Ukraine:
Profits Can Keep Flowing after the War

December 8, 2025

This article is translated from the December 5 issue, #2992 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Florida, where American negotiators tried to impose Trump’s so-called peace plan on his team. Then he rushed to Paris on December 1 to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, who considers himself Zelenskyy’s most ardent defender against Russia.

Zelenskyy must hope that European leaders will push back against Trump’s pressure to force him to sign the Trump plan. Even with tweaks, this plan admits Ukraine’s unfavorable position on the front lines, as well as Zelenskyy’s weakened position as a head of state mired deeply in corruption scandals. Above all, this plan confirms that Washington believes it has achieved its objective by having worked to provoke a conflict that weakens Moscow’s influence in the former Soviet bloc. The logical next step is the exploitation of Ukrainian resources that American corporations have managed to acquire. But maybe also opening up the Russian market!

Some American business circles see the promising possibility of collaboration with Russia’s economic giants. Supposing the White House recognizes Putin’s victory in Ukraine, they envision juicy contracts, especially in oil, gas, and rare earths. And don’t forget nuclear power. Anti-Russia sanctions or no, U.S. nuclear reactors depend on Moscow-headquartered Rosatom to supply them with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of enriched uranium each year!

The Wall Street Journal devoted a long article to all this on November 30, stating that the Trump administration views Russia “not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity.”

Many media outlets churn out self-serving war propaganda. But there is no need to seek Moscow’s hand in the drafting of Trump’s plan. Businessmen in the American delegation wrote the plan. Trump’s special envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, made one of his regular visits to Moscow on December 2. In those discussions, Putin was accompanied by his own special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev—a Harvard-educated investment banker who became CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. His sovereign wealth fund manages at least ten billion dollars.

Of course, the Ukraine that Western governments and media call a courageous little sentinel of democracy on Europe’s eastern flank is no match for these deep corporate appetites and financial resources. Second-tier imperialist powers like France have little influence to assert their interests in the postwar world that is largely evolving without them.

So, while Macron and his associates proclaim their devotion to peace, they push Ukraine to continue the war. In an interview with Bloomberg on November 13, Zelenskyy admitted that his European “friends” demand that he recruit more soldiers. The Ukrainian legislature is complicitly debating a bill to conscript women.

Ukrainian people may have had enough. But Macron and his ilk are eager to wage war on others and want even more cannon fodder. After all, as long as the Ukrainian army has troops, they need weapons, which Kyiv can order from manufacturers … preferably French ones! To justify this to the public, while simultaneously conditioning citizens for the worldwide conflict they are preparing, the Macrons and their general staffs invent the threat of the bearish Russian ogre. The fact that Russian tanks stalled out 250 miles from Kyiv almost four years ago is irrelevant to these professional liars, who insist that Russia will soon enter Paris and Berlin. Not because it’s true, but because their industrialists and generals have a vested interest in making people swallow this preposterous lie!