It is nearly four months since the fascistic regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrested and imprisoned Comrade Bogdan Syrotiuk, the founding leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), on bogus charges of “high treason” and abetting the Russian government.

The YGBL is aligned with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and active in the former Soviet Union, including Russia and Ukraine. Twenty-five-year-old Syrotiuk has courageously fought among Ukrainian workers and youth for the anti-war policies of the ICFI.

Bogdan has been framed up and imprisoned because he opposes the US-NATO war in Ukraine against Russia and fights for the unification of Russian and Ukrainian workers against the capitalist oligarchs in both countries.

We publish below statements from two Sri Lankan political parties—the United Socialist Party and Socialist People’s Forum—and Youth for Change, the youth organisation of the Frontline Socialist Party. The Youth for Change statement has been published in Sinhala and English and is on its Facebook page. The position of Youth for Change on the US-NATO war against Russia is theirs.

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The United Socialist Party

Campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk of the Ukraine Socialist Organisation

Bogdan Syrotiuk is a young leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, a Trotskyist organisation active in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Ukrainian authorities have charged Bogdan with treason, accusing him of being an agent of the Putin regime. It is very clear that he has been charged because of his principled opposition to the war against Russia by Ukraine, backed by NATO.

It is clear that he has been arrested because the ruling Ukraine regime is engaged in suppressing his leftist and anti-war voice and oppressing the anti-war voices of workers and youths.

Accordingly, our organisation urges Ukrainian authorities to immediately release Bogdan Syrotiuk and that they respect his democratic right to advocate for his anti-war views.

Yours faithfully,
Siritunga Jayasuriya,
General Secretary of the United Socialist Party

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Socialist People’s Forum

Let’s join hands for the freedom of Comrade Bogdan Syrotiuk!

The Socialist People’s Forum in Sri Lanka strongly condemns the arrest and detention of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists which is an active Trotskyist organisation in the former Soviet Union including, in Ukraine and Russia. On April 25, the SBU—the state security service of the Ukrainian government—arrested Bogdan Syrotiuk on treason charges.

It is reported that preparations are underway to impose a death sentence or a lifetime prison term [on Syrotiuk]. He is being held at the Mykolaiv maximum security prison accused of serious charges.

Further the Socialist People’s Forum believes that the reason for his arrest is that Syrotiuk was fighting for a global perspective against Zelensky’s and Putin’s capitalist ruling regimes and the complicity of the US and NATO in the brutal war which is being carried out and is destroying tens of thousands of lives of Ukrainian and Russian people.

We consider that the imprisonment of the 25-year-old Comrade Bogdan on bogus accusations is not merely an anti-democratic attack on an individual but an attack on the international working class as a whole.

Therefore, the Socialist People’s Forum of Sri Lanka, while joining the global campaign for the freedom of Syrotiuk, strongly demands that the Ukrainian rulers withdraw all the bogus accusations against him and release him immediately.

Free immediately Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Dharmasiri Lankapeli
Political Committee

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Youth for Change

Ukrainian socialist leader Bogdan Syrotiuk imprisoned on false charges must be released immediately!

The United States has orchestrated the military intervention of the NATO imperialist coalition along with their puppet Volodymyr Zelensky using the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, as a reason for this aggression. The ongoing war, which has lasted over two years since that day, has claimed the lives of millions, including countless soldiers, and caused immeasurable property damage in both countries.

Furthermore, it has enriched a handful of wealthy elites in both the US-NATO camp and the Russian camp to an unimaginable extent. Day by day, both sides are experimenting with increasingly horrific weapons of mass destruction within this devastating wartime scenario.

What is truly happening is a clash of the US-NATO military coalition and the Russian army on Ukrainian soil. The escalating war is paving the way for a third world war. The destructive nature of capitalism, which is collapsing on a global scale, exposes the devastation in Ukraine and the Palestinian genocide carried out in the name of saving [us] from annihilation. Crumbling capitalism secures its survival through the coercive apparatus called the state. Therefore, history teaches us that the power of the ruling elite must be overturned through revolutionary uprisings led by the working class on a global scale and that state power must be seized by the oppressed class to ensure the future existence of humanity as a whole.

The invading Russian army must be immediately withdrawn from Ukraine. The only sustainable solution to the Ukraine-Russia war is the unification of the oppressed classes of Ukraine and Russia based on a socialist program and against the imperialist US-NATO-Zelensky coalition and Putin’s nationalist oligarchs.

To this end, we demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk, the 25-year-old leader of the Young Bolshvik-Leninists (YGBL), who has been tirelessly conducting revolutionary politics in Ukraine.

[Syrotiuk] was arrested on April 25 by the state security service under the Zelensky regime on false charges. He is accused of being involved in serious acts of treason, which allegedly include engaging in the preparation of publications for the World Socialist Web Site [which Ukraine authorities claim] is Russian propaganda and information to support Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine, and to act to legitimise it over the past two years.

These charges are entirely false. Both the World Socialist Web Site and Bogdan Syrotiuk have clearly articulated their opposition to the Russian invasion since the onset of the war. Zelensky’s repressive actions reveal nothing but a murderous hostility towards the revolutionary ideology that nourishes the Ukrainian oppressed class.

We, Youth for Change, the youth organisation of the Frontline Socialist Party in Sri Lanka, condemn the above-mentioned repressive actions of the Zelensky regime and demand the immediate release of our brother Bogdan Syrotiuk, who is facing hateful false charges!

Moreover, we call upon youth around the world, revolutionary and progressive youth movements, and leftist parties to unite in the establishment of a revolutionary struggle and movement against the imperialist capitalist forces that are the architects of the Ukraine-Russia war!

International Committee
Youth for Change