Re: Jail sentence for Ukrainian Trotskyist is an assault on free speech By Marv Gandall

There is a back and forth discussion between Pirani and me in the comment
section of his article. Pirani may have a valid point about freedom of
speech in Ukraine, but overall he portrays the view that is all too common
on the non-campist left that the "left" Putin apologists and us are all
part of one family and that we're basically all on the same team. In his
article Pirani writes "It beggars belief that the Russian state would be
stupid enough to fund the WSWS, or that the WSWS would be stupid enough to
accept that funding. In any case, Syrotiuk would have known nothing about
such arrangements."

No, it doesn't beggar the imagination at all. Code Pink and PSL receive
large amounts of money from the Chinese Communist Party-connected Roy
Singham and the African Peoples Socialist Party got money from Aleksandr
Ionov. Those are just the above board cases. An important part of Putin's
strategy is to have agents and assets all around the political spectrum,
and given the position of WSWS, it wouldn't surprise me in the least that
the are Putin assets and even paid agents in WSWS. Yes, it's true that WSWS
"opposes" Putin, but that is out of one side of their mouth. Then out of
the other, the cover up for him. For example, I went to a meeting of theirs
several years ago in which they denied the fact of the war crimes committed
by the Russian forces in Bucha. We see this sort of double speak from
neo-Nazis who say they don't like Hitler and then turn around and say "but
we just want a reexamination of the actual facts surrounding the Holocaust."

As for Syrotiuk himself: There was clothing with Russian insignia allegedly
found in the basement of the building where he lives. There was no legal
proof that that material belonged to him, but what "beggars the
imagination" is that it did not. Consider a hypothetical situation in which
such clothing with Nazi insignia had been found in a similar location in a
building during WW II. So, yes, I think Syrotiuk was probably a conscious
Russian agent.

The fact that he and WSWS spout "left" sounding phrases means nothing. Does
anybody remember Borotba? They claimed to be communists and all sorts of
things. They had me fooled back in 2014. Then it turned out they were
Russian agents.

Socialists need to stop this nonsense of letting Putin and his defenders
off the hook. I remember when Howie Hawkins debated Margaret Kimberly. He
refused to point out her complicity with fascists at the AGMR conference.
It was the same when Bill Fletcher debated Medea Benjamin and said he
considers her to be a comrade and failed to point out her support for
another dictatorship - the Iran dictatorship. Without drawing these
pictures, it's nearly impossible for the uninitiated to understand what the
difference is really all about. It was the same - even worse, in fact - at
the recent Porto Alegre "anti fascist" conference that
wasn't an anti-fascist conference at all, as I've pointed out. (See:
the International
"Anti-Fascist" conference that wasn't
<https://oaklandsocialist.com/2026/04/25/the-international-anti-fascist-conference-that-wasnt/>
.)

John Reimann


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