Ukrainian conscientious objector Vitaliy Alexeienko had his appeal rejected on 16 January and is believed to have been imprisoned shortly afterwards by order of an appeal court in Ivano-Frankivsk in Western Ukraine. Ukraine has suspended the right of conscientious objection.
Vitaliy, 46, had told the authorities last June that he refused to be conscripted into the Ukrainian army because of his pacifist religious beliefs.
He said that he was willing to take up alternative…
Dozens of international peace activists have volunteered to act as an unarmed civilian protection team at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, supporting inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (see PN 2663).
John Reuwer, founder of the Zaporizhzhya Protection Proposal project, writes: ‘Among the most immediate of the many threats faced by Ukrainians is the release of a nuclear dirty bomb by an intentional or accidental mishap at the Zaporizhzhya…
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:…
Britain is sending uranium weapons to be used in Ukraine. That was revealed in a parliamentary written answer from junior defence minister baroness Annabel Goldie on 20 March, first reported by Declassified UK the next day.
The advanced Challenger 2 tanks that Britain is exporting to Ukraine will be sent with
CHARM 3 armour-piercing depleted uranium (DU) rounds, Goldie confirmed.
CND general secretary Kate Hudson responded: ‘Like in Iraq, the addition of depleted…
28 peace activists have volunteered to act as an unarmed civilian protection team at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
John Reuwer, founder of the Zaporizhzhya Protection Proposal project, writes: ‘Among the most immediate of the many threats faced by Ukrainians is the release of a nuclear dirty bomb by an intentional or accidental mishap at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.’
The group plans to send a team of trained unarmed civilians to support inspectors…
‘Although it is difficult to evaluate it precisely, the nonviolent civil resistance has contributed to stopping the invasion in the north’ of Ukraine.
That’s one of the conclusions of Ukrainian Nonviolent Civil Resistance in the Face of War, published in October by the International Catalan Institute for Peace and Novact – International Institute for Nonviolent Action.
The author, Felip Daza, studied 235 nonviolent actions between 24 February – 30 June.
…
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…
We, the Ukrainian pacifists, demand and will strive to end the war by peaceful means and to protect human right to conscientious objection to military service.
Peace, not war, is the norm of human life. War is an organised mass murder. Our sacred duty is that we shall not kill.
Today, when the moral compass is being lost everywhere and self-destructive support for war and the military is on the rise, it is especially important for us to maintain common sense, stay true to our…
