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No UK troops for Nato’s Ukraine war games

nato_460Stop the War Coalition are calling for signatures for a petition against the NATO joint exercises with Ukrainian troops within Ukraine which is not a member of NATO, and against British involvement in these exercises. This action is provocative, and makes a political solution to the crisis more difficult to achieve. That is not in the interests of any of the people living within the internationally recognised borders of the Ukraine. We urge you to sign the Downing Street petition which reads as follows:

We note with great concern that UK and US troops will participate alongside Ukrainian troops in joint military exercises on Ukrainian territory in July as part of NATO’s Rapid Trident manoeuvres. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Its participation in military exercises by a nuclear-armed alliance with a first-strike policy can only further destabilise the situation in the Ukraine, making it more difficult to achieve a political resolution to the crisis.

The existence since 1997 of the Rapid Trident exercises, their forerunner Peace Shield, and the associated Sea Breeze naval exercises in the Black Sea, make clear that NATO seeks to include Ukraine as part of its eastward expansion which has been taking place since the end of the Cold War.

We call on the British government to urge the US and other NATO governments to cancel this July’s Rapid Trident exercise, and to give a plain and public undertaking that Britain will not participate.

We call on the UK government and the Welsh Assembly to make clear that NATO’s expansionist policies are adding to global instability, and urge everyone to join our protests at the 2014 NATO Summit which is due to take place in Newport, Wales, in September.

Lindsey German convenor of Stop the War Coalition 
Kate Hudson general secretary of CND 
Caroline Lucas MP 
Jeremy Corbyn MP 
John Rees Stop the War Coalition
Baroness Jenny Tonge 
Ken Loach film and TV director 
Mark Rylance actor 
Miriam Margolyes OBE actor
Michael Rosen author and broadcaster
Salma Yaqoob former leader of the Respect Party 
Andrew Murray chief of staff for Unite union

 

4 Comments

  1. William Jones says:

    Well I must be slipping!I always thought I was up to date and informed on these matters!The news of this has come has a complete shock to me and is absolutely outrageous.

    Moreover it is symbolic of the UK Foreign Office’s back of a fagpacket approach when drawing up policy on Ukraine and previously Syria!

    On Ukraine they have openly sided with those who are descendants of Ukraine fascists who sided with Nazi Germany in World War Two.

  2. Dave Roberts says:

    I thought the far right got derisory votes. The first two candidates took nearly seventy per cent of the vote between them.

    The main thing surely is that there are free and fair elections, more or less, something that didn’t happen of course under Communism. I thought Stop the War had gone into liquidation.

  3. James Martin says:

    In terms of deaths of innocent civilians caused, over the past couple of decades NATO must rank as the worlds most effective terrorist groups out there. And of course these war games with Ukraine troops as a very public part of them are very much part of the ever louder drums of war that NATO is banging.

    The Ukrainian army has also effectively merged with and absorbed the fascist home guard paramilitary units of the Right Sector, who are now using the heavy weapons now at their disposal to regularly shell residential areas in the east.

    Now of course you can argue that the new chocolate president got a lot of votes and the two openly fascist candidates didn’t. Yes, quite so, and the lack of electoral support for the fascists is encouraging, but they still hold huge amounts of power (not least in the state’s armed forces). Plus of course what has the chocolate man done to heal the civil war as promised? Sent even more troops to pacify the population it would seem. And while all this is happening it went largely unreported in the western media that a number of presidential candidates had to withdraw due to the continued violence against them. This included the Communist Party (in reality in political terms a social democratic body for years now) whose offices remain occupied, whose members are openly attacked in parliament itself and where legislation is being debated to ban them.

    But no matter, as long as the guns keep firing and socialists and trade unionists continue to be attacked and their organisations banned then NATO will be happy. And democracy? Well first you have a coup, attack those that oppose it and then you have elections with mass abstentions to create a veneer of respectability. It is what has just happened in Egypt, and what has just happened in Ukraine, and it would appear is also the road marked out for Thailand. Different countries, different continents, but the same old anti-working class reactionary crap.

    1. Dave Roberts says:

      What is the evidence for any of this? You seem to agree that the far right didn’t do very well at the elections but then that they have a lot of clout in the military.

      Where was the coup? I seem to remember a pretty much popular uprising. The fact that it didn’t turn out the way you wanted is neither here nor there, that’s life.

      How does this situation get bracketed with Egypt and Thailand? What should the new president do, according to you, nothing.

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