Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I express our solidarity with the people of Ukraine. People across the world have been horrified and moved by the graphic pictures of horror and brutality unleashed by the invading imperialist Russian forces that have emerged. Those images cannot but move people and give them a sense of the extreme horror of war.

I will address the point that was made by Deputy Richmond which was, in some ways, an attempt to suggest that People Before Profit and others on the left are in some way pro-Putin because we do not support further escalation by the West or the ratcheting up of sanctions. It is important to remember that while the West was rolling out the red carpet for Putin, it was the socialist left which consistently opposed him as a despot and warmonger. Many of those who today are attacking the left were silent when Putin was committing brutal war crimes against the people of Chechnya. Let us not forget that during that invasion, Putin was given a state visit to the UK by Tony Blair and Fianna Fáil's own Bertie Ahern shook his bloodstained hand while socialists were protesting outside. The socialist left were the ones who spoke out against that war. Even at the start of this year when Russian troops were sent to Kazakhstan as part of a Collective Security Treaty Organization, CSTO, operation to put down and intimidate a workers' uprising, it was the socialist left that spoke out and organised international events in solidarity with Kazakh trade unionists and socialists. The Department of Foreign Affairs was utterly silent on the matter.

Deputy Boyd Barrett today reiterated our total opposition to Putin and his bloody war. We stood with the people of Ukraine today and we stand with them in their struggle against the Russian invasion. However, that does not mean we have to go along with the calls for the escalation of the conflict by the West. For example, what does a NATO no-fly zone mean in reality? It means a hot conflict and an air war between NATO forces and Russia over the territory of Ukraine. It is a recipe for a global conflict and, potentially, a global nuclear conflict. The French finance minister has described the escalation of sanctions as "total economic war". They have been described as the harshest sanctions that have ever existed.

What is the impact of these sanctions? What is their impact on the ordinary Russian people who are not responsible for this war? There is an impressive anti-war movement from below. People look back now at the wars in Iraq. What came before the first war in Iraq were horrendous sanctions that were responsible for the deaths of 500,000 children. Everybody acknowledges that was wrong. Sanctions that impact on ordinary people are wrong. They also serve to undermine what we need, which is for the anti-war movement to grow. They bolster Putin in the polls by portraying this as coming from the outside, as opposed to showing ordinary Russian people that they do not benefit from his warmongering.

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