People Before Profit will hold a public meeting entitled ‘No to Putin, No to NATO Escalation’ at Áras na nGael, Dominick Street tomorrow, Monday 14 March at 8pm.
The meeting will be chaired by People Before Profit Galway representative Adrian Curran and addressed by Prof. Kieran Allen, People Before Profit National Secretary and Associate Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Adrian Curran said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an outrageous act of aggression by an imperialist power on a former colony which harks back to the darkest days of Russian chauvinism and Stalinism.
“People Before Profit stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. We call for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces, for the abolition of Ukrainian debt, for opening the borders of the EU to all refugees from Ukraine regardless of colour or nationality, and for the sending of humanitarian aid to the people in Ukraine,” he said.
But Curran said that just as Putin is using militarism to bolster his despotic rule, NATO and the western powers are using the Ukrainian crisis to militarise the European Union, expand NATO eastward, increase its military presence and exercises in the region and more closely align Europe with US militarism.
“In this inter-imperialist conflict, People Before Profit is against both sides. While we support the Ukrainian people in their struggle against the Russian invasion, we oppose the sending of military aid by western forces to the Ukrainian state as it risks significant escalation and the drawing of the western camp into an actual hot war with Russia, which, by creating the possibility of nuclear war, threatens all humanity,” he said.
“While not a NATO member, Ireland is clearly situated in the western camp as is illustrated by the use of Shannon airport by the US military.
“We condemn the Irish government for its refusal to criticise NATO’s role in escalating tensions in central and eastern Europe and for using the current crisis to further erode Irish military neutrality and align Ireland with the EU/NATO project of European militarisation.
“We also oppose sanctions imposed by western forces on Russia as they will have humanitarian consequences for ordinary Russian people, have the potential to escalate the conflict, and are a tool on the part of the western camp to assert its hegemony.
“It is clearly hypocritical for NATO powers to call for immediate sanctions against Russia for its military aggression in Ukraine while they arm and support Israel, arm and support the brutal dictatorship in Saudi Arabia conducting a murderous war in Yemen, and those same powers led invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that claimed the lives of millions of people,” he said.
