COLIN Fox (Letters, Sep 27) sees his duty as a socialist as being to “examine issues” and “consider what political settlement can be found” in Ukraine.
He is obsessed with the involvement of Nato countries in supplying weapons. Many of these weapons have been anti-missile defence systems which have saved thousands of Ukrainians from the indiscriminate missile and drone attacks on civilian targets.
He becomes an apologist for Putin by parroting the excuse that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a response to Nato’s eastward expansion. That does not stack up.
READ MORE: Next steps to help displaced Ukrainians settle in Scotland unveiled
It was the USA and the UK on their own (not Nato) that invaded Iraq, Libya and (with a few more allies) Afghanistan.
Again, he gets it wrong about Syria. It was the USA and the UK (not Nato) that launched a few air strikes in Syria – small in scale compared to Russia’s indiscriminate barrel bombing against civilians in rebel-held areas of that country. Nor was Nato involved when Russia invaded the South Ossetia region of Georgia in 2008 after whipping up extreme Russian nationalism there. That was repeated in Crimea and the Donbass in 2014 (again with no Nato involvement) after the ousting of the pro-Russian president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukrainians did not have the Nato weapons they now have when they successfully repulsed the Russian attack on Kyiv from Belarus in February-March 2022.
READ MORE: Socialists have a duty to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine
Colin Fox tries to make an issue of corruption in Ukraine (so do we in Britain about contributors to the Tory party and the pathetic so-called regulators of privatised industries).
The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine constantly attacks the failings of the Zelenskyy government over this. But that doesn’t prevent it wholeheartedly supporting the war effort to expel the Russian imperialist invaders from its country.
Socialists call that a war of national liberation. In common with Donald Trump and the US Republican Party, Colin Fox is calling for a ceasefire with huge swathes of Ukrainian territory occupied by a Russian imperialist army guilty of many war crimes.
In the 1930s they called that kind of stance appeasement. It led to the Munich sell-out of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 and had disastrous consequences for tens of millions of people in Europe.
Putin wants all of Ukraine. He may pause (like he did in 2014) but he won’t stop. Ukrainian trade unionists and people know this. They need continued solidarity and support for their fight from the trade unions and the people of this country as was shown by both the STUC and the TUC this year.
John Dennis
Trade Union Organiser, Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland
IT appears that David Pratt has been quaffing the US/Nato Kool-Aid again (Western decisions on the war must place Ukraine front and centre, Sep 21). He’s peddling the same old tired “evil Russia/Putin versus innocent Ukraine/Zelenskyy” line. Once again, his analysis is both tendentious and highly selective.
For example, in discussing Nato expansion, he states that “the West could have done more by way of reassuring Moscow over such things”. Ah yes, but here is where a little bit history is necessary to understand why Moscow may not be minded to put any reliance whatsoever on so-called “Nato reassurance”.
On February 9 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker assured Mikhail Gorbachev that “Americans understand the importance for the USSR and Europe of guarantees that not an inch of Nato’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction”. Document 119 of the Gorbachev Foundation archive contains a detailed transcript of their discussion. The addition of 15 countries to Nato since then, moving ever closer to the Russian border, is testimony to the trust that Russia should have in Nato: zero.
READ MORE: David Pratt: Ukraine's biggest battle will be retaining support
Ukraine in Nato would put US/Nato military bases, troops, missiles et al on Russia’s doorstep. We’re expected to believe that this is all in the name of peace and freedom. It’s not. This is a proxy war between the US and Russia. Pratt and other US/Nato apologists simply refuse to accept that the US, using the useful idiots of Nato and the EU for its own ends, is NOT a good actor but is instead a declining hegemon which is determined to prevent a resurgent Russia (and a rising China) from challenging its position, both economically and militarily. That’s why it has supplied untold billions of dollars to Ukraine. That’s why it has bases, personnel and weaponry all over the world. That’s why it destroyed Nord Stream 2. Today’s US target is Russia, tomorrow’s will be China. Fasten your seat belts, the US juggernaut rolls on!
Name and address supplied
IF the UK union was a truly a benefit for Scotland to be a “partner” of, why are we only hearing debate about whether HS2 ever reaches Birmingham or Manchester? Why not Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen? Why are we helping to fund this project, when it will be of no benefit to us? Is this the real GERS fiction?
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
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