The Betrayal of Ukraine

When the betrayal came, it was swift and brutal. Donald Trump, having barely started his second presidency, phoned up Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, on Wednesday 12 February and paved the way towards negotiations to end the war without consulting Ukraine itself (BBC, 13 February 2025). When only a week later, high-ranking delegations of both countries including Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in Riyadh/Saudi Arabia for extensive discussions, no Ukrainian representative was at the table (BBC, 18 February 2025). At the same time, ‘White House officials told Ukraine to stop badmouthing Donald Trump and to sign a deal handing over half of the country’s mineral wealth to the US’ (The Guardian, 20 February 2025). This was presented as a way to pay back all the assistance the US had provided over the course of the war.

The public humiliation of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting in the White House was the final confirmation that the US had dropped its support for Ukraine. Denounced by many European leaders and commentators for what it is, a betrayal, this was not, however, the first betrayal of Ukraine. The country has been betrayed by the West on several occasions before, leaving it now in a perilous situation. In this blog post, I will discuss previous moments of betrayal taking a much longer historical perspective.

Trump, the rise of China and labour: What future for ‘Free’ Trade Agreements?

What are the implications of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)? How does the rise of China affect global free trade? And perhaps even more importantly, what should labour’s position on free trade look like? In this blog post, I publish the interview, which I gave to Bruno Dobrusin from the Argentine Workers' Central Union (Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina, CTA) addressing these and related questions about the future of ‘free’ trade agreements.

Reactionary working class?

Large parts of the western working class now seem to gather around right-wing populists, demagogues and racists. They vote for reactionary and fascistoid political parties. They helped to vote the UK out of the EU, to make Trump president of the world's superpower number one, and they vote so massively for the far right political parties so that they have government power in sight throughout several of Europe's most populous countries. In this guest post, Asbjørn Wahl assesses these developments from a labour perspective and reflects on a progress way forward.