LCIP Statement on Ukraine Crisis
For months, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has been making repeated statements about his desire to join NATO, the U.S.-led military alliance. The U.S. administration has approved these statements. Everyone knows that such membership is unacceptable to Russia.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, NATO has been absorbing all the countries surrounding Russia one by one, contrary to what Russia’s leaders claim were verbal promises by the United States that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East.”
Since 1999, by joining NATO, the countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have encircled Russia in the west. Only the border countries of Belarus and Ukraine have not joined NATO.
According to the United States and the European Union, Russia is responsible for the escalation. The truth is that the U.S. administration is using the “threat of Russian invasion” to build up huge military forces on the Ukrainian side, and this is nothing new. Hundreds of U.S. and Canadian military advisers are present in Ukraine. U.S. military aid has totaled US$2.5 billion since 2014, and Biden just added $200 million in recent days.
The governments closest to the United States in NATO (Britain, Canada, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) have just made major arms deliveries to Ukraine. On January 24, NATO placed all of its members’ military forces “on alert” – including 8,500 U.S. troops. Adding fuel to the fire, the U.S. embassy in Kiev called on U.S. citizens to leave the country, which the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called “excessive caution.”
The workers and peoples of Ukraine, Russia, the countries of Europe, and the United States have no interest in such a war. NATO is an instrument of U.S. imperialist designs. The huge sums of U.S. military aid to Ukraine – and to countries across the globe – are needed desperately here at home for healthcare, education, jobs, social services, and more.
• U.S.-NATO Hands Off Ukraine!
• Stop the U.S.-NATO warmongering, military aid, and armaments deliveries to Ukraine!
• Money for jobs and social services, not war!
