Keir Starmer & Volodymyr Zelenskyy, January 2025 -- Number 10, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
"A peace settlement is long overdue in Ukraine, so it's time to stop the war and start the peace!", Kevan Nelson declared on Tuesday evening (February 18) following that day's talks between the US and Russian governments,
"But it's a bit rich for British and EU politicians to complain about their own exclusion from the Riyadh summit, when they have spent two years fuelling the conflict instead of trying to initiate a peace process", the Communist Party of Britain's (CPB) international secretary told the CPB political committee.
He hoped an agreement to keep Ukraine out of NATO would "end the 20-year long eastwards march of NATO and the EU to Russia's western borders" and ridiculed Keir Starmer's proposal for British troops to be stationed in Ukraine as peace-keepers.
"In recent years, British forces have bombed or invaded Afghanistan, Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria in the name of peace, democracy and Western values", Mr Nelson recalled, "while also aiding and abetting the Israeli mass extermination of defenceless Palestinian civilians in Gaza".
Britain's Communists reaffirmed their long-standing policy of withdrawal from NATO and their opposition to any further EU militarisation in alliance with the UK.
The CP political committee also rejected any increase in British military spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP as proposed by the Labour government, the Tory Opposition and military chiefs, or to the 5 per cent demanded by US President Donald Trump.
"If the Labour government has between £6bn and £60bn extra to spare, it should use a new peace dividend to defend millions of people against poverty, poor housing and ill health rather than waste a fresh war dividend on more nuclear warheads, submarines and bombers", Mr Nelson suggested.
Warning against US and Russian attempts to carve up Ukraine's rich natural resources, the CP political committee called upon President Zelensky to unban the Ukrainian Communist Party and restore trade union and democratic rights in that country.
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