In Pamplona, on April 9, a couple of people gathered to claim “Insumission, gerrei!” and “Putin ez, NATO ez”. They recalled Unai Salanueva, an insurer who committed suicide before entering prison in 1997: “Those of us who were opposed to joining NATO and compulsory military service have to step back against war.” In other words, in 1991 and 2003 the antimilitarists came with the spirits who had gone out against the war to face the war in Ukraine, in particular with the demands not to increase military budgets, not to send arms to Ukraine, to help the citizens hit by the war, to help the deserters who have given up participating in the crime and to those who, like in Ukraine, suffer disobedience and without repression of the warriors in Russia.

In this couple of months when the Ukrainian war has monopolized all the news, few voices have defended the objection and submission to war. Another was Catholic Pope Francis: “I am ashamed of states that increase military spending to 2%, they are crazy! The real answer is no more weapons, more punishments and more political-military alliances.”

However, globally, feminists have mobilized against the war of the most prominent, from different platforms. In Euskal Herria, the Women against War group has spoken at ARGIA about patriarchy and capital, with the document Criminal Alliance. Globally, the International Association of Women for Peace and Freedom (WILFP) is the most prestigious example. The Weapons signed by Carmen Magallón, leader of the WILFP, will not save us the article that has had a great impact: “Seeing the European decision to send arms to Ukraine applauded, I hear my dissenting voice: weapons will not save us. Instead, they will introduce us into a whirlpool to kill us.”

Magallon cited the works of the German painter Käthe Kollwitz against war. Kollwitz apparently drove two of his sons I. Fight and get lost in the World War. “From that asphyxiation came to the woman the painting The seeds should not be ground in the mill, where he tells the men to defecate. Young people are seeds. Their mission is not to kill, but to live.”

Feminist resistance to war is another reference document at the global level that has been extended with the signing of feminist personalities such as Nancy Fraser, Verónica Gago, Teresa Rodríguez, Yayo Herrero, Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor… “We give continuity – they say – to the feminist trend that has historically participated against reactionary wars, as in 1914 [I. Facing the World War] Rosa Luxembourg, encamped in Greenham Common in 1980 against nuclear weapons or Black Women’s Movement against War.”

They clearly condemn the invasion of Ukraine by the regime of Vladimir Putin, they also blame NATO for this war, and at the same time “we reject the decisions that have been taken these days in favour of deepening the spiral of war, we put more weapons into conflict and we increase the budgets of wars”. In Russia they join the work carried out by certain feminist groups and also call for the cancellation of debts to Ukraine.

Specifically, feminist economist Catherine Samary and the IV who refuses to sign this feminist manifesto. The international member takes up in my writing the reasons why I have not signed the feminist manifesto against the war in Ukraine some of the keys to the blockades and controversies that live today in the West. “As I told those who offered me to sign the manifesto – says Samary – I respect equally the Ukrainian women fleeing the country to protect their children and those who have remained in the disarmed or armed defense of the country. This means recognising that the armed resistance there is a just war, a defensive war, which is what makes a people that Putin has clearly questioned their status as a people. (…) Rejecting Ukrainian armed resistance and calling for peace and negotiation is in practice asking Ukrainians to bow to Putin’s wishes.”

Beyond the division of feminism, everyone on the left is agitated by the debate on how to act in the face of the Ukrainian war, perhaps more specifically in the face of the Russian attack. To mention another thousand writings, from the Europe Solidaire movement, Mark Johnson and Pierre Rousset have tried to summarise the reactions they consider to the European and Western Left: “As in previous conflicts, socialdemocracy and the Greens have become the main acolytes of NATO. Since the Ukrainian invasion, some progressives have become even more favourable to the European Union and NATO. On the other hand, part of the anti-capitalist left is unable to find itself in a conflict that has led to non-Western imperialism.

The members of the band do not dare to go beyond a warm criticism of the Russian invasion, are reluctant to show solidarity also to Ukraine and say, against all evidence, that NATO is the sole or main culprit, that Ukraine is the puppet of the West or a proto-factional state and that the real victim is Russia. Her position is camper: They automatically protect those who go against the Western ruling class. (…) The starting point for solidarity must be the defence of peoples who are victims of war. The camper stream is not able to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people for its deviant ideas about geopolitics.”

Along the same lines, Santiago Alba Rico, well-known in the left Spanish language: “The paradox is that the invasion has become war thanks to Ukrainian resistance. Independence is a war. It is a priority to prevent NATO from entering the war; it is a priority to defend and ensure the independence of Ukraine. The limit of our waist must be to avoid international conflict and nuclear war; to reaffirm the limit of our pacifism, justice and international law.”

In view of the heat of the debate, it may be thought that between the Western Left Ukraine will cause the same breaks and stains that caused the Hungarian invasions in 1956 and those of Czechoslovakia in 1973. In the meantime, however, there are few demonstrations in Ukraine to urge, in some way and immediately, the implementation of a ceasefire and peace. These will not be strengthened much if the allies of their leftist years also reproach them that asking for peace is proposing to surrender to Putin.
During the days of drafting these lines, a ceasefire and negotiated settlement effort is being made from different currents on the world left, Ukraine: Peace now! Under the direction of Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Corby, Rafael Correa, Yanis Varoufakis, Pablo Iglesias and other personalities. Will you be able to jump from paper to mobilization in the streets?

Meanwhile, most people see the destruction of Ukraine on television and on social media, consuming it as military porn. Forgetting that those seen before in Iraq, Syria, Libya or Yemen are happening right now.