London demonstration for ceasefire in Gaza, 8 June 2024
Why we carry this banner
For the last year and a half, a group of us have participated in anti-war demonstrations, against Israel’s war on Palestine and against Russia’s war on Ukraine, with our banner saying “From Ukraine to Palestine, Occupation is a crime”.
Ukraine and Palestine are both small nations resisting a vicious colonial power. Their circumstances and allies are different, but their causes stand on the same foundation. Both Ukrainians and Palestinians have a right to be free and to resist genocide and occupation. Both peoples deserve our international solidarity.
Lawless authoritarianism on a global level has been boosted by the second Trump presidency. It encourages Israel’s ongoing genocide against Gaza and approved Israel’s bombing of Iran. It is also indifferent to the suffering of the Ukrainian people, blaming the victims and echoing the propaganda of Putin’s authoritarian regime in its war of aggression and colonisation.
America’s allies have now become Trump’s enablers. The dominant neoliberal political class have helped create a world of accelerating inequality. Now they are capitulating to the militarism and racism that Trump and his fellow authoritarians need to bolster their declining authority. This in turn undermines our basic civil liberties – including the right to protest. Alongside the national rights of Ukrainians and Palestinians, rising authoritarianism threatens our democratic and social rights – here in Britain too.
How can we respond?
We need to continue to build solidarity with the people of Palestine, on the streets, in our workplaces and by forging direct people-to-people links. We must also maintain our solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance to Russian terror.
We support their right to resist Russia militarily and to acquire arms from other governments, including our own, while rejecting the exploitation of their struggle as a justification for any UK-European rearmament programme or increases in British defence spending.
The hypocrisy of the Western political class is clear. It purports to support Ukraine (yet avoiding any sanctions on Russia that might destabilise oil markets), while denying the rights of Palestinians and trying to silence opposition to Israeli war crimes.
This hypocrisy is rooted in racism and we reject it. But we also reject its mirror image, so-called “campism”, which opposes the imperialist threat coming from the US and its allies alone, but denies or downplays the principal threat facing the Ukrainian people, from Putin’s Russia. We believe these are twin evils that go together, and that we must oppose them together.
We need positive solidarity without borders, forging political and practical links between different struggles, challenging the narratives that undermine this unity.
In the US, Vermont State Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, speaking at a recent ‘No Kings’ anti-Trump protest, said: “We can never forget that our futures are inextricably linked: from Ukraine to Palestine – Occupation is a crime.
“We fight for a better future that puts people and planet first. A future that says No to the destructive greed of the ruling class, a future where authoritarians have no room to wreak chaos and sow fear. Together we can defeat global authoritarianism by coming together across our differences to fight shoulder to shoulder to build a global network of working class solidarity.”
Join our discussions
In the autumn of 2025, the Ukraine Information Group plans to continue meetings that analyse the global situation and bring the different struggles together. If you would like to join us, please get in touch at 2022ukrainesolidarity[at]gmail.com, and look at our web site, ukraine-solidarity.org.
| Israel in Palestine | Russia in Ukraine | |
| Invasion and occupation? | More than 75 years of occupation intended to subjugate and dispossess the Palestinian nation. | The full-scale invasion in 2022 continued an incursion started in 2014, after centuries of imperial violence that has caused millions of deaths. |
| Settler colonial? | Ethnically cleanses Palestinians and establishes settlements on their land. | Has subsidised tens of thousands of Russians to move into stolen Ukrainian homes on occupied land. |
| Authoritarian rule? | Apartheid. Palestinians subject to military rule and state-backed attacks on their lands and homes in areas occupied in 1967, unequal status in other areas. | In Russian-occupied areas: military rule, fake elections, torture, independent trade unions abolished, destroying Ukraine’s fragile, albeit imperfect, democracy. |
| Bombs civilians as collective punishment? | Yes. At least 50,000 killed in Gaza, overwhelmingly civilians. Israel’s blockade on food and aid is starving Gaza’s people. Israel has also bombed Iran. | Yes. Over 12,000 civilians killed in Ukraine. Western-provided air defences have kept Ukrainian cities safer, but Trump has cut these. Elsewhere, Russia has bombed Grozny in Chechnya and Aleppo in Syria. |
| Genocide? | Yes – now recognised by United Nations. | Arguably. Putin speaks about eliminating the Ukrainian nation, and Russian troops have carried out massacres, as in Bucha. |
| Relies on outside support? | Vast military and financial backing from the US, Germany, UK and many other nations. Oil from Azerbaijan via Turkey. Surveillance tech co-developed with China. | Relies on North Korean arms and soldiers and Iranian arms, Western machine tools, and oil purchases by India and China. |
This is the text of a flyer published by the Ukraine Information Group, July 2025.
Download the flyer as a PDF here, or as a PNG file here.
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London, 1 June 2025, Demonstration in defence of Ukrainian children
Barcelona, VE Day, May 2025
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Brussels, May 2025
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At the demonstration against Gaza genocide, London, 15 March 2025
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At the “Russian troops out of Ukraine” march, London, 22 February 2025
At the national march demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, 2 November 2024
At the national march demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, 5 October 2024
Upcoming actions
Watch this space, or contact us on 2022ukrainesolidarity[at]gmail[dot]com or find us on twitter
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Links and resources
□ A flyer prepared for the conference of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU), May 2024
□ United Action UK on instagram
□ Building Ukraine-Palestine solidarity (The Fire These Times podcast, 5 May 2024)
□ To join the “unite the struggles” bloc on demonstrations in London, please email unitethestruggles[at]gmail.com
□ A “Ukrainian letter of solidarity with the Palestinian people”, signed by more than 400 Ukrainian researchers, artists, political and labour activists and others, is attached here, as a flyer. You are invited to print it out and distribute it.
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Palestine and Ukraine: things to read
□ “Syrians Celebrate When Russian Generals, Involved in War Crimes in Syria, Are Being Killed in Ukraine”. Interview With Leila Al-Shami Commons.com.ua, July 2024
□ “Ukrainian letter of solidarity with the Palestinian people”, Commons.com.ua, November 2023
□ “I stand on the side of the oppressed, whoever they are.” Interview with Adeeb Shaheen, Commons.com.ua, April 2024
□ Why Ukrainians should support Palestinians, by Daria Saburova, Open Democracy, October 2023
□ Interview with Dana el Kurd, Commons.com.ua, August 2023
□ A Palestinian view of Ukraine. Interview with Adeeb Shaheen, Anti Capitalist Resistance, September 2023
□ Ukraine and Palestine: building real solidarity is hard work, John Lawrence, People & Nature, May 2024
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Past actions
Bratislava, Slovakia, 28 September 2024
Photo from national march against weapons supply to Israel, London, 7 September 2024
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Photo from national march for a ceasefire in Gaza, London, 3 August 2024
Photo from London march, 8 June 2024
Photo from London march, 18 May 2024
Munich, Germany, 18 May 2024
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Photos from London march, 30 March 2024
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All photos published with a Creative Commons licence. Please re-use them
In June 2024 we organised a Discussion meeting: “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime” – Tuesday 11 June 2024, 7.0pm
Organised by the Ukraine Information Group and the “Unite the Struggles” group. Speakers from Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and Palestine joined us, and their statements were followed by discussion. This was our call for the meeting:
The UK general election campaign is, unfortunately, likely to push the wars on both Ukraine and Palestine down the news agenda.
Already, the length of these conflicts has fuelled an acceptance in the mainstream media that continued abuse against the peoples of these oppressed nations will be inevitable for the foreseeable future.
Yet in the Middle East, there has been mounting opposition to the genocidal bombardment of Gaza. The arrest warrants applied for against the Israeli prime minister and his defence secretary by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor are based on a devastating set of allegations about the conduct of the war.
Meanwhile, the decision by Norway, Ireland and Spain to recognise the state of Palestine, to the fury of Israel’s leaders, marks a significant shift in international opinion, the fruits of relentless campaigning. .
Ukraine, on the other hand, is facing some of its toughest days since the Putin regime unleashed its murderous invasion in February 2022. Once-supportive voices are now floating solutions that would compromise Ukrainian sovereignty and reward Russia’s unprovoked aggression. This pressure may intensify with the expected shift to the right in the upcoming European elections.
Although the forces internationally claiming to support the Palestinians and the Ukrainians appear to be quite different, the two conflicts have much in common. Both Ukraine and Palestine are small nations resisting a vicious colonial power. Their needs, circumstances, and allies are different, but their causes stand on the same foundation.
Both Ukrainians and Palestinians have a right to be free, and to resist genocide and occupation through all legitimate military means. Both peoples deserve committed international solidarity.
The Western political class supports Ukraine, albeit inconsistently and insufficiently, but not Palestine. This hypocrisy is founded in racism and in the legacy of the Cold War. We reject this hypocrisy – and also reject its mirror image, articulated by some on the left, who blend Russian imperialist myths with nostalgia for the Soviet Union, as a basis for denying Ukrainians their basic rights.
Some Ukrainians see this clearly and express it keenly. A recent Ukrainian letter of solidarity with the Palestinian people, signed by more than 300 scholars, activists and artists, said:
Our solidarity comes from a place of anger at the injustice, and a place of deep pain of knowing the devastating impacts of occupation, shelling of civil infrastructure, and humanitarian blockade from experiences in our homeland…
Watching the Israeli targeting civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli humanitarian blockade and occupation of land resonates especially painfully with us. From this place of pain of experience and solidarity, we call on our fellow Ukrainians globally and all the people to raise their voices in support of the Palestinian people and condemn the ongoing Israeli mass ethnic cleansing…
We strongly object to equating of Western military aid to Ukraine and Israel by some politicians. Ukraine doesn’t occupy the territories of other people; instead, it fights against the Russian occupation, and therefore international assistance serves a just cause and the protection of international law. Israel has occupied and annexed Palestinian and Syrian territories, and Western aid to it confirms an unjust order and demonstrates double standards in relation to international law.
The need to call out these double standards is obvious, but the next steps might not be. We need to move to positive solidarity without borders; to forging political and practical links between diverse struggles; and to challenging the narratives that undermine this unity.
Please join us at our meeting on Tuesday 11 June 2024 to discuss the next steps.
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