Europeans show solidarity with Ukrainian anti-fascists

Solidarity with the resistance in southeastern Ukraine has spread to at least six West European countries’ anti-war movements. The actions described below were reported to Workers World after we sent out a call by the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC) for solidarity demonstrations across the U.S. from May 9 to May 26 and requested reports from other parts of the world about similar solidarity actions.

On May 15 in Pisa, Italy, activists answered an appeal from various anti-imperialist organizations and communist parties as well as individual internationalists gathered to demonstrate solidarity with “anti-fascist Ukraine” and to oppose the intervention of the European Union, the U.S. and NATO against the Ukrainian workers and the Russian Federation.

The appeal, signed by 50 activists and parties, called on “all who support the values of democracy and peace and who want to wage a battle against war to participate in a national demonstration of protest and grief [for those killed by fascists in Odessa]. We call on you to do this together and quickly.”

Such demonstrations are now planned for May 17 in Rome and Turin, and on May 20 in Bari and Gradisca d’Isonzo, where they will “give a massive, dignified and collective response at the side of anti-fascist Ukraine and against the aggressive military escalation in the heart of Europe.”

For the full statement in Italian, see tinyurl.com/p4djsqf.

In the Spanish state, demonstrations in solidarity with the anti-fascist activists in the eastern Ukraine have already taken place in Madrid — in front of the Ukrainian Embassy — and Salamanca on May 10 and in Bilbao in the Basque Country on May 12. After the experience of the 1936-1939 civil war and decades of rule by the fascist regime of Francisco Franco, anti-fascists here feel a special identity with the struggle in Ukraine.

A statement issued May 9 by the organization Red Roja (Red Network) calls attention to “the criminal imperialist interventions from Iraq to Syria and including Yugoslavia and Libya. And that at the end of the road is the weakening of Russia and even China themselves.” Red Roja defends an anti-imperialism that clearly focuses on the crimes of imperialism and never on the shortcomings of those that imperialism is attacking.

For the full text of the statement in Spanish, see tinyurl.com/l4upfmd.

In Denmark, the Peoples Movement Against Nazism of Denmark (FMN), which signed the UNAC appeal, also held a protest outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Copenhagen on May 8.

In Finland, the Communist League expressed its opposition to the “dangerous fascist developments” and “oppose[s] the U.S.-EU-NATO intervention” in Ukraine. In an email to WW, CL spokesperson Tommi Lievemaa writes that his organization plans an outdoor event in May or June in Helsinki, by the World Peace Statue that was donated to the city by the Soviet Union in 1990.

From Sweden, Mike Powers wrote to WW that more than 100 people demonstrated in Stockholm on Victory Day — the day the USSR defeated Germany in 1945 and ended World War II in Europe — to denounce fascism in Ukraine and link it to the struggle against resurgent fascism throughout Europe.

At a conference on the May 16-18 weekend in Degerfors, a Swedish industrial community, activists and organizers will meet to discuss challenges to peace on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. Ukraine will be a central topic along with Iraq and Afghanistan, and the activists will discuss a campaign against any plans for Swedish cooperation with NATO.

While that includes the total of direct reports, we note that in Britain the Stop the War coalition has issued a statement opposing the planned joint maneuvers in July in Ukraine of U.S., British and Ukrainian troops.