SEP (Canada) founding congress pledges to fight for the freedom of socialist-internationalist, anti-war prisoner Bogdan Syrotiuk

1 October 2026facebook iconFree Bogdan Syrotiuk!The following resolution was adopted unanimously by the founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) held in Montreal from August 22 to 24. The World Socialist Web Site has posted a report on the congress proceedings, which marked an historic step forward in the building of the world party of socialist revolution.

This Founding Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) condemns the 15-year prison sentence handed down by the Ukrainian state against Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 27-year-old Ukrainian Trotskyist and leading member of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists. The Socialist Equality Party demands Bogdan’s immediate and unconditional release and the dropping of all of the charges against him, which are of an entirely concocted character.

Bogdan’s conviction explodes the lie that Ukraine and its imperialist patrons are fighting for “democracy” against Russia. He was convicted of “high treason” under martial law by the fascistic Zelensky regime, based solely on statements and articles he authored calling for the unity of Ukrainian and Russian workers against the war and all the reactionary governments that are waging it. His writings, published on the World Socialist Web Site, also exposed the far-right character of the Ukrainian regime and its promotion of the Nazis’ Ukrainian collaborators— including the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist (OUN) leaders Stepan Bandera and Andriy Melnyk—as national heroes.

Bogdan is a political prisoner, subject to mistreatment and abuse ever since his arbitrary detention in April 2024. He is being persecuted for advancing the revolutionary socialist political perspective which this Congress affirms: The war in Ukraine constitutes an imperialist war against Russia. It can be stopped only by uniting Russian and Ukrainian workers against their respective ruling classes on the program of international socialist revolution.

Can you explain how Canada came to give safe haven to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators after World War II and how that shaped its later foreign policy?How does the case of Bogdan Syrotiuk compare to earlier historical examples of socialists being persecuted for opposing imperialist wars from a revolutionary internationalist standpoint?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comThe International Committee of the Fourth International denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine as reactionary from the outset. But the ICFI has always insisted that the ultimate origin of the bloody slaughter lies in the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union and the post-1991 drive of the imperialist powers, led by the US, to redivide the world through war.

The Socialist Equality Party (Canada) bears special responsibility to develop a global campaign for Bogdan’s freedom because Canadian imperialism is one of the chief architects and backers of the Ukraine war. It helped politically prepare and instigate the war, has provided the Zelensky regime with tens of billions of dollars in armaments and economic support, and has repeatedly vowed to pursue the war no matter the cost in lives and social devastation to secure victory over Moscow. During the course of the war, Canadian imperialism’s decades-long alliance with the Ukrainian far right has expanded dramatically. Following the Second World War, Ottawa gave safe haven to thousands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, helped them and their political descendants whitewash their crimes, and incubated and promoted a virulently anti-communist, anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism that was deployed to Ukraine as the Stalinist bureaucracy restored capitalism. These far-right nationalist conceptions are now effectively the state ideology of the NATO-proxy government in Kiev that is persecuting Bogdan and holding him in conditions that place his life at risk.

This Congress resolves that the Socialist Equality Party will: mount a vigorous campaign to mobilize the working class and all those who defend democratic rights to press for Bogdan Syrotiuk's immediate and unconditional release; expose the complicity of Canadian imperialism in his persecution; and take a leading role in the international campaign for his freedom as an integral part of the fight to mobilize the working class in Canada and internationally against imperialist war and for world socialist revolution.