Below is the speech given by Nadia Eljadid, a UK-based activist in US organisation Indivisible, at the Ukraine solidarity protest in London on 21 February. (Nadia pictured at the protest above.) It was written by her and fellow Indivisible activist Alyssa Elliott. We hope to publish more of the speeches soon.

Solidarity with those facing oppression around the world, from Ukraine to Palestine, from Iran to the US, was a strong theme of the demonstration.

I’m Nadia. I’m a US citizen and an active member of Indivisible London, a chapter of the American grassroots resistance movement against Trump and Trumpism worldwide. As we mark this fourth year of Russian’s full scale invasion, we support the fight for a free and sovereign Ukraine.

The US has an authoritarian dictator in place who has turned the United States away from our decades-long alliances and toward a corrupt and covert allegiance with Russia, and this current leader of the US is taking his cues directly from Vladimir Putin. The USA should not be browbeating Ukraine to accept occupation. The United States should be giving sufficient aid to protect Ukrainian civilians and to help drive the Russians out, and to secure justice and peace for Ukraine on Ukraine’s terms as a sovereign nation. Citizens around the world are crying out for these promises to be remembered and action to be taken to fight for a free Ukraine and to guarantee its safety and sovereignty for generations to come.

That Trump continues to insist it is Ukraine’s responsibility to compromise and accept occupation is absurd.

But Trump is an imperial expansionist, as we have seen with his designs on Gaza, Greenland, Panama, Venezuela – and we do not know where it will end. Like Putin, he believes any corner of the world is his to claim to conquer for his own. And so he supports his autocrat ally Putin in taking by force what is not his to take. Neither by force nor by negotiation: Ukraine is not for sale!

Trump and Putin expect everyone to appease them and bow to their whims, and they blame any violence on those who stand up to them.

But appeasing them only emboldens any authoritarian to invade territory they want – if it becomes a war, they say it’s because the invaded people wouldn’t let it happen peacefully. These strongmen are ruthless, violent bullies, and bullies do not stop because you give in. They always come back for more.

What does peace mean to a dictator? It means allowing your country to be taken over by tyrannical thieves. It means not fighting back – and accepting what will be decided by a greedy, violent and corrupt regime. But this is not peace! And we must all support those fighting back against their invaders. Our futures are bound together, because Ukraine did not start this war. Russia started it and Russia can end it at any time, by going home.

If the UK is serious about helping Ukraine protect its borders, and in turn all of Europe, it must not only reject any negotiation settlement that legitimises Russia’s occupation. The UK government must rally its military, financial, and diplomatic support behind Ukraine, it must also exert continual economic pressure on the United States to honour its promise to protect Ukraine from Russian invasion, without giving up an inch of its territory. And we as citizens must rally together and petition our governments to keep their promises to the secure and independent future of a free and sovereign Ukraine.

Slava Ukraini!

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