Around 60 peace activists gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in

Berlin last Saturday 1st November, which happens to be exactly adjacent to the US embassy.

The rally called for solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba and the Global South, Peace with China and Russia, and Palestinian freedom, with speakers from the United Front for Latin America, Cuba Si, and the Communist Party of Chile.

Theo Russell spoke about the history of the current war in Ukraine on behalf of the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign, saying: “The war in Ukraine started in 2014 and not with the Russian military intervention in 2022. The NATO-backed coup on 22nd February 2014 ushered in a tragedy for all the people of Ukraine.

“Over six-million Ukrainians went into exile,  with four million finding a home in Russia.

“The forces that allied with NATO in Ukraine have started two wars in Ukraine. The first was the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) that was launched on 15th April 2014 with the full support of NATO, which claimed that Russia had invaded Ukraine.

“That claim was a barefaced lie based on satellite images and old pictures of Russian tanks on exercise. But Kiev’s army was defeated by the Donbas anti-fascist militias in 2015.

“Since 2014 we have the Western media collectively censored all reports on the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Donbas Republics at the hands of Ukraine’s forces and the Nazi military battalions.

“We now know that the eight-year-long Minsk peace talks were used by NATO to secretly re-arm Kiev’s army, and even while the peace talks continued, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky declared in 2021 ‘We will re-occupy the Donbas’.

“NATO used the talks to secretly re-arm and train Ukraine’s military, with the participation of the USA, Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Canada.

“The US military expert Scott Ritter has described how these countries brought the fascist battalions into Ukraine’s  armed forces and trained them to use NATO military equipment.

“Several days before the Russian intervention on 24th February 2022 a 60,000-strong Ukrainian force launched the second all-out military offensive against the Donbas People’s Republics, the first being in 2014.

“In February–March 2022 Russia and Ukraine negotiated a deal to end the war, but the NATO Council met and decided that Ukraine must continue fighting with NATO weapons and money.

“This was the second great tragedy for Ukraine. About 180,000 Ukrainians have died since then as NATO’s cannon fodder. Their deaths could so easily have been prevented.

“After this war ends, perhaps in six months or a year, a new government will emerge, with the participation of Ukrainian anti-fascists and democrats. But our media will then tell us that this new government is a Russian colony, worse than Nazi Germany, and will no doubt label it a ‘Stalinist dictatorship’. “Even now they are very likely laying preparations for future terrorist attacks and sanctions to destabilise and isolate a new Ukraine. So a genuinely democratic Ukraine may need our solidarity for many more years to come. I want to end with the words:

No Pasaran! Sie werden nicht durchkommen! Nyet fascismu!”