It seems that it was yesterday that we woke up with an incomprehensible (or perhaps not so) surprise. Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine to conquer their Western colleagues. They soon entered the Donetsk basin, but they also crossed the border between Belarus and Ukraine to reach less than 100 kilometres from Kiev. For we have been in war for a year, and today, beyond the propaganda messages on either side, we can clearly say that Russia has absorbed 20% of the surface of Ukraine, namely the one that affects the south-east.

"The first victim of a war is true," is a phrase pronounced in World War I, and after more than a century things have not changed, they have radicalized. Propaganda and the battle of the story is as important or more than the territory in which it is developed. The truth is, life on the front is not so different from that of the trenches in the first great war of the 20th century, and volunteers don't struggle with typing codes on sophisticated computers. They rot the trenches in the excrement like 100 years ago to maintain their position equipped with machine gun nests so that the meat grinder continues its fruitful work.

So what has been the cost of this conflict so far in human lives? Question not answered. Contrasting the sources, we only see in the military that deaths vary between 20,000 and half a million lives. No one accepts his casualties, but he is proud to have affected his rival. However, the meat picker to which we have previously referred asks for his part without understanding the flag, and is pleased that the professional mercenary, the oppressor with Chechen beard or the Nazi brigade join this macabre dance.

Other data are comparable. For example, the number of people who are refugees by war: 6.4 million people, about 6,000 of whom are refugees in the Basque Country.

Here we are responding to the obligation to respond to the humanitarian crisis, because memory reminds us that last century it was our ancestors who fled the horrors of war. When the National-Catholic uprising extended that Gernika fed the Reds, the truth was the first victim of the war (and so it appears today in official books). Therefore, from our point of view it is difficult to determine who was responsible for the massacres like Bucha, although it is not the first thing that comes to mind, while we pay for our pockets the increase of products such as gas or diesel.

We see war from afar, although in this case Blondes and Catholics suffer it. Nothing to do with the most melanin families on your skin. Now, however, we are reflected, which speeds up our consciences and our duty to cooperate. Perhaps that is why our authorities have no doubt that all the necessary military supplies will be dispatched from our ports, or that is why previously neutral countries are about to join this group which is the Atlantic alliance. What sensations those Scandinavians seemed to us!

And we cannot forget new warlike concepts like the hybrid war. Yes, everything is invented and barely distinguishes itself from what in the last century called cold war. In this case it is aggressors who are suffering in their meats. The first objective was the Russian press, silenced by Russia Today and Sputnik, the guarantor of freedom in Europe, where freedom of expression and information is sacred and where a journalist would never be imprisoned in a Member State of the Union (sorry Pablo González, you will be the exception ratifying the rule).

Then came the economic penalties, but not only Russia as a state, but also private Russian companies, some 1,615 pensioners and Russian banks were also expelled from the Swift system. And to the surprise of everyone who believed that sport was a field that should not be politicised, both athletes and Russian groups have been expelled from most international competitions.

Does all this justify the loss of material damage in Ukraine to US$ 104 billion? That the home, the road, the airport, the school or the hospital are the most attacked places? No. In this context, Russian military spending reaches US$ 69,000 million (4.26% of GDP) and in Ukraine it reaches US$ 5.920 million (4.13% of GDP). It's a dramatic picture of a year of war.

Since Basque anti-militarism, we must intensify efforts to stop this and other wars and call on the authorities that have doubled military spending to stop feeding the war machinery. We have to challenge the parties that have chosen to send tanks and other weapons, and continue to say that wars are starting here and are being done here. SAPA, Air ITP, Sener or Aernnova see their death business grow and expect to earn over 2 billion euros. As Josep Borrell is an evil villain, you will always remember him as a vicious and tempting militarist.

This Friday, 24 February, at 11.30 a.m., in the Plaza de convivencia de Bilbao (Torres Isozaki), it is time to mobilize antimilitarism to stop the war.

Anti-militarist coordinator Kakanez