Anti-War Ithacan’s Call for End to Russian-Ukraine War
“Genuine Diplomacy” is impossible as long as the United States is fueling the Ukrainian war effort to the tune of nearly $100 billion a year.
A group of local activists working with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition held a protest on February 24, to call on elected officials in Congress to prioritize “genuine diplomacy” to bring an end to the war in Ukraine as it nears the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion.
This comes amid President Joe Biden’s recent surprise trip to Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the full-scale Russian invasion. Biden said that the trip was meant to “reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.”
Biden’s trip has been seen positively by those who wish to see American monetary and military support for the Ukrainian war effort to continue. However, those who don’t think that a solution can be achieved through continued war have voiced concern over prolonging the war effort — which the United States has already financed to the tune of nearly $100 billion since February 2022.
According to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. spent $48 billion on humanitarian, financial, and military assistance to Ukraine from February 2022 to November 2022. In December Congress approved another $45 billion aid package for 2023, bringing total U.S. support for Ukraine to $93 billion.
Anti-war activists have opposed continued military support for Ukraine saying that it makes genuine attempts at diplomacy impossible and risks escalating to Nuclear War.
One of the protest organizers, Michael Smith, recently said “We are hurtling toward a catastrophe for humanity and the planet with this relentless escalation of the war in Ukraine. Those of us organizing this protest believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is immoral and a violation of international laws and norms — just as the U.S. invasion of Iraq was — but the U.S. and its allies have completely abandoned diplomacy as a path to ending the war, even as the risk of nuclear war grows by the day.”
In a statement, the coalition said: “The Feb. 24 anniversary of the invasion should serve as an opportunity to amplify calls for genuine diplomacy to end this terrible war…Protests are appropriate, given the widespread failure of Congress members to challenge the current militarism that threatens everyone’s future.”
The protest has been planned to take place in a week when the House and Senate are not in session – so this is a great opportunity for constituents to put public pressure on members of Congress while they are likely in their home arena. Several other similar public events are planned to occur across the county on the same day.
In the minds of many Americans the war between Russia and Ukraine began when Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. However, if you ask anyone in Ukraine you’ll come to realize that the war has been going on for much longer.
The start of the war can be traced back to February 2014. In the aftermath of what is known in Ukraine as the “Maidan Revolution” which was supported by the United States and culminated in the ousting of elected pro-Russian President VIktor Yanukovych — Russian forces invaded and annexed the Crimea Peninsula and began supporting pro-russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbass region.
According to crisisgroup.org, between the start of fighting in February 2014 and the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, the war had already killed more than 14,000 people. That’s excluding the number of casualties that have occurred since Russia’s full-scale invasion, which has been estimated to be in the “tens of thousands”.
On top of the untold human cost of the war, it has also resulted in massive economic costs in the form of inflated prices for things like food and gasoline due to supply chain issues caused by the war.
For example, western sanctions against Russia that are supported by countries like the United States, and Russia’s decision to restrict gas deliveries to some EU member states have all contributed to Europe's energy security crisis. As access to Russian oil declines, demand increases to secure imports from other sources, which has driven the price of oil up further.
Longtime journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the stories that allowed the public to know about the My Lai massacre and many of the CIA’s abuses at Abu Ghraib, recently reported that the United States likely “took out” the Nord Stream Pipeline that carries natural gas from Vyborg, Russia to Greifswald, Germany. Hersh said that the pipeline was seen by the U.S. as a “threat to western dominance” in the region and that getting rid of it would force Europe to rely more heavily on importing oil from the United States.
The White House has responded to Hersh’s reporting on Nord Stream saying, “This is false and complete fiction” and the CIA has responded saying “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
Additionally, the war has also caused massive price hikes for food. According to a report from VOAnews.com, in March 2022 wheat prices had increased 71% from pre-invasion levels. Prices have begun to subside, but they remain about 10% higher than they were before the invasion at the start of 2022.
Given the catastrophic nature of the war it’s no surprise that anti-war activists across the country are calling for an end to the war through diplomacy. Unfortunately their voices seem to have been drowned out by the influence of those who stand to make a profit if the war continues.
For example, Defense Contractors manufacture everything from boots to bombs that are used in the war. These companies are incentivized to keep the war going because it allows them to generate massive profits by supplying militaries around the world with the materials necessary to wage war.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States is the world's largest weapons exporter. The U.S. has supplied 39% of weapons worldwide for the past seven years, more than double that of Russia and ten times that of China.
Based on numbers from OpenSecrets.org, the Defense Contractors that supply these weapons have spent more than $124 million lobbying the federal government in 2022. Considering these statistics helps one understand why the voices of those calling for genuine diplomacy have been overpowered by the monetary influence of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower once called the military industrial complex.