Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland (USCS) members recently joined demonstrations in Aberdeen and Edinburgh to coincide with Donald Trump’s four-day visit to Scotland, during which they challenged the US president’s failure to support Ukraine in its war of national self-defence.
USCS was delighted to be invited to address both demonstrations. You can find below the text of Peter Cooper’s speech at the Edinburgh demo.
My name’s Peter Cooper and I’m secretary of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland.
You may well ask why the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland is supporting this protest against Trump.
We all want peace in Ukraine. But wishing for peace does not produce it.
First of all, we have to be absolutely clear what is involved in this conflict. Putin has always been delusionally crystal clear that he considers Ukraine to be part of Russia. He thinks he’s winning, and he will not stop until Ukraine has been erased from the map, its people forced into exile or russified, and the Tsarist empire restored over its former colonies.
Trump is no friend of Ukraine. He seems to think that by cosying up to Russia and forcing Ukraine into conceding territory, including Crimea and the occupied territories, that he can entice Putin into a peace deal, in return for juicy fossil fuel contracts for US corporations.
However, he misunderstands that Putin is not interested in any deal so long as he thinks he’s winning the war. Look at the contempt with which Putin has responded to Trump’s demand for a ceasefire.
Regrettably, the only language of peace that Putin understands is economic and military failure. That means we have to continue to support Ukraine until the cost of continuing the invasion is too high for Russia, already in deep economic trouble, to continue. Russian troops out of all of Ukraine now.
Since resuming office, Trump has:
- Gaslighted Zelenskyy, for example ridiculously blaming Ukraine for starting the war.
- Deprived Ukraine of the weaponry needed to defend its cities against Russia’s criminal nightly bombing of Ukraine’s cities’ civilian populations and infrastructures. Don’t believe those minimised figures – half a dozen here or there – of deaths admitted by the Ukraine government caused by these bombardments. You can multiply them by 100, according to senior Ukrainian trade union sources. We are looking at hundreds of deaths a night.
- Forced Ukraine to grant the US and its corporations privileged access to Ukrainian minerals without any security guarantees in return.
- Made empty threats three times without any follow through consequences to sanction Russia for its failure to agree a ceasefire. This only encourages Putin to call Trump’s serial bluffs.
Trump’s “U-turn” towards greater support for Ukraine is no such thing.
Trump has authorised no new weapons for Ukraine since coming to office. All current deliveries were authorised by Biden. These could run out in the coming months, leaving Ukraine essentially defenceless.
The illegal – because they were approved by Congress under the Biden administration – withholding by the Trump administration of 30 Patriot air defence missiles has only been partially resumed, probably at the cost of hundreds of Ukrainian civilian lives, as Putin has stepped up his drone and ballistic missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.
It’s a strictly commercial deal. All new US weapons deliveries will now be paid for by European nations.
In response to a Senate bill threatening severe sanctions against countries trading with Russia in sanctioned products, especially oil and gas, Trump has yet again let Putin off the hook by watering down its terms and granting him yet a another 50 days to agree to ceasefire talks before considering implementing these sanctions.
What further proof do we need that Putin has no interest in a ceasefire when he thinks he’s winning? This unnecessary reprieve will facilitate Russia’s current “summer offensive”.
There is an open divergence between the fight of Ukraine and its people for the preservation of their right to self-determination and for their very existence, and Trump’s US to seek a deal with Russia on Russia’s terms.
Ukraine is no puppet of US imperialism, and never had been. It is time for many on the left to acknowledge this, and and throw themselves unreservedly behind Ukraine’s cause.
OK. What is to be done?
The EU and the UK must step into the breach. But equally we should oppose European countries’ plans for general European rearmament, very little of which (an estimated 8%) will go towards helping Ukraine. Anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin and pacifist forces’ campaigns for “welfare not warfare” will only be strengthened by European rearmament.
Ukraine is fighting for us all. Ukraine is the frontline in the defence of democratic governance and rights against the Russian, US, Chinese autocrats.
One thing that we can do in Scotland is to support the campaign to stop Seapeak. Seapeak is a Glasgow-based corporation which is shipping $3bn of Russian liquefied natural gas every year from Siberia, thus significantly financing Putin’s invasion. Write to your MP to demand that they sign the UK EDM calling on the UK government to sanction Russian LNG.
But supporting Ukraine does not mean always politically supporting the line of the Ukrainian government. It means supporting Ukrainian unions and civil society.
This week has seen massive demonstrations, for the first time since the full-scale invasion, against the oligarch-backed Ukrainian government’s abolition of its anti-corruption agencies, forcing Zelenskyy into retreat. This followed a government minister-linked oligarch’s seizure of the HQ of the FPU, the main trade union federation.
We fully support these mass movements. Defending Ukraine is part and parcel of defending our precious democratic rights, including the right not to be robbed by big business and their political representatives everywhere – including Putin and Trump, the chief of corporate thieves.
Stop Trump.