NATO and the crisis in Ukraine

by New Worker correspondent

ANTI-FASCISTS and peace campaigners packed the Baptist Central Church in Bloomsbury on  Thursday 19th March for a meeting organised by Stop the War to examine the role of Nato in the current crisis in Ukraine.

Speakers included Jonathan Steele former [Guardian] journalist, Andrew Murray chief of staff Unite the Union, Kate Hudson CND general secretary and Alex Gordon RMT and leader of Solidarity with Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine.

All the speakers emphasised that Nato interventions were behind the coup a year ago in Ukraine that brought to power a government that included open Nazis who now dominate that government, not but numbers but by aggression and terror.

They all agreed this was part of a long-term US strategy to surround Russia with a hostile military presence and destabilise Russia in order to achieve US global hegemony.

Jonathan Steele rather naïvely claimed that the fall of the Soviet Union had brought an end to the threat of nuclear war, which he said, has now been resurrected by Nato.

None of the speakers was pro Putin but they did point out that all the measures the Russian government has taken have been justifiable self-defence actions.

Alex Gordon made a very strong speech, detailing the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and other European countries, for example Golden Dawn in Greece, Pegida in Germany and the legalisation of pro-Nazi symbols and public events in the Baltic States.

He also attacked those who are trying to revise history to make it appear that the Soviet Union was the aggressor in the Second World War and that Germany was the victim.

There was a lively debate, which included allegation of imperialist aggression against Putin and a complaint from some Latvian students present that it was hypocritical of Alex Gordon to complain at the legalisation of the swastika in Latvia while the hammer and sickle is legal here.

Alex Gordon made a very robust reply to this, condemning anyone who would try to make an equivalence between the Nazis and communism when the Red Army played the major role in defeating the Nazis.