Below are some new statements from UNAC ( unac.notowar.net ) and the related Sanctions Kill Campaign, and people are encouraged to co-sign the #SanctionsKill statement. There is also an older statement from the Assange Defense Committee but initiated by UNAC. Some have argued that the US is attempting to make Ukraine into a "Vietnam" for Russia, as it did in Afghanistan in the 70's and 80's ( for example here). There is also the bizarre and unbelievable demand that a no-fly zone be declared over all or part of Ukraine, which would mean starting a direct war with Russia, seeming to indicate that many in the US and European elite no longer fear nuclear war or no longer believe it could happen, though the USA is spending massive amounts of money on its nuclear weapons and opposes global nuclear disarmament efforts. There was so much concern to avoid getting into a direct war with the USSR or China during the Cold War, but over the last ten years the alleged "adults in the room" have been talking more and more about having a world war in the very near future over who gets to dominate Ukraine or Taiwan, or both at the same time. There was also a lead up of skirmishes and smaller wars before the first two inter-imperalist world wars and people apparently didn't realize the magnitude of what was starting in August 1914. It's also starting to feel like the early 2000's, except that maybe this time rank and file liberal Democrats are with the warmongers in power to a greater degree.
United National Antiwar Coalition Statement on Ukraine [March 19th]
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) remains steadfast in its opposition to the United States/NATO imperialist project. The people of Ukraine are now suffering in a war zone because of the actions of the United States, beginning with the 2014 coup which violently ousted an elected president. The goal then as now was to use Ukraine as a weapon to target Russia militarily. We point out that the current conflict is not the first for Ukraine. More than 14,000 people living in the eastern Donbas region have died in an eight-year long war because they refused to accept the coup government imposed by the U.S.
There have been many opportunities to peacefully resolve this conflict. The US could have announced that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO, but it would not. The Minsk II Agreement signed in 2015 by Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France was unanimously approved by the United Nations Security Council. Minsk II called for the end of hostilities between Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in Donbas. Ukraine was required to engage in negotiations and provide constitutional recognition for this region. But far right forces prevented implementation and three American presidents saw an advantage in not implementing the agreement.
The result was a continuation of bloodshed and the strengthening of right wing and neo-Nazi forces. Ukraine is now a haven for white supremacist groups and has invited mercenaries from across Europe, the United States, and other nations. This use of the right wing is by design and is yet another means of maintaining a dangerous status quo. It is both naive and dangerous to deny the existence of these far-right forces and to ignore the hold they have on Ukrainian politics. They will not only unleash violence in Ukraine, but they will inevitably bring racist violence back to their home countries.
The Biden administration sends weapons and prolongs the conflict. The U.S. further enriches the military industrial complex with its actions with money that should be used for the good of the people. The promised Build Back Better bill is in limbo and the monies promised for renewing the Child Tax Credit and providing covid relief instead are used to stoke the conflict in Ukraine.
UNAC calls on the antiwar community to join in opposing NATO plans to expand further eastward. Not only should NATO cease integrating new members, but it should be dismantled altogether. It is not the defensive force that it claims to be and has wrought destruction from Ukraine to Libya to Afghanistan. NATO is the expression of U.S. global dominance and can only do great harm around the world.
Congress and the Biden administration approved $15 billion to fund militarism in Ukraine in the same week that providers of free covid testing, vaccination, and treatment for the uninsured were informed their services would no longer be reimbursed. The military industrial complex gets billions of dollars while the people’s needs go unmet. The uninsured and unhoused go without help while the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion gets money with the blessings of Congress.
The calls for a so-called “no-fly zone” would in fact create an air war that would heighten the risk of nuclear conflict. Sanctions are war by other means and should be universally condemned by all in the antiwar movement.
The displacement of millions of people in Ukraine is a repeat of what the US and NATO have wrought elsewhere. UNAC appeals to antiwar forces in this country to join in making consistent demands for peace in Ukraine, an end to the NATO imperialist structure, and a system which meets public needs and not those of defense contractors.
We demand:
US/NATO hands off Ukraine: No weapons, No military “advisors,” No mercenaries.
Humanitarian aid to Ukraine and resettlement of all refugees and displaced persons
Keep Ukraine out of NATO and Stop NATO expansion.
Expulsion of all foreign white supremacist and neo-Nazi forces from Ukraine
Reparations to civilians in Ukraine and the Donbas independent regions
Dismantle NATO and establish a military neutral zone from Western Russia through Ukraine and the Baltic states
U.S. government renounce doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance
For a more comprehensive background statement from UNAC, please click here [copied below]
Ukraine: U.S. Out Now! Remains Our Anti-Imperialist Antiwar Credo
Statement by the UNAC Administrative Committee
[Editor's note: The statement below was drafted by UNAC Administrative Committee member, Jeff Mackler and approved following discussion and amendment by the March 17, 2022 meeting of UNAC Administrative Committee.]
U.S. Out Now! Hands Off! Self-determination for the World’s Poor and Oppressed! and $Billions for Human Needs Not War! have sufficed to define UNAC’s ten years as the nation’s leading antiwar coalition.
And what about Ukraine Today? And what of the role of the US? Have we entered a new era wherein the US imperialist behemoth has instantly transformed itself, repudiating its bloody past to stand before us as the champion of truth, justice and freedom? The corporate media and the bi-partisan war parties would have us believe it. Their full throttle war propaganda ranges from blatant falsification of history, to daily Orwellian-like media fabrications to jailing truthtellers like WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange to banning Russian Television (RT), including its renowned broadcaster Chris Hedges.
We in the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) offer no free pass to imperialist warmakers, who today preside over a $trillion dollar-plus war budget that is daily bloated with its NATO allies begging for additional $billions to make war on whomever the US elite designate as the “enemy.” War has never been as good for military profits
Maidan’s 2014 rooftop fascist snipers
Today’s unfolding Ukraine tragedy began in February 2014 when rooftop fascist snipers opened fire on Maidan protestors assembled to resist the Victor Yanukovych government’s austerity measures. The fascists murdered 100 in cold blood, including some of their own for good measure. Yanukovych, the elected president, was instantly blamed and pilloried by the world’s corporate media, paving the political road for what followed. He fled for his life.
US backed fascist coup
It mattered not that US representative to the European Union, Victoria Nuland, had inadvertently revealed that the rooftop assassins were of the fascist Svoboda Party and Right Sector ilk and not Yanukovych’s military. The armed thugs that had come from across Ukraine and beyond to dominate the Maidan events – replete with US Senator John McCain sharing the stage with fascist orators and Nuland handing out US friendship cookies to boot – were led by the fascist Svoboda Party leader, Andriy Parubiy. They stormed the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, banned the two largest and majority parties from entrance, declared themselves the new government and instantly approved a series of reactionary “laws” while appointing themselves to head key government ministries.
The March 5, 2014 on-line British Channel 4 news account told the story well: “The man facing down Putin’s aggression as secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council is Andriy Parubiy. He oversees national security for the nation, having previously served as [self-appointed] “security commandant” during the anti-government protests in Kiev.” Channel 4 identified Parubiy as a member of fascist Svoboda Party and a founder of its pro-Nazi predecessor, the Social National Party. The British television station’s account continued: “Overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector—a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters, who previously boasted they were ready for armed struggle to free Ukraine.”
Other Svoboda neo-Nazis leaders “elected” to the top echelons of the new government were Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, Ecology Minister Andriy Mokhnyk, Agriculture Minister Ihor Shvaika, and acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky. In 2016 Parubiy became Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament.
The fascists in power, instantly moved to ban the Russian language from schools and public institutions and ordered the Ukrainian Army, replete with its now formally integrated fascist Azov, Aidar, Dnipro and Tornado battalions, to march on the Donbass in the east to take control of this largely Russian-speaking population. Now with “government” approval, they attacked anti-coup demonstrators across the country. In Odessa, they murdered 48 coup protestors outright, setting a trade union building where they sought refuge afire and slaughtering survivors who were compelled to leap off the flaming edifice.
All leftwing parties were banned. The bailout agreements negotiated by the Yanukovych government with Russia, on terms far less onerous than those offered by the European Union, were revoked, and instead, an economically punishing Association Agreement with the European Union, that largely subordinated Ukraine to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund, was approved.
US appoints Ukraine president
The question then arose. Who would take Yanukovych’s place? Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, made that decision. Again, in her taped remarks, Nuland named Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a hard right member of Fatherland, the ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian formation. The Europeans, especially the Germans, wanted a more moderate figure to head Ukraine. They favored Vitaly Klitschko, a boxer turned politician with more moderate views than Yatsenyuk. During the hacked call, Nuland blurted, “F***K the EU,” and, of course, the US pick, Yatsenyuk, became the Prime Minister of Ukraine, forming a coalition governing majority with the fascist Svoboda Party. The coup’s finance minister was US citizen and high-ranking diplomat, Natalie Jeresko, who was granted Ukrainian citizenship the day after the coup. Joe Biden’s son took a position on the board of Ukraine’s largest natural gas company earning a monthly salary of $50,000.
The U.S.-backed rump government declared itself the leader of the nation. Nuland remarked in her intercepted phone call, that Vice President Joseph Biden, in charge of the Ukraine events at that time, would give the ultimate "atta boy" to the coup leaders.
The US had previously laid the ground for the coup, pouring $5 billion into Ukraine over the years to support hundreds of NGOs aimed at moving Ukraine into its orbit, one way or another.
US military base established in Ukraine
Shortly after the 2014 coup, in 2015, the coup makers established the so-called International Peacekeeping and Security Center, a US-run western Ukraine military base, near the Polish border, that had been, according to the March 14, 2022 New York Times, “a hub for Western military troops to train Ukrainian forces since 2015.”
The Times added, “Troops from the United States, Britain, Canada, Poland, Sweden and Denmark, among others, have trained 35,000 Ukrainians there under a project called ‘Operation Unifier.’” This is the “operation” that aimed to forcibly “unite” western Ukraine, with the Russian-speaking eastern and southern populations that rejected the fascist coup. US paid troops included the modern-day descendants of the privatized Blackwater forces of Erik Prince that slaughtered civilians in Iraq during that “weapons of mass destruction” regime change war that killed 1.5 million Iraqis. Need we note that with the exception of Sweden, all the above nations are NATO affiliates, training, arming and financing non-NATO Ukraine to wage war on behalf of NATO’s US puppet master?
Ukrainian Army desertions
Here we add that the official Ukrainian armies in the east and south also rejected the 2014 coup as they did orders from the coup government to turn their guns on the Russian-speaking populations. Indeed, with near zero exceptions they deserted the Ukrainian Army and joined the Russian Army without a shot being fired. The same with the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking population in Crimea. They voted 97 percent to affiliate with Russia in a referendum result contested by virtually no one. The turnout was 87 percent.
The March 14, 2022 Times article concludes, “But Western nations withdrew their forces ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the base has been used by Ukraine to train and organize the thousands of foreigners [from 28 nations] who have arrived in the country and volunteered to help defend it.” This single paragraph comes close to defying rational explanation, unless, of course, it is The Times’ explanation of the instant transformation of a secret US/NATO military base operating on Ukrainian territory into a solely Ukrainian-run base aimed at training the Ukrainian version of Middle East jihadist terrorists. No doubt these instantly-discovered “foreign fighters” suddenly flocking to defend “Ukraine’s freedom” are akin to those jihadists murderers armed, trained, financed and deployed by the US/NATO/Gulf State monarchies to take down the Syrian government in that ten-year failed US regime change war. 500,000 Syrians died in that US horror. By all accounts, today’s Ukrainian “freedom fighters” were drawn from the ranks of Europe’s growing fascist and far right fanatics. Ukraine has become their central focus.
Imperialist obfuscation
From 2015 to just before the Russian invasion, that is, for seven years, the US and NATO forces have been arming, training and financing, inside Ukraine, the coup government’s war against the Russian speaking population. That war has killed some 14,000 people in the Donbass, mostly civilians. That the victims are pilloried for defending their lives and for seeking Russian aid, constitutes yet another travesty of fundamental human and democratic rights, not to mention the right of an oppressed people to self-determination, that is, to be free from annihilation at the hands of the US-installed fascist coup government.
The Minsk Protocols
For the past eight years, prior to the Russian invasion, a state of perpetual war has prevailed in the Donbass region, with the U.S. government backing the reconstituted and ever-reinforced Ukrainian Army’s unrelenting attacks – spearheaded by fascist troops that have been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian army.
The early post-coup years were punctuated by a series of negotiations referred to as the Minsk Protocols. Signed on Sept. 5, 2014 and Feb. 12, 2015, after negotiations between the Ukrainian coup government, Russia, Germany and France, they were purportedly aimed at stopping the bloodshed via a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front lines, release of prisoners of war, and a Ukrainian constitutional reform granting self-government to specified areas of Donbass. In practice, none of these Minsk Protocols were implemented, as the Ukrainian Army’s ceaseless incursions into the Donbass region aimed at subjugation and conquest as opposed to pursuit of a negotiated settlement. Some 100 “ceasefire” agreements were repeatedly violated. The Ukrainian government refused to implement the Minsk-projected elections in Luhansk and Donetsk. Endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution, the gist of the Minsk accords was to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine via a federalization process that would return the breakaway republics in exchange for their local autonomy. The latter implied that the resources of a federated Donbass, especially the vast fossil fuel reserves, and access to pipelines, would be under the control of local/regional governments – as they had previously been – a proposition that US imperialism outright rejected.
Russian-speaking Ukrainian refugees flee to Russia
Today, we hear no mention of the fact that 800,00 Russian-speaking Ukrainians had fled to Russia during the coup government’s death squad reign and another 70,000 in recent weeks. We do hear reports of Ukrainians fleeing west in the face of the Russian intervention, but not of the coup government’s segregating out Ukrainians of African and Middle East origin, who have been shunted to the end of the line in the face of NATO ally’s racist, white supremacist policies refusing to accept immigrants “who don’t look like us.”
Welcome to the embrace of the imperialist war machine
Today, admission to the good graces of the US imperialist establishment requires both denunciation of the Vladimir Putin Russian government and hailing the “democratic” US-led NATO imperial war pact. We in UNAC decline the invitation. Whatever our varying assessments of the Putin government, and there are many, we decline to condemn the Donbass people for asking for Russian aid. We decline to condemn Russia’s and the Russian-speaking Donbass population’s opposition to the US-engineered fascist coup and its US/NATO perpetuation. We decline to condone NATO’s expansion into Ukraine and its perspective of establishing nuclear weapons along Russia’s 1500-mile border. That 27 million Russians died in fighting Hitler’s fascist WWII invasion has not been obliterated from Russian popular consciousness.
And we decline to join the near-deafening bi-partisan war cries, echoed daily by virtually every US corporation, every military contractor, every oil behemoth, every major media outlet and every politician to pursue war in Ukraine without hesitation. If there is any US debate over the war among the corporate parties it is over whether to risk nuclear war via the US embarking on a “no-fly zone” wherein US planes and missiles will be assigned to challenge Russia’s, a doomsday scenario if there ever was one.
History of US oil wars
The same US oil monopolies on whose behalf the US government wages war today against Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Bolivia, and beyond, were critical players in the monstrous wars that killed millions and raped the planet in years and decades past. Four-plus million were slaughtered by the US war machine in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; 400,000 in Guatemala by US-trained death squads; 50,000 slaughtered by Batista’s US-backed dictatorship in Cuba; 80,000 murdered by Somoza’s Nicaragua dictatorship; 60,000 by Pinochet’s Chilean death squads and tens of thousands more in Argentina Panama, Haiti Colombia, Dominican Republic, and Brazil – all by US-backed and/or installed dictatorships. The modern era lists of US atrocities never ends; 1.5 million were murdered in Iraq; two million more in the US-orchestrated 1980-88 Iraq/Iran War aimed at obliterating both nation’s competitive oil resources; tens of thousands in the US-backed al Sisi Egyptian coup; one million in Afghanistan and today millions perishing in the US-backed Saudi Arabian genocide in Yemen.
Unprecedented plunder
Today the US plunderers have scaled unprecedented heights in a scheme to monopolize the world’s largest fossil fuel markets – Western Europe and beyond – by eliminating cheap Russian oil and gas that was to be sent directly through the undersea Nord Steam 2 pipeline. The US scheme, forced upon reluctant German and French officials, contemplates closing existing Russian pipelines and Nord Stream 2 and substituting high cost US-fracked Liquid National Gas. The coup government’s US-backed military conquest of eastern and southern Ukraine was seen as a prerequisite to completing this barely disguised and latest US fossil fuel war – a first magnitude confrontation at a time when the continued, if not expanded use of this deadly resource, spells doom for all humankind.
UNAC’s anti-imperialist politics
• We reject the imperial propagandists’ disgusting transformation of a US-backed fascist coup into a popular rebellion.
• We reject the corporate media-created fantasy of a US imperialism driven by benevolent intentions.
We demand:
US Out Now! Hands off Ukraine!
Abolish NATO!
No to US/NATO nuclear war-threatening “no-fly zones” over Ukraine!
No to US punishing sanction wars against Russia and 39 other nations!
Self-determination for the people of Donbass!
No to US-backed fascist coups!
No to US oil wars everywhere!
$Billions for human needs; not one penny for war!
For a rapid transition to a safe, clean, fossil fuel world free energy system that guarantees quality jobs and security for all!
Close all military bases the world over beginning with the 1,100 US bases in 110 countries, followed by Russia’s seven bases and China’s single base in Djibouti!
Peace Now!
#SanctionsKill Campaign Statement on Ukraine Conflict
[ Originally posted at unac.notowar.net/2022/03/18/sanctionskill-campaign-statement-on-ukraine-conflict/ ]
The SanctionsKill Campaign is a broad coalition of social justice, solidarity, and peace forces focused on exposing the devastating impact of US sanctions on civilian populations globally.
Sign the Statement: HERE
Sanctions are not a substitute for war
The current regime of sanctions against Russia is not a substitute for war, but a form of warfare. Sanctions kill many thousands just as bombs do. Sanctions create hyperinflation, artificial famines, social upheavals, and health crises that punish civilian populations. As US President Biden said, the sanctions are intended “to inflict further pain.”
Sanctions are collective punishment and illegal under international law.
Nor are the sanctions by the US and its allies against Russia a deterrent to war. They will not reduce hostilities, but are an escalation of the current conflict.
Sanctions used to consolidate US dominance in Europe
Sanctions are being used to consolidate US dominance in the region, even though it is counter to the material interests of the European Union (EU) and the UK to cut economic ties with Moscow.
The growth in EU trade with Russia and China threatens the domination of US corporate power in Europe. The EU is the biggest investor in Russia. While the US is the largest exporter of methane gas, the EU purchases substantial gas from Russia at much lower prices, and also oil and wheat.
With the EU and especially Germany unwilling to impose sanctions, which would break all relations with Russia, Biden threatened the US allies that the only alternative to going along with the US would be nuclear war. The US president said: “You have two options. Start a Third World War…Or two, make sure that the country that acts so contrary to international law ends up paying a price.” Biden said the US “goal from the very beginning” was to keep NATO and the EU “on the same page.”
Using the dominant role of the dollar in the world economy, Washington has unilaterally imposed over 5,500 sanctions on Russia, making it the most sanctioned target of US aggressive policies.
US sanctions dragging the whole world into the conflict
Unfortunately, Russia is not the only victim of these unilateral coercive measures. Over 40 countries, comprising a third of humanity, are so targeted by the US. These include Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Third countries trading with targets of US sanctions also face heavy fines. This deadly form of economic warfare destroys regional development.
Further, the US is compelling other countries to execute these extreme economic penalties. We note, with grave concern, that these sanctions imposed on Russia are dragging the whole world into a conflict which has a high potential of spiraling out of control.
The United Nations did not approve the US-instigated sanctions. Many countries now refuse to join with the US/EU sanctions imposed on Russia. To date India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries with smaller economies have refused to comply with the US measures. In fact, almost all of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and most of Asia reject the sanctions.
Sanctions are a crime against humanity
Such sanctions would damage these countries’ own trade relations. Supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures from the US-led sanctions are already disproportionately impacting poor and working people globally due to shortages and higher prices for food, fuel, and basic commodities. Especially impacted are people in the developing world.
As over 60 years of US sanctions against the Cuban Revolution prove, sanctions meant to achieve the regime change the US wants to impose have, in fact, resulted in raining misery upon the targeted people. These sanctions serve as a cautionary lesson to any nation that wishes to exercise its sovereignty under the globally inflicted Pax Americana. It is a crime against humanity.
Ending the Ukraine War
This devastating war started with the US-orchestrated coup in 2014 coup, overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Although Ukraine is not a formal NATO member, the US has since dumped mountains of lethal arms and deployed US military “advisors” into Ukraine.
Ukraine is a pawn in Washington’s strategy against Russia. Since the coup, Ukraine has been reduced to the poorest country in Europe with the highest rate of migration. Kiev’s continuing aggression against its eastern provinces and mass privatizations of socially owned property have furthered the economic ruin.
Sanctions Kill Campaign calls on all sides to end hostilities and for the US to employ diplomacy; not weapons, sanctions and war!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 19, 2022
Contact:
Joe Lombardo: Coordinator, United National Antiwar Coalition
UNACpeace [at gmail] | 518-281-1968
Nathan Fuller: Director, Courage Foundation
nathan [at assangedefense org] | 516-578-2628
Thousands Sign Petition Supporting Assange Release
WASHINGTON, DC–Led by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), more than 26 antiwar groups and 2,500 individual peace and justice advocates have cosponsored a statement calling for the immediate release of publisher Julian Assange and commending him for his contributions toward global peace.
Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States after the Trump administration indicted him on unprecedented Espionage Act charges. His indictment marked the first time in U.S. history that a journalist has been charged for publishing truthful information.
Since being removed from Ecuador's London embassy after a new Ecuadorian administration bowed to U.S. pressure to withdraw his asylum, Assange has been held for more than 1,000 days in Belmarsh Prison while his extradition case is being heard through UK courts. A decision from the British High Court on whether to hear an appeal is expected in the coming days.
Among the statement's signers is Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple and longtime peace activist. Walker, a co-chair of the Assange Defense Committee, emphasized the importance of Assange's commitment to showing the public the horrors of war.
"We owe it to Julian to fight for his freedom, because he fought for peace for the rest of us," Walker said. "He fought for justice by exposing how the United States conducted horrific wars of conquest in Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions died in these wars, mostly civilians. Assange believed that knowledge of U.S. war crimes belonged to us, the people, to decide for ourselves what should happen in our name. And now it's time for us to fight for him."
Remarking on the ignominious 1,000 day milestone, Nathan Fuller, Director of the Courage Foundation and Assange Defense, expressed disappointment over the Biden administration's unjust continuation of Trump's controversial prosecution.
"While the Biden administration is confronting U.S. adversaries over their press freedom shortcomings, it should address its own hypocrisy," Fuller said. "Locking up Julian Assange for exposing the truth about U.S. wars is an insult to all those struggling for peace and human rights."
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