Dear Prime Minister,
The war in Ukraine has raged for over a year at great cost to the Ukrainian people and leading to greater instability worldwide. The urgent need is for a ceasefire and peace talks. We oppose the UK government’s plans to provide long range cruise missiles, drones and fighter plane training to the Ukrainian military.
The Tory government is leading the West’s effort to escalate the war in Ukraine. If delivered, these will be the first long range missiles any government has sent to Ukraine. Britain has more special forces in Ukraine than any other country in a war it claims not to be involved in.
These actions will only prolong the war and the suffering of the Ukrainian people, and they risk a wider, potentially nuclear, confrontation with Russia. Even senior US foreign policy figures admit there is no prospect of an all-out victory for either side.
We endorse the views of the recent letter in the New York Times, where former diplomats and military figures argued that this is not a war that can be won and peace is a necessity now:
“The immediate cause of this disastrous war in Ukraine is Russia’s invasion. Yet the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears. And Russian leaders made this point for 30 years. A failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the Russia-Ukraine War before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.”
Rather than fanning the flames of war, our government should be backing growing international calls for peace negotiations and demanding a ceasefire and end to hostilities.
Yours sincerely,
Shelly Asquith, Stop the War Chair
Shadia Edwards-Dashti, Stop the War Officer
Brian Eno, Stop the War President
Lindsey German, Stop the War Convenor
Alex Gordon, RMT President
Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary