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No DU shells to Ukraine!


The Kremlin warned Britain of the grave consequences of supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium (DU) shells. Some said this simply meant escalation. Others, the gurus of the bourgeois media who pose as ‘military experts’, told us that they posed no danger to Ukrainian civilians and that, in any case, this was just another empty threat from the Russians who would soon be on their knees following a Ukrainian spring offensive. What none of them foresaw was that the “grave consequences” that would follow would be the taking out of the DU ammo dumps and the possible release of deadly radiation into the air.
    That’s exactly what happened when a Ukrainian military depot was totally destroyed by a Russian ballistic missile this week. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says reports that radiation levels have risen in the aftermath of the Russian strike are wrong.
Whether deadly gamma rays really were released when the warehouse went up is a matter of indifference to the hapless citizens of Khmelnitsky. They stampeded to the shops to buy iodine pills and are being told not to drink the tap water. They're seeing patrols going around the streets with radiation dosimeters after the explosion. They were not prepared to give their authorities the benefit of the doubt. Neither should we.
    Sadly Labour’s leaders and most of the trade union bureaucrats think otherwise. They spend their time thinking of new ways to take the UK back into the European Union and drivelling on about the “human rights” they believe can only exist under the rule of the bourgeoisie. These days many of those who pose as socialists have also become cheer-leaders for imperialism and its lackeys in Israel, south Korea and, of course, Ukraine.
    No treaty explicitly banning the use of DU is yet in force, however repeated UN General Assembly resolutions have highlighted serious concerns over the use of DU weapons. Needless to say, the UK, together with the USA, France and Israel, are the only states that have consistently voted against the resolutions.
    Sadly, the influence of the venal social-democrats and the bogus left stretches far beyond the union movement. Its dead-hand stifles debate in academia and within the traditional anti-war and peace movements in Britain.
    CND and the Stop the War campaign are in the doldrums precisely because they refused to take a principled stand when the Russians intervened to defend the people of the Donbas last year. But genuine communists, such as the New Communist Party, along with anti-imperialists and revolutionary socialists, stepped up their solidarity work in support of the Donbas people’s republics and the underground Ukrainian anti-fascist resistance.
    More people are now seeing through the lies of the imperialists and their willing tools in the peace and labour movement. Stop the War, which originally called for an end to the fighting on NATO’s terms, is shifting. CND to its credit has called on the Sunak government to put an immediate end to its use of DU. They say “inflicting it on the people of Ukraine is the last thing they need” – it’s the last thing we need too.

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