Author: Marcy Winograd

CODEPINK’s Marcy Winograd, Chair of the US-based Peace in Ukraine Coalition, interviewed Yurii Sheliazhenko, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, about the war in Ukraine and military mobilization against the Russian invasion. Yurii lives in Kyiv, where he faces routine electricity shortages and daily air raid sirens that send people running to subway stations for shelter.

Inspired by pacifists Leo Tostoy, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, as well as Indian and Dutch nonviolent resistance, Yurii calls for an end to US and NATO weapons to Ukraine. Arming Ukraine undermined past peace agreements and discouraged negotiations to end the current crisis, he says.

The Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, with ten members at its core, opposes the war in Ukraine and all wars by advocating for protection of human rights, especially the right to conscientious objection to military service.

Continue reading “Ukrainian Pacifist Movement: An interview With Its Leader Yurii Sheliazhenko”

On Sunday President Biden warned Russian President Valdamir Putin "Dont. Don’t. Don’t." use nuclear weapons in retaliation for severe battlefield losses in Ukraine. While Putin dismissed Biden’s worries as unfounded, the specter of nuclear Armageddon drove US anti-war activists to the streets days before in a September Week of Action organized by the Peace in Ukraine Coalition.

Demanding a "Ceasefire now!" activists hosted anti-war events in DC, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, Boston, Rockville, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, San Pedro, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

The Peace in Ukraine Coalition – CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, Democratic Socialists of America, Massachusetts Peace Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-US and other organizations – mobilized for negotiations, not escalation in what CODEPINK describes as a proxy war threatening a direct war between the two most heavily armed nuclear nations, the United States and Russia.

Continue reading “Peace Activists Hit the Streets from DC to San Francisco”