We ask the governments of the UK, EU, USA and other Western countries to try and achieve peace in Ukraine by adopting an equidistant stance (neutrality) in this conflict. We ask therefore to stop sending weapons and military aid to Ukraine and to lift any sanctions on Russia and to other countries involved in this conflict. We support humanitarian aid to Ukraine as long as it is not used for any military or military-related purposes.

We ask that countries in the West become proactive in seeking a peaceful and negotiated solution to this conflict and this can only be done from a neutrality position. It is likely that this peaceful solution will require the recognition of the territories currently controlled by Russia and Ukraine and we support this. For any disputed territories, or for any regions where their people feel they are not represented by their central government, referendums should be used to attribute the sovereignty to either country or the independence of the territory. These referendums should be free and open to all people living in the territory.

We believe that the adoption of this approach will soon bring the conflict to its end, with many lives saved in Ukraine and with a great improvement in the living conditions in this country. The adoption of neutrality by Western countries will bring many benefits to the people in Donbas, Crimea and in other regions who just want to carry on with their lives peacefully.

So far, the approach of many Western governments on the Ukraine conflict has been to send weapons to Ukraine and to sanction Russia. After more than two years of war and thousands of Ukrainians and Russians dead, it is clear that this approach has failed. That this approach was destined to fail, it could have been predicted at the start of the conflict and thousands of lives could have been saved. The weapons sent by the West are only fuelling the conflict and are contributing to the killing of Russians and Ukrainians. The sanctions imposed by the West are contributing to exacerbating tensions and have done nothing to achieve peace. Sanctions are causing economic harm to the countries that impose them, which in turn is causing job losses and higher taxation in the West.

As part of the removal of sanctions to Russia, we ask that any restrictions on Russia’s broadcasters in the West are lifted and that requests are made to Russia to do the same for Western media. People should be allowed to choose freely which broadcaster to watch or which to choose for their daily news. People should be treated as educated adults and should be allowed to use their critical thinking to decide which programmes to watch and which source of information is more reliable. We also ask that any restrictions on the participation of Russian athletes and teams to international sport events (and other types of events, e.g. Eurovision) are lifted. Russian athletes and teams should be allowed to participate in any events freely with their flag. We believe that sanctions in sport events only exacerbate tensions between people of different countries, they don’t make peace any closer and don't bring any benefits to anyone. Currently Ukrainian athletes are not allowed, by decision of their government, to shake hands or show friendliness towards Russian or Belarusian athletes. It is sad when hostilities between governments, i.e. wars, trickle down to ordinary people, who are made to believe that other ordinary people, just because happen to have a different nationality, are not their friends or are their enemies. Countries in the West should ask the Ukrainian government to lift the ban on Ukrainian athletes to show friendliness to their Russian and Belarusian counterparts. 

In addition to killing people in Ukraine and fuelling the war, weapons and sanctions have a negative effect on the environment which is being felt and will be felt by everyone on this planet. The manufacture and use of weapons are responsible for large greenhouse gases emissions. Sanctions are causing higher use of fossil resources and higher carbon dioxide emissions. For example, because of the restrictions of air space for civil aircrafts, many long-distance flights from Asia, Europe and America have to take longer routes, with consequent higher fuel consumption and higher greenhouse gases emissions, in addition to the problems caused by longer travel times. We find incoherent and wrong that the Western governments are at the same time asking their citizens to make sacrifices to reduce their use of fossil resources and their greenhouse gases emissions whilst they are themselves adopting policies (weapons and sanctions) that increase use of fossil resources and carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, the use of weapons by whatever country and for whatever reasons, has obviously large negative effects on the environment and on wildlife.

In the context of the Ukraine conflict, we often hear statements like “there cannot be peace without justice” or similar. We disagree with these statements. On the contrary, we believe that justice should be sought with nonviolent means without resorting to endless wars or terrorism. Justice should be obtained with negotiations, diplomacy, nonviolent and non-disruptive protests and campaigns, with education and by listening to people (e.g. free and fair referendums). If we look, for example, at the British history, we see many examples where justice was obtained and injustices were corrected without the need for wars or for violence. For example, the injustices of slavery, of colonialism in the Indian subcontinent and of criminalisation of homosexuality (which was in place in Britain until the 1960s) were ended largely by political nonviolent means. The same can be said if we look at the history of many other countries if not of all countries. In a world where countless injustices are occurring every day in all nations, the ”no peace without justice” slogan could only mean endless wars or endless violence and we disagree with it.

The governments of Russia and Ukraine claim to be in this conflict for different reasons. Russia argues that they are defending the human rights of people in Crimea and Donbas against discrimination and ethnic cleansing. Ukraine argues that they are fighting to restore the integrity of their territory. Each person should make their own judgment for the reasons of this conflict and should be allowed to campaign, peacefully and non-violently, for either cause. The governments in the West should stay neutral in this conflict and should dedicate all their efforts to facilitate a lasting peace.