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Russian socialists and anti-war activists have condemned the so-called “peace deal” for Ukraine being negotiated between Russia and the United States, warning it will bring new wars. They say plans to carve up Ukraine between two powers would only “untie the hands of all imperialists”.

Following a phone conversation a week earlier between the US and Russian presidents, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met to discuss Ukraine’s fate in Saudi Arabia on February 19. No Ukrainian representatives were invited.

Regarding the talks, said in a February 24 statement that while “right-wing anti-Communist US President Donald Trump is promoting the idea of peace”, in fact he only “seems to want to share Ukraine” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and strip “Ukrainian people of their sovereignty”.

Left for Peace Without Annexations brings together Russian socialists from various revolutionary tendencies, and was formed as a result of a organised in Cologne, Germany, last November.

The coalition argued such negotiations would “inevitably [lead] to many more wars of conquest”, given “the impunity with which parts of Ukraine have been annexed will untie the hands of all imperialists”.

Their views were echoed by the editorial collective of Posle, a Russian anti-war website set up by Russian leftists shortly after the war started.

Their February 24 editorial argued that the US-Russia talks “will bring nothing but new wars to the world. Imperialism never stops halfway — it only takes the acquisition of desired territories as an invitation to further aggression”.

 warned of the dangers posed by the Trump-Putin deal, in a February 19 letter written from a Russian penal colony where he is serving a five-year jail term for “justifying terrorism”.

According to Kagarlitsky, US imperialism’s “new orientation is towards dominance, one that does not take into account the interests or rights of others”.

Within the framework of this project, Trump is openly offering Russia “the role of a junior partner in this enterprise — one directed against China, Europe, and indeed the entire rest of the world”.

On the other side, the Russian elites “desperately” need Trump’s support “to extricate themselves from the dead-end situation they have created [in Ukraine]…

“It seems that the people in power in Moscow have little choice but to accept [Trump’s] terms, especially since Trump will accommodate them on the Ukraine issue...”

The real significance of the talks, Posle noted, do not lie in the outcomes, given nothing tangible was agreed upon: “The US administration does not offer any definitive plan to end the war, and Russia has not yet demonstrated any willingness to compromise and relinquish at least some of its territorial claims.”

Rather, “for both sides, these negotiations are primarily of symbolic importance: it is important to them to show that such a scenario” — which they describe as “representatives of military powers calmly discussing the division of another country's territory and its natural wealth” — “should no longer seem unthinkable and that the rules of the game have been radically changed.”

For that, “this meeting will go down in history as the beginning of a new era — the era of 21st-century imperialism”.

“The fate of tormented Ukrainians today may soon become the image of the future for humanity,” Posle warned, “but humanity always has the chance to say ‘Enough!’ to this imperialist madness.”

In light of this, Left for Peace Without Annexations called on all Russian leftists to “speak out in favour of the right of Ukrainians to resist and for the defeat of ‘their own’ imperialism”.

Meanwhile, they said the Western left should demand their countries step up aid to Ukraine so that Ukrainians can “continue [their] resistance against Russian imperialism, allowing [them] to win in the long run”.

Despite the dangers posed by what he termed an emerging “Moscow-Washington axis”, Kagarlitsky finished his letter on a note of optimism: “Fortunately, there are good reasons to believe that the rapprochement between these authoritarian projects will not be smooth…

“I believe that we are not headed for a bleak era of triumphant totalitarianism … but rather a period of sharp and sometimes chaotic struggle.

“We simply need to recognise the threat and understand its scale.”