Comrades, members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and deputies of the CPRF, we address you with a friendly request. We ask you to publicly demand an immediate end to the fratricidal war between the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, and to come up with a transitional programme to change post-war Russia and the world. And also to take this position in intra-party discussions.

We are convinced that you and I have no right to remain silent during the catastrophe that is unfolding in the former Soviet Union. A catastrophe that has had no precedent since the Great Patriotic War. Especially when the deaths of children and adults in Donetsk, Luhansk, Odessa or the crimes of the Ukrainian ultra-right cannot be tolerated as a justification for Putin’s military adventure.

This war is blatantly imperialist [1]. The ideologues of imperial nationalism, who dream of decommunization according to their own script, are behind it. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, mostly from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, die in it, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are forced to leave their homes and millions live in fear of bombing and shelling. The war will hit the workers of both countries, it is they who will have to pay for this bloody bacchanalia. If Ukraine needs “denazification”, this task can only be solved by the Ukrainians themselves. On the contrary, the Kremlin’s aggression will only lead to the rise of far-right and anti-Russian sentiments, legitimizing in the eyes of many the previous crimes of the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Today, hundreds of thousands, millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who have nothing to do with neo-Nazism, call Russia an occupier and the events taking place the Ukrainian Patriotic War. Do we like such analogies? Any brotherly relations or alliances with the Ukrainians after this adventure of the Putin regime can be forgotten forever.

Russia will not be the same after this one anyway. But it depends on you and me, on our actions or our inaction, what these changes will be.

By supporting the war, we will disgrace ourselves, the Party and the whole Communist idea for decades. But by making use of the emerging anti-war consensus in society to bring about a radical change in the interests of the majority, we will raise the Communists’ credibility enormously. To do this we need to wrest power from an entrenched handful of oligarchs and militarists so that such a tragedy will never again be possible. Such wars happen because of glaring inequalities. Because a tiny percentage of people living in luxury and security behind the walls of their palaces and bunkers can arbitrarily make decisions that make the lives of hundreds of millions a living hell and a bad dream. Under any sanctions, the elites will find a way to keep their money and property - at the expense of the people.

As the largest opposition parliamentary party in Russia, the CPRF, which received public support in the last Duma elections, must take an active part in the anti-war protest and combine it with demands for socio-economic restructuring of the country.

State Duma deputies from the KPRF Smolin, Markhaev, Matveev, Moscow City Duma deputy Stupin, a number of regional Komsomol organizations and many others have already advocated an immediate end to this war, an initiative “KPRF/MLKSM members against the war” has emerged. [2], but this is not enough.

We urge you, our comrades, Party and Komsomol members, CPRF deputies at all levels to take steps:

1. Openly support and disseminate information about the appeal on your resources.
2. Write or call your fellow CPRF deputies and personally ask them to join the appeal.
3. Discuss the appeal at meetings and gatherings of their party organisations, CPRF meetings in parliaments at all levels, and adopt resolutions based on these discussions.
4. Using any tribune, including the parliamentary one, as well as street meetings with voters, demand a simultaneous end to the war between fraternal nations and social transformation in our country.

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