DRAFT ENSU STATEMENT
SECOND DRAFT
The European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU) has always denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fully supported the Ukrainian right of self-defense.
Ukraine’s war is just. It is taking place not as part of military aggression by NATO, the United States or any Western country but as a defensive war against the declared goal of the regime of Russian president Vladimir Putin: to reconquer the fictitious “Russian world” supposedly lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
ENSU not only considers the armed defence of Ukraine to be legitimate, but that all states that regard themselves as democratic and upholders of law-governed international relations are obliged to help Ukraine defeat the Russian invasion.
At the same time, ENSU’s founding declaration defines the global orientation of our network as “anti-colonial” and opposed to “militarism and imperialist competition for power and profit that destroy our environment and our social and democratic rights”.
Military support to Ukraine does not contradict that orientation. Meeting Ukraine’s urgent need for arms does not necessarily entail a permanent increase in military expenditure, the entrenchment of rival military blocs or the social and political promotion of militarism.
ENSU’s approach therefore has two aspects.
We call on all governments—NATO members and others—that oppose Russia’s unlawful aggression to provide Ukraine with the armaments, ammunition and financial support required to expel the invading force from Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory.
We stress that this can be achieved without setting off a wave of militarism, chauvinism and war profiteering. For example:
- Military aid to Ukarine can initially be sourced from stockpiles and from weaponry presently supplied to governments conducting wars of aggression condemned by the United Nations.
- Arms production can, and should, be nationalised. This would make possible an end to arms trafficking by subordinating the production and delivery of weapons to the internationally recognised rights of national sovereignty and according to the need to oppose wars of aggression like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In this spirit, ENSU also holds, in the case that countries need to expand military budgets to help Ukraine or to defend themselves against the threats of the Putin regime, that this increase should be funded by increased taxation of the wealthiest layers in society.
This is the just and democràtic approach to helping fund Ukraine’s just war of self-defence.