By Sacha Ismail
In Spring 2022 Green Party of England & Wales (GPEW) conference passed a resolution entitled “Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine” that “condemn[ed] Putin’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine and [sent] solidarity to the brave people of Ukraine. We reject the Russian claim that the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are anything other than parts of the sovereign state of Ukraine. We acknowledge that this conflict originated with the Russian aggression in Donetsk and Luhansk.” (Full text below.)
Since then, however, while many Green activists and individual leaders have shown active solidarity, the party as such pretty much puts out a statement once a year – and that’s it.
The February 2026 statement was pretty good, but rather glaringly did not include a quote from the party’s leader, for the first time. More broadly Zack Polanski is unclear on Ukraine and has largely only talked about it, briefly, when asked about it in interviews. His team has also failed to reply, over five months, to two written requests from Ukrainian GPEW members and allies to meet for a discussion.
This lack of advocacy and activity in support of Ukraine and its social movements is why in 2025 GPEW activists, including trade unionists, linked to Ukraine Solidarity Campaign set up a Green Ukraine Solidarity (GUS) network to try to push things forward. As well as organising a number of political and educational events on Ukraine (including with speakers in Ukraine), GUS coordinated the submission of motions entitled “Strengthening solidarity with Ukraine” to the Autumn 2025, Spring 2026 and Autumn 2026 party conferences.
The October 2026 conference
Despite widespread support and growing momentum, the Autumn 2026 conference (2-4 October, Brighton) once again failed to reach the motion. It also did not discuss an emergency motion on the desperate situation in the Kherson city of Oleshky (more on this below).
With an extra boost because it had been submitted at previous conferences, the main Autumn conference motion was prioritised quite highly by members, 10th out of 51 policy-based “E motions” (in fact it was prioritised 6th but some grouping of motions on similar subjects as each other pushed it down). However the conference only reached two E motions, along with some in other categories.
There are many reasons for that, unrelated to Ukraine; but it is certainly fair to say that some in the party don’t want to or don’t care that much about solidarity with Ukraine.
This problem was displayed arguably more blatantly by what happened at the end of the conference with the emergency motion on Oleshky.
The motion, submitted by Green trade unionist Matthew Hull, was co-proposed by the unusually higher number of 135 other members. It was in the conference chair’s gift whether to take it; the chair mentioned at the start of the final session that were two emergency motions and he might take one. Then, when it came to it, he took neither –and closed the conference ten minutes before the advertised time!
Building solidarity
All the indications are that a substantial majority of Green Party members support Ukraine. There is, of course, the 2022 conference policy. In the official pre-conference “workshop” to discuss the Autumn 2026 motion, it was passed 78-22%, after an amendment to weaken it by removing military aid was defeated 68-32%. The Green Ukraine Solidarity network has grown substantially, and that continued at this conference.
We ran an official stall inside the conference, getting a lot of interest, more than fifty new signs ups and a number of invitations to speak.
There was also a lot of support evident for the strong pro-Ukraine stance argued by Finnish Left Alliance MEP Li Andersson at the big conference fringe meeting on “Progressive foreign policy in an unstable era”.
We’ll be back at the Spring 2027 conference (5-7 March, Leeds). But meanwhile we’ll be doing much more to build solidarity. If you’d like to help, get in touch: green.ukraine.solidarity@gmail.com
