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

The Ukrainian people have faced two years of invasion, occupation and war crimes as a result of Putin's horrendous, criminal, imperialist invasion. It has been described as a meat grinder and been compared with the First World War due to the level of casualties and the type of war that is being fought. More than 10,000 civilians have been killed and that is potentially a significant underestimate as a result of some of the atrocities it has not been possible to properly investigate. There has been absolute horror for the people of Ukraine. They have every right to resist this invasion and we stand in solidarity with them.

It should be noted that combined with the imperialist aggression of Russia outside its borders is an internal crackdown on dissent, anti-war activists and anyone who would challenge the rule of Putin. That appears to have resulted in the death, whether assassination or killing through imprisonment and isolation, of Navalny, but it is also seen in the barring of Boris Nadezhdin, an anti-war challenger to Putin, from standing in the forthcoming presidential election. It is seen in the jailing of socialist and anti-war campaigner Boris Kagarlitsky, who was imprisoned for over five years. Repression at home is combined with imperialist aggression abroad.

The State needs to increase its support for the people of Ukraine. That is not about increasing militarisation. We oppose that. It is not about sending weapons or getting involved in NATO operations. It should be about increasing humanitarian aid, calling for the cancellation of Ukrainian debt and shutting down the shadow banking system within the IFSC used by Russian oligarchs and other oligarchs to fund the Russian regime and other wrongdoing throughout the world. It should not involve a cutting of the support to Ukrainian refugees, which the Government is scandalously planning to do, having originally treated them as all asylum seekers should appropriately be treated.

When speaking as part of the western world it is important to say that what is happening is not simply a war of horrific imperialist aggression by Russia and a war of legitimate national liberation by Ukrainians.

As well as that, layered on top of it, is effectively a conflict between major powers, an inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and its allies on the one hand and the US and its allies on the other hand. Evidence of that is clear in the $50 billion of military aid which has been poured into Ukraine by the US. If anyone two years ago may have believed that the US, NATO and the EU were doing this because they support self-determination, democracy and human rights, their illusions will have been dismissed by the reality of seeing the very different way they have acted with regard to Palestine, where they support Israel. They are doing this not out of concern for the Ukrainian people because they have their own conflict with Russia and their own plans in terms of expansion of NATO, and in that conflict ordinary people can have neither side. Both sides, NATO and Putin, are enemies of ordinary people. Therefore, we have to oppose what is happening in terms of the race to militarise Europe and the race to undermine neutrality, using Putin's horrendous invasion of Ukraine as a reason to do so.

In 2022 alone, the planned projected increase in military spending within the European Union was €200 billion, more than the total spend in one year, in 2020. There is a drive to integrate the European military project within NATO, the applications from Finland and Sweden to join NATO, and the participation of Ireland and others in the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, described as a NATO alliance by the US Secretary of Defense. There is the drive towards a European army, talk now of a defence commissioner, the strategic compass, effectively establishing an EU army of 5,000 soldiers able to be deployed at this stage and, effectively, an EU command and control centre in terms of the military.

Here, this war, this invasion, has been used to accelerate the assault on neutrality in terms of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, sending military aid and military training to Ukraine. We have to oppose those things absolutely. We need not to invest in war. We need to invest in climate action and we need to fight against imperialist aggression, for the right to self-determination and for peace.

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