Human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov’s Russian-language petition against the war with Ukraine has gathered 1.2 million signatures as of 27 March. Tens of thousands of Russians have signed petitions or open letters against the invasion of Ukraine – groups of Russian doctors and nurses, Russian teachers, academics and students, Russian architects, Russian lawyers, Russian culture workers (artists, curators, architects, art critics, art managers) and many more.
Below are a few of the…
Towards the end of March, a new British anti-war statement appeared online. Unlike the two main anti-war groups in the UK, ‘No War on Ukraine’ does not mention NATO expansion as a factor in the Ukraine crisis.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Stop the War Coalition are part of the international ‘Peace in Ukraine’ coalition which organised the global day of action against the war in Ukraine on 6 March.
Members include US groups such as CODEPINK, Food Not Bombs…
The talk can be watched here.
This is an awful subject to try and talk about. What I’d like to try and do, is try and look back and see how we’ve got to here, why it has happened, what has happened and where we are two weeks into this war, and what might happen next and what might be the best sort of outcome we could look for.
I won’t go into any detail in any one area because there is an awful…
Paul Rogers gives an overview of the crisis and how we got here. Paul calls for a radical re-thinking of western perceptions of security that embraces a willingness to address the core issues of global insecurity.
Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of Peace Studies in the Department of Peace Studies and International Relations at Bradford University, northern England and an honorary fellow at the Joint Service Command and Staff College. His latest book is the fourth edition of 'Losing…
[Milan Rai will be giving a Zoom talk about the contents of this article at 7pm GMT on Thursday 17 March 2022. Please click here for more details.]
On top of the fear and horror caused by the current Russian onslaught in Ukraine, many have been shocked and frightened by Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent words and actions in relation to his nuclear weapons…
Below are statements opposing the war in Ukraine from groups in Russia. (They are all auto-translated from Russian – if you can help supply better translations, please do get in touch.)
As well as signing statements, thousands of Russians have gone out in the streets to protest against the war. 5,948 Russian anti-war protesters have been arrested since 24 February, according to OVD-Info, the Russian…
Earlier this month, Yurii Sheliazhenko, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, told Democracy Now!: ‘Both great powers of the West and the East share equal responsibility to avoid escalation of war in Ukraine and beyond Ukraine.’
This is more of what he said: ‘The escalation towards major war in Ukraine is unnecessary. Our government became part of it when we…
Ukrainian Pacifist Movement (24 February)
Ukrainian Pacifist Movement condemns all military actions on the sides of Russia and Ukraine in the context of current conflict. We call the leadership of both states and military forces to step back and sit at the negotiation table. Peace in Ukraine and around the world can be achieved only in a nonviolent way.
War is a crime against humanity. Therefore, we are determined not to support any kind of war and to strive for the removal of…
There are two connected Ukraine crises going on. There is a civil war in Eastern Ukraine, in the Russian-speaking Donbass region, which Russia is involved in. There is also a larger confrontation over NATO expansion. The massing of over 100,000 Russian soldiers on the border and the threat of all-out war are linked to both crises.
As we go to press, it’s not clear what is going to happen.
What is clear is that there are nonviolent solutions to both crises.
Solving the…
These are the footnotes for the double pamphlet written by PN editor Milan Rai in October 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Many of these references can be verified online - sometimes whole texts have been scanned and placed online. In other cases, a search for the quoted text will bring up the page in the book referred to.
Footnotes for 1917: The Nonviolent Russian Revolution
1 SA Smith, Russia in Revolution:…
On June 16, the New York Times reported :
'More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war.
The memo, a draft of which was provided to…
On 15 March, Moscow saw its largest demonstration in over two years, a protest against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and impending annexation of the Crimea.
News agency AFP reported that some demonstrators carried placards comparing Putin’s actions with the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland before the Second World War. AFP counted 50,000 demonstrators; the Moscow police only 3,000.
Kidnapped and beaten
Only one arrest was reported at the 15…
Russia after the election is a grim place. With electoral doubts safely swept under the carpet, Putin has been sworn into Office.
Greeted by Putin Youth Rallies in Moscow, and an explosion in Chechnya killing “Putin's man in the region”, Kadyrov, Head of Parliament Hussein Isaev and, at time of going to press, possibly Finance Minister Ely Isaev. No accidental irony this attack: on the Day of Victory. Putin's promise: the liquidation of the terrorists.
Speaking of which - one…
In December 1994, days after the first modern invasion of Chechnya by Russian forces, Time magazine wrote, “Unless someone backs down, Moscow's advance into Chechnya threatens to start a guerrilla war that could wreck Yeltsin's presidency or end Russian democracy.”
Yeltsin is long gone, and so now, following the recent re-election of President Putin, with the attendant, and embarrassingly muted, concerns about it perhaps not being entirely free and fair, is an ideal time to revisit…
The FSB, one of the successors to the KGB, have accused humanitarian organisations working in Chechnya and Ingushetia of producing “anti stability” propaganda harmful to the efforts made by the Governments involved to seek a resolution of the “Chechen Problem”.
These organisations have been working with refugees from the continuing bloodbath in the Caucasus, providing necessary materials for the refugee camps in which they live. The FSB has been monitoring these organisations for…
