This emergency resolution was passed unanimously by the Seventh National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK), held November 29-December 2, 2024

1. The Socialist Equality Party (UK) condemns the arrest and detention of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 25-year-old socialist opponent of the fascistic Zelensky regime and the NATO-instigated Ukraine-Russia war, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and calls for his immediate release. Bogdan is the founder and leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), a Trotskyist youth organisation, which has declared its political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

2. The persecution of Bogdan is based on fraudulent charges of “high treason under martial law.” He is accused of undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine and serving the interests of the Russian state. The charges carry a prison sentence of 15 years to life. Bogdan’s life is in danger. Arrested on April 25, Bogdan, who is in poor health, has been held under atrocious conditions in a prison in Nikolaev. Even the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor has documented severe human rights violations by the Ukrainian regime, including torture, arbitrary arrests, and “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.”

3. The main evidence cited by the prosecution against Bogdan are articles and statements that appeared on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), which is slandered as a “Russian propaganda and information agency.” But these same articles demonstrate that Bogdan and the WSWS have consistently opposed the oligarchic capitalist governments of both Ukraine and Russia that emerged out of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The Trotskyist movement’s opposition to the war in Ukraine has been based on the fight to unify Ukrainian and Russian workers with their class brothers and sisters in the imperialist countries in a joint struggle against war and capitalism.

4. Bogdan was arrested because of these socialist views and principles. Faced with growing popular opposition to the war—with polls showing that 9 in 10 people in North America and Western Europe oppose military escalation against Russia, and desertions all along the Ukrainian front—the Zelensky regime and its NATO backers fear that these political principles are finding a broad hearing among workers and youth in Ukraine and internationally.

5. Bogdan’s persecution is a violation of the most basic democratic and human rights. It exposes the fraud of NATO’s war propaganda, according to which the war against Russia is a war waged in defence of “democracy.” Ukraine is not a democracy, but a dictatorship, run by criminal oligarchs and fascists. To safeguard their own reactionary interests, they have placed the country’s working class and resources at the disposal of imperialism. There can be little doubt that Bogdan’s arrest was discussed and decided not only by the regime in Kiev, but also its imperialist backers.

6. The British government bears political responsibility for Bogdan’s arrest, maintaining close ties to the SBU. Firstly under Conservative prime ministers and now Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, the UK has provided billions of pounds in military assistance to Zelensky’s dictatorship, and boasts of training 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Now London has authorised Ukraine to launch UK-made long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles at targets within Russia, fuelling Zelensky’s war machine and escalating war with one of the world’s major nuclear-armed powers.

7. The persecution of Bogdan Syrotiuk demonstrates that the defence of democratic rights is inseparable from the mobilisation of the working class against imperialist war and the capitalist system. The international working class and youth must recognize this connection and the relationship between the genocide in Gaza and the US-NATO war against Russia. Both are interrelated battlefields in an emerging imperialist redivision of the world. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom is an essential component of the fight to build a global socialist movement by the working class and youth against this developing world war and its root cause, capitalism.

8. This is why the ICFI, on April 30, days after Bogdan’s arrest, initiated a global campaign in his defence. It launched a petition that has already been signed by thousands of people, published an open letter to the Ukrainian government, and held rallies at Ukrainian embassies, including its embassy in London which refused to even receive the letter. Workers, youth and artists throughout the world have declared their support for the release of Bogdan.

9. The Socialist Equality Party in the UK:

• Demands the immediate and unconditional release of Bogdan Syrotiuk from imprisonment by the Zelensky regime.

• Condemns the fraudulent charges by the SBU to justify Bogdan’s arrest, as well as the brutal conditions of his detention.

• Calls upon the international working class, youth, students and all supporters of democratic rights to mobilise in defence of Bogdan, spreading awareness of his plight and demanding his freedom.

• Supports and encourages the widest circulation of this resolution on social media and other platforms, urging individuals and organisations to sign the petition calling for Bogdan’s release and to involve their communities in this critical campaign.

• Reaffirms its solidarity with the ICFI, the YGBL and the WSWS in their efforts to end the war in Ukraine and unify the international working class in the fight against imperialism, fascism and capitalism.