Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The same forces that gave the world a climate crisis and put profit before people in a pandemic - big corporations, oligarchs, the arms industry, dictators and right-wing politicians - are now bringing us the NATO-Russia stand-off. A curse on both of their houses, on NATO, which has expanded eastwards towards the Russian border by 800 km since 1990, and on the Putin regime which sent tanks over the Ukrainian border this week. NATO should withdraw from eastern Europe and Russian troops should be returned to barracks. These forces offer nothing to the ordinary working people of Ukraine, Russia or the world.

In Russia, patients recovering from serious illnesses are being turfed out of hospitals to make way for refugees. In Ukraine, $15 billion has left the country as big business flees to protect profits, leaving the people to face the threat of tanks. Here, working people face the scourge of inflation and another surge in energy prices.

To its shame, the Irish Government has sided politically with NATO, following in the footsteps of the Home Rule politicians who sided with British imperialism against the Kaiser more than 100 years ago. If this escalates, we need an international anti-war movement and action by workers to prevent the movement of troops and weapons. Last, but far from least, we need an international socialist alternative to war and to the system of capitalism and imperialism which sustains and promotes it.

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