FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 19, 2024
Media Contact: Melissa Garriga | [email protected]
Statement from CODEPINK, World Beyond War, Veterans for Peace, End Wars Working Group of Progressive Democrats of America, and Peace in Ukraine Coalition
We denounce President Biden’s decision to approve long-range missile strikes–already underway–deep inside Russia. Biden’s reckless decision ignores Pentagon advice against such long-range strikes, thereby escalating tensions between the two most nuclear armed nations, US and Russia, to endanger the entire world.
In approving these strikes, the Biden White House chose to make the US a direct party to the Ukraine-Russia war, crossing a previous red line and causing Russia to lower the threshold on the use of nuclear weapons. Russia’s new nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear response even to a conventional attack, if the nation responsible for the attack is supported by a nuclear power.
A lame duck President, Biden opts for last minute escalation to make it even more difficult for the incoming administration to broker a peaceful settlement.
Such a settlement could have been brokered a month after the February, 2022, Russian invasion had Western powers not sabotaged the peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.
Moreover, think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that could have been saved had the US not provoked the Russian invasion with NATO expansion to Russia’s borders, expanding NATO from 12 countries at the end of WWII to now 32 countries in a nuclear alliance that surrounds Russia.
According to the polls, 70% of the US public surveyed wants a peaceful settlement that elevates diplomacy to end this unnecessary carnage and expenditure of US taxpayer dollars, now almost $200 billion for the war in Ukraine while urgent needs in the United States are ignored. The Biden administration must listen to the will of the people—and Congress must intervene to make sure he does. For the sake of the people and the planet, it’s imperative the US reverse course on this homicidal path, call off the missiles and support an immediate ceasefire.
Diplomacy now!
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