Republished with thanks from Labour Hub

Dear Diane,

As socialist labour movement activists, we were very concerned to learn that at the “International Conference Against War” in London on 20th June you described Russia’s murderous war against the people of Ukraine as “the NATO campaign against Russia”.

You cited the Ukraine war as the final, emphatic item in what was clearly intended as a list of crimes by or backed by Western imperialist powers, including Israel’s murderous violence against the Palestinians.

In similar vein, you condemned the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny in Syria, kept in power by extreme violence and by bloody Russian and Iran military intervention, as a Western-backed “coup”. The issue here is not hostility to the new Syrian regime, but prettifying Assad and his imperial backers.

Since your speech became more widely known, there has been no shortage of right-wing criticism of it. What matters, however, is how what you said undermines left-wing – democratic, anti-imperialist and socialist – values and politics.

Defining Russia’s war on Ukraine as “the NATO campaign against Russia” is like describing the Vietnam war, at the end of a list of crimes by the Soviet Union and China, as “the Communist campaign against America”. (In fact it is even less accurate, since Western military aid plays a smaller role in Ukraine’s resistance than external allies did in the Vietnamese resistance.)

The facts of the war in Ukraine are widely available, but let’s revisit some key ones. According to conservative estimates, tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed; the year to January 2026 was the deadliest for civilians since the first year of the full-scale invasion. Many millions have been driven out as refugees or internally displaced. Meanwhile Russian forces and authorities have engaged in deliberate attacks on civilians targets (including strikes on hospitals, schools and the energy grid), massacres of civilians, largescale use of torture and sexual violence, forced Russification and suppression of Ukrainian language and culture, forced deportations and mass abductions (including of many thousands of children), ecocide and use of illegal chemical weapons.

Given your reference to Syria, we would also highlight the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed and widespread war crimes by the Russian-backed Assad regime there, in addition to direct killing by Russia.

The Ukraine war has additionally seen tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers – the latter coming disproportionately from the oppressed nationalities and minorities of the Russian Federation, alongside thousands from poor countries and regions in Africa and Asia, in many cases tricked into going to Russia for work and then forced into the army.

This is a war waged by an increasingly fascistic regime that promotes the far right across the globe – the great bulk of which, in turn, supports it and its war. Socialists and anti-imperialists should use their voices to expose and fight this eruption of fascistic imperialism.

As Abdul El-Sayed, the left-winger just chosen as the Democratic senatorial candidate in Michigan, put it: “Make no mistake, this is decidedly a war between democracy and autocracy, between self-government and fascism. To view it otherwise is to ignore the context in which it’s occurring.”

You are widely regarded as a trailblazing representative of and advocate for oppressed people. What you said on 20th June undermines that position.

We believe you should discuss with Ukrainian socialists, trade unionists and campaigners for equality and social justice; listen seriously to what they have to say, and engage in serious discussion. We can help put you in touch.

You should also engage with the very different position taken by many of your colleagues on the Labour left. We’re sure they will be happy to discuss. This 2023 article by John McDonnell MP, and this recent podcast by Nadia Whittome, are good starting points.

Yours for anti-imperialism and internationalism,

Sacha Ismail and Christopher Ford

(Sacha Ismail and Christopher Ford are members of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Steering Committee, writing in a personal capacity.)

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