WSWS readers in Asia demand the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk

8 September 2026facebook iconBogdan Syrotiuk, founder and leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-LeninistsWSWS readers from different countries in Asia have written demanding the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 27-year-old socialist and leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), jailed in Ukraine for opposing the war. He was sentenced on August 10 by a court in Pervomaisk to 15 years in prison on charges of “high treason” under martial law. The only evidence presented against him was his articles for the World Socialist Web Site calling for the unity of Ukrainian and Russian workers to end the US-NATO proxy war with Russia.

I call for the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk from his imprisonment in Ukraine. Bogdan has not committed any crime. Instead, he has been jailed by a fascistic court for exercising his democratic right of free speech and calling for the unity of workers in Ukraine and Russia to stop the devastating war instigated by the US and NATO.

This is not simply about one man, but about the democratic rights of workers throughout Ukraine and internationally. The only way governments can carry out war is by violently attempting to suppress anti-war sentiment. Kiev is terrified that Bogdan’s message resonates with workers. His jailing exposes all the phony claims that the war against Russia is about democracy. The war is actually about the imperialist subjugation of Russia, using the Ukrainian working class as cannon fodder.

The war in Ukraine impacts all workers, including in South Korea. The government in Seoul has actively participated in this conflict by providing massive numbers of shells to Kiev, spending money on munitions while workers face higher costs and stagnating wages. Therefore, I call on all workers to come to Bogdan’s defense, demand his release from prison, and help put a stop to this conflict on the basis of the unity of the international working class.

Bogdan Syrotiuk committed no crime. He only called for the unity of the working class in Ukraine and Russia to stop the war being waged between Russia and the US-proxy government in Ukraine.

Sentencing Bogdan to 15 years in prison is absolute nonsense. The law only serves to safeguard the existing capitalist system that appears powerful but is hollow at its core.

The Zelensky government is nothing more than a puppet of the capitalist powers represented by NATO and the United States. It is prosecuting a man whose only “crime” was to call for the unity of Ukrainian and Russian workers against a war that serves the interests of the ruling classes.

I grew up in a country where anti-socialist sentiment prevails and capitalism is defended as though it were the natural and inevitable order of human society. I reject this lie.

I call upon the international working class to fight against this distorted stage of world history and against a system that sacrifices human lives for the interests of capital.

Release Bogdan Syrotiuk! He has not done anything wrong; he is making a great contribution to world peace and democracy. He is uniting Ukrainian and Russian workers against a war that does not belong to them. Ukrainian fascists and the European bourgeoisie behind them want to suppress workers through war to seize Russia's resources and markets, and Russian oligarchs also force workers to protect interests that never belonged to them.

Russian and Chinese workers do not need to support bourgeois geopolitical conflict; the ruling classes have never truly considered workers’ rights, making cuts in social welfare and living standards. Now Bogdan Syrotiuk is defending the rights for Ukrainian workers, making great efforts for unity among workers, but the Ukrainian bourgeois regime arrested him and sentenced him to 15 years in prison for speaking out with a real workers’ voice at the WSWS. I call on Russian and Chinese workers to speak out for him, not support the war.

I join the call of workers and youth around the world to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk from his utterly unjustified imprisonment by the fascistic Ukraine regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Prosecutors, in the two years of Bogdan’s trial, produced no evidence for acts of treason, espionage, sabotage, or collaboration with the Russian military. Instead, the sole evidence presented against him consisted of his writings, published on the World Socialist Web Site. In fact, the articles that were cited in the conviction made explicit Bogdan’s opposition to the Russian invasion and the Putin regime.

Bogdan’s real crime is that he is courageously opposed to the war. Not from the standpoint of one nationalist camp or the other, but from the standpoint of socialist internationalism. This is the standpoint that the working class has no country, that Ukrainian and Russian workers are not enemies, and that the war serves only the interests of the oligarchs in Kiev and Moscow, and the imperialist powers in Washington and other NATO capitals.

Can you explain the historical origins of the Trotskyist movement's position on 'revolutionary defeatism' and how it applies to the war in Ukraine today?What is the background to how Zelensky's government banned the WSWS and moved against socialist critics of the war?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comThe Zelensky regime banned the WSWS in Ukraine a month after Bogdan’s arrest. Two years on, it has convicted him. The state is criminalizing not just one young opponent of war, but the very ideas of socialist internationalism, the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.

These are attacks on the entire working class. If the Ukrainian regime can imprison a worker who calls for unity between Ukrainian and Russian workers, no opponent of war anywhere is safe. If the WSWS can be banned as “Russian propaganda” for opposing NATO’s proxy war, no independent socialist voice is secure.

As a worker in the Philippines, I call on my fellow workers, youth and students, to join in the struggle for Bogdan’s release.

The Ukrainian authorities should be disbanded. They have sentenced Bogdan Syrotiuk to 15 years in prison after already depriving him of his democratic rights and jailing him for two years on false charges.

Bogdan is a brave young man who sought a genuine socialist alternative to a fratricidal war ignited by the United States’ and NATO’s imperialist ambitions and the military adventurism of Russia’s incompetent ruling class. Since Bogdan’s illegal arrest in April 2024, how many young Russians and Ukrainians have died terrible deaths on the battlefield? How many people have lost their livelihoods or are suffering?

The fascist Zelensky dictatorship in Ukraine is suppressing the anti-war movement including that of Bogdan, stripping away democratic rights, and engaging in forced abductions for military conscription. The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has revealed the horrors that an escalating global conflict would bring. It is a situation where the ruling class drives the working class to their deaths in reckless war and destroys society while Bogdan’s socialist anti-war movement stands as a courageous struggle demonstrating the path the working class should take amid the trap of national confrontation.

In the coming period, workers will struggle against the ruling class, which is pursuing war, while following Bogdan’s path and demanding his release.

Zelensky’s prosecuting authorities must overturn the bogus 15-year sentence against Bogdan and immediately end his unlawful detention!