October 24, 2022
Media Contact: Melissa Garriga | [email protected] | 228-990-6148
CODEPINK Praises Congressional Democrats Calling for Ukraine Peace Talks; Urges Congress to Choose Negotiations, Not Escalation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CODEPINK thanks the 30 House signatories to a letter by Congressmember Pramila Jayapal (D-WA-08) calling on President Biden to engage in direct bilateral talks with Russia President Vladmir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. In a break with their Democratic Party colleagues, the signatories urge the White House to support a mutual ceasefire and diplomatic efforts to avoid a protracted war that threatens continuous human suffering, climate degradation, and economic peril, as well as nuclear war through intention or miscalculation. You can read the letter here.
To date, not a single Democrat has voted against sending tens of billions of dollars in training and weapons–rockets, missiles, drones and ammunition–to Ukraine, though 57 of their House Republican colleagues have, for a variety of reasons, voted against bills that couple weapons shipments with economic assistance.
CODEPINK appreciates the courage these signatories displayed in dissenting from the status quo and encourages other House members to join them in demanding a ceasefire and negotiated settlement in Ukraine. As a leading peace and anti-war organization, CODEPINK also asks that all members of Congress, regardless of political party, vote against future weapons and military dollars for Ukraine.
“Fanning the flames of war with more ammunition serves as a disincentive to peace, leads to escalating violence and furthers the fiction that there is a military solution to a conflict that predates the Russian invasion. We hope that more elected officials from both parties will realize that it is in the best interest of Ukrainians, and the American people, to stop escalating and start negotiating,” said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK and coauthor of the new book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.
CODEPINK criticizes President Biden in the strongest possible terms for stating that he refuses to meet with Putin at the G-20 Summit in Indonesia next month. Despite President Biden’s recent acknowledgement that we have never been closer to nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Biden has not met with Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine last February.
“It is unconscionable for the President of the United States to hold the world hostage when he could end the war in Ukraine through diplomatic efforts,” said Marcy Winograd, coordinator of CODEPINK Congress. “Whether Biden is motivated by hubris and ego, patronage to weapons contractors, or a desire for full spectrum dominance–US domination of the globe–there is no excuse for the President to act as a servant of the arms industry pushing for protracted war that risks nuclear annihilation. We ask President Biden to pick up the phone and meet with Putin at once.”
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