At the outset of this short book, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies note that the complex nature of the conflict in Ukraine has ‘made it particularly confusing and difficult for the Western peace movement’ to respond to, with many citizens of NATO countries ‘largely oblivious to their own governments’ share of responsibility for the crisis and the carnage’.
Moreover, according to former US assistant secretary of defence Chas Freeman, the war in Ukraine is also now ‘the most intense…
The mainstream media continues to suppress unwelcome but crucial facts about Ukraine’s recent peace positions, and to distort Russia’s current position.
It goes without saying that the Russian invasion a year ago was a criminal act and that Russia has committed and continues to commit a host of war crimes. However, it does not help us to find a way out of this disaster if we distort the facts.
Lawrence Freedman is perhaps the most respected foreign policy academic in Britain.…
As we head towards the second year of the horrifying war in Ukraine, the British government should be supporting a rapid, negotiated end to the war (see p3 for more on this).
Prime minister Rishi Sunak should be helping to remove obstacles to peace. This includes pressing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to lift his ban on negotiating with Russia while Vladimir Putin remains president (see PN 2663).
Instead of seeking peace, the British government is supporting…
Medea Benjamin (Codepink) talks about the war in Ukraine on 9 January 2023, at an online event co-hosted by Peace News and CND and chaired by Tom Unterrainer, chair of CND.
Russia’s brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has attracted widespread condemnation across the West. Government and media circles present the conflict as a simple clash between an evil empire and an innocent victim.
In her new book, War in Ukraine:…
In November, there was a surprising development in relation to the Ukraine War, with pressure for a diplomatic solution coming from the US military (pressure that has been resisted fiercely by the civilian political leadership).
The New York Times reported on 10 November that the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, general Mark Milley, argued in private top-level meetings for…
‘The deepest power is that of determining what people consider normal,’ British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in the Financial Times on 13 November.
The next day, British prime minister Rishi Sunak condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with these words: ‘There can be no normalisation of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s behaviour, which has no place in the international community.’
Perhaps Sunak was referring to the massive waves of Russian missile attacks on…
The United States could make a huge contribution to the safety and wellbeing of the Ukrainian people – and to global security – by giving its full support to a peace process between Ukraine and Russia, and by promising that all US sanctions on Russia will be lifted once a peace treaty is signed and Russian forces are withdrawn.
Instead, US president Joe Biden is playing a cynical game by trying to appear as though he is in favour of peace talks, while actually having no interest in…
Every time the US has increased its military support for Ukraine, Russia has responded by escalating in some way.
We’re approaching a very dangerous point now, where a Russian nuclear attack starts to become a real possibility (see p7), with catastrophic consequences not just for Ukraine, but almost certainly for the world.
However, as Noam Chomsky recently pointed out to Truthout: ‘The impact of the war goes far beyond: to the millions facing starvation with the…
Despite his warlike words, and the enormous brutality of his invasion forces, Russian president Vladimir Putin has also signalled that he wants negotiations with Ukraine to end the war.
Britain and the US must end their anti-negotiations position (see PN 2661).
Putin put pro-negotiations language into both his 21 and 30 September speeches, which…
A European-wide petition calling to protect the rights of conscientious objectors (COs) on all sides of the Ukraine conflict was launched on 21 September, the UN International Day of Peace.
The petition calls for protection and asylum for deserters and conscientious objectors from Belarus and the Russian Federation. It urges the Ukrainian government to stop prosecuting conscientious objectors, instead granting them internationally-guaranteed rights.
It challenges all nations…
Anti-war campaigners took to Russia’s streets on 21 September after the government there announced that it would be calling up 300,000 reservists to fight in its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Brutal repression had put a stop to mass protests earlier in the year (see PN 2659), but the new announcement led to a new surge in protests.
It was reported that, in the hours after president Vladimir Putin’s speech on television launching the new policy, at least 300 people…
The following existing proposals and possible steps for ending the war in Ukraine through diplomacy have been extracted from a paper, Ceasefire and peace in Ukraine, published by the German section of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War/ Physicians in Social Responsibility (IPPNW) in July.
Minsk II
In 2014, Germany and France launched the so-called ‘Normandy format’ to resolve the war in eastern Ukraine. The mediation rounds, each consisting of one…
This article was written before the Ukrainian military began their counter-offensive in early September. The advances made have encouraged talk of ‘victory’ and the maximisation of Ukrainian war aims – even beyond the military defeat of Russia. The need for a negotiated end to the death and destruction becomes ever more urgent.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was an illegal act of aggression and the war that has ensued is a disaster of death, destruction and displacement on a…
Image Click on the image to enlarge it.
Most people in the US support their government pursuing diplomatic negotiations as soon as possible to end the war in Ukraine, ‘even if it means Ukraine making some compromises with Russia’ (see graphic above).
When Data for Progress asked the question in a slightly different way, an even larger majority of…
The woman who is likely to be the next prime minister of Britain approved £289m of UK exports with potential military use to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine, Matt Kennard of Declassified reported on 28 July.
Liz Truss (now foreign secretary) was secretary of state for international trade from July 2019 to September 2021: she was in charge of regulating the export of British arms and ‘dual use’ (possibly military) equipment.
According to Kennard, Truss approved…
