimmed from the top and stolen the receipts of oil, gas and raw materials exports. Even before the current war started in 2022, Ukraine had one of the lowest standards of living in Europe and its population was emigrating by the million. ...
Bogdan Syrotiuk is an active member of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists, a Trotskyist organization of international socialists, who share the ideas of the International Committee of the Fourth International and of the WSWS.org daily Marxist web site.
As an international socialist, comrade Bogdan is an enemy of the Kyiv regime and its imperialist overlords in Washington, London and Berlin. He is also an implacable enemy of the Moscow comprador regime of Vladimir Putin. He has publicly called for the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers against their respective capitalist regimes. He has both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky as his enemies. Among his other enemies are Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and OIaf Scholz, and the big bourgeois media outlets of their countries. The capitalist media get very excited over the persecution of a racist Russian chauvinist and critic of V. Putin, Alexei Navalny, but they remain quiet over the arrest on bogus charges of comrade Bogdan. In fact, the hypocrisy of the capitalist media is most visible in the current ongoing genocide by the Zionist regime of the population of Gaza and the West Bank in Palestine. The same world powers that send bombs and tanks to Ukraine, also send tanks and bombs to Israel to kill and maim thousands of women and children in the death camps of Gaza. Washington is so desperate that it is willing to risk a nuclear war in the center of Europe.
Free Bogdan Syrotiuk!
No to war!
Down with capitalism, the root source of all war!