The 48^th festival of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) continues with a wide range of political and cultural activities. On Saturday 17/9/22, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, addressed a speech at the events in Thessaloniki. In his speech, he highlighted the strategic identification of the parties supporting Euro-Atlanticism and the choices of capital and referred in detail to the struggle of the KKE and its political proposal. He devoted an important part of his speech to international developments and the KKE’s assessments of them,an extensive excerpt of which reads as follows:

“You know that our Party, particularly during the past six months, has developed a significant activity against the imperialist war, the deployment of troops through Greece, the sending of weapons systems to the war fronts, and the transformation of our country into a base of war.

This was inspired by the activity we developed 23 years ago, here in Thessaloniki, against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

An activity that hurts the system and its representatives, that is why it drags militants, the members of the KKE and KNE to the court.

As was the case then, today our Party rejects any pretences and highlights the real causes of the war in Ukraine.

This war is being waged neither for ‘democracy’ nor for ‘freedom’, as the US-NATO-EU powers falsely claim. Nor is this war being waged for the long-suffering people of Donbas and the ‘struggle against fascism’, as the leadership of today’s capitalist Russia claims.

Behind the false pretexts of ‘democracy’ or ‘anti-fascism’ are the interests of the plutocracy and their powerful monopolies for raw materials, energy, commodity transport routes, and market shares.

This war, which has caused the death of thousands of people and uprooted millions of others, is an unjust war, a war of thieves, devouring human flesh for the profits of one capitalist or another.

We do not forget that the overthrow of socialism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the kick-start to the build-up of the factors that today are leading to the bloodshed of the peoples.

Since everything that the Soviet people had been working hard to achieve for 70 years, as well as labour power itself, became an object that can be bought and sold, the framework and basis for the development and re-sharpening of competition among the capitalist states and their imperialist alliances was created.

NATO and the EU have spread their tentacles in the territories that Russian capital considered as its area of influence.

Ukraine, for many reasons, was a point of fierce conflict, since it was and is valuable in the capitalist unification plans of each side involved in the conflict.

Thus, peoples such as the Russians and Ukrainians, who thrived together in the time of socialism, are now killing each other.

The war being waged in Ukraine, in close proximity to our country and especially Thessaloniki, cannot leave any of us indifferent.

Furthermore, this war has an important particularity in relation to the other wars and imperialist interventions that we have experienced over the past 30 years in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, in countries of Africa and Asia.

It is being carried out on the territory of a country with nuclear facilities and nuclear power stations. A large-scale disaster can occur even without the use of nuclear weapons.

Moreover, this war marks a general confrontation between the United States and its EU-NATO allies, on the one hand, and China and the Eurasian bloc that is currently being formed, on the other.

We are talking about a conflict of powers in the modern imperialist world, a confrontation for supremacy in the global capitalist system.

So far, Ukraine has cushioned the US-NATO, while Russia has cushioned China.

The peoples of those countries are already paying the capitalist confrontation with their blood but they are not the only ones.

The peoples of Europe are among the victims of the economic consequences of this gigantic conflict.

As if the so-called green growth, which is promoted for the interests of the ‘green’ monopolies and not for the protection of the environment, was not enough, the consequences of the energy war skyrocketed prices, inflation, and the electricity and gas bills that the popular strata will have to pay.

In this conflict, the EU is not 'shooting itself in the foot', as some claim, due to its alignment with the USA and its sanctions against Russia.

The EU has been playing an active role in the war in Ukraine from the very beginning.

It contributed to the unconstitutional overthrow in Ukraine in 2014 and even supported fascist forces to 'get the job done'.

The EU, which is a union serving anti-popular interests, is actively involved in the war. In this way, it assesses it can better serve the interests of its own monopolies seeking to penetrate into Eurasia in order to increase their profitability and enable them to compete with both China and its ‘allied’ powers.

The war enables the anti-popular governments of the EU, either right or ‘left’, to strengthen both the so-called green transition and its militarization, all the mechanisms used against the workers’–people’s movement.

This does not mean, of course, that the European leaders will not be forced in the coming period to manoeuvre under the energy pressure on their economies, as well as under the workers’ struggle, which will inevitably grow stronger.

The government of the New Democracy, as well as SYRIZA, KINAL-PASOK, and the forces that support NATO as a whole, bear huge responsibilities for the country’s involvement in the war and the transformation of Greece into an imperialist launching pad by the expansion and proliferation of the bases of death, the deployment of troops, and the financing and support of the war.

This development turns the people into a target of the war countermeasures of the opposite side.

Our country must be immediately disentangled from the imperialist plans and unions!

All foreign bases must be closed down!

All armed forces outside the borders must return home!

The imposition of sanctions against Russia, which place new economic burdens on the peoples of Europe, must stop immediately!

The war in Ukraine has also cast its shadow on Greek-Turkish relations. Government officials claim that we must not allow Putin’s Russian ‘revisionism’ because it strengthens Erdoğan’s ‘revisionism’ towards Greece and Cyprus.

But who are the initiators of ‘revisionism’?

Aren’t they the ones who dismantled Yugoslavia?

Aren’t they NATO, the EU, and the USA?

Aren’t they the ones who destroyed Libya?

Aren’t they the ones who have repeatedly violated international law in Afghanistan, Syria, and so many corners of the world?

Aren’t they the ones who back Turkey, which still occupies 40% of Cyprus, equips itself with modern weapons, and develops its own war industry?

Aren’t they the ones who allow Turkey’s claims of ‘grey zones’ in the Aegean, the dispute of the sovereignty of the Greek islands and the sovereign rights of Greece and Cyprus with the so-called Blue Homeland doctrine?

We heard a few days ago the Greek Prime Minister further fueling the debate and claiming that the ‘neo-Ottoman rhetoric’ of the Turkish leadership will fail!!!

And all the above were stated while the fighter planes of the ‘allied’ Turkey make overflights above Greek islands; when the airspace is constantly violated by the ‘allied’ Turkish fighters; when our ‘powerful allies’, who are also Turkey’s ‘allies’, give their best to keep Turkey in NATO’s ‘hornet’s nest’, far from Russia’s malign influence…

The NATO ‘alliance’ is truly strange!....

One ‘ally’ is threatening another ‘ally’ that they ‘may come suddenly one night’ with their weapons and assert their claims, which have reached a new level of escalation these past days. Now they are not only talking about the unacceptable demilitarization of the Greek islands, but that the latter is the result of ‘invasion and occupation’, which is even more dangerous...

What interest do the peoples of Greece, Turkey, and other countries have in such an ‘alliance’, where some ‘allies’ are getting rich by selling weapons that will be used by other ‘allies’ to kill each other?

These ‘allies’ are the same ones who, along with other reactionary regimes, such as those of Israel and Saudi Arabia, have been presented over time by Greek governments ostensibly as a guarantee for the security of the country and peace of the peoples.

The reality is completely reversed.

Modern weapon systems are purchased and then controlled in various ways by these powers. The so-called guarantees provided by these powers are not enough to prevent the mayhem of wars that are created in this capitalist system and turn the peoples into cannon fodder for the profitability of the monopolies.

We must have no trust in the bourgeois governments, the parties of Euro-Atlanticism, and the fake cockfights, where they alternate claims such as ‘enough with the bravado’ with their embraces in the NATO Summits and various business councils of the capitalist market.

The solution for the peoples of Greece, Turkey, and our other neighbouring countries lies in the struggle for the disengagement from the interests and plans of the bourgeois classes and their imperialist unions.

The peoples’ struggle can put an end to the causes of the bloodshed of war.”

21.09.2022