Ukraine is the frontline of European democracy

Mick Antoniw MS

As Ukraine reaches the three and a half year point since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, support from the people of Wales has never waned.

The war may not be making headline news as it once was but the public donations of humanitarian and medical aid continue apace.

One Welsh support group UK4UA, based in Pontypool are on their 57th delivery to Ukraine!

Around Wales individual communities of Ukrainians and supporters and individual groups collect aid and money to send supplies and vehicles to the Ukrainian front line.

It does get harder each month as the initial shock of war becomes normalised.

Difficult

The effort needed to raise funds and remind people what is happening in Ukraine becomes incrementally more difficult as time passes – But the support nevertheless remains.

Support for Ukraine amongst Senedd members is unanimous and non-partisan.

A recent cross party delegation travelled to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to meet with government officials to promote the memory of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones.

In 1933, Jones exposed to the world, Stalin’s artificial famine, the Holodomor which led to the death of millions of Ukrainians and other nationalities and led to severe measures to repress Ukrainian opposition by suppressing the Ukrainian language and education to erase its national identity.

The delegation plan to return in the Autumn to place a trilingual plaque on a building in the street which has been renamed after Gareth Jones.

An additional important outcome of the meetings is an agreement to encourage closer links and solidarity with Ukraine by forming partnerships and twinning agreements.

Cardiff of course has a longstanding twinning agreement going back to the nineteen sixties with Luhansk which is currently under Russian occupation.

The initial response so far from Welsh Councils has been fantastically positive. Over half a dozen have already expressed a serious interest in exploring such partnerships.

Repression

In areas currently under Russian occupation history is repeating itself, torture, deportation, abduction of children, sexual violence and murder have become the tools of repression.

That is the Russian way under Vladimir Putin as Russia abandons any residual democracy and commitment to the international rule of law and mutates into a neo fascist state underpinned by the extremities of extreme Russian nationalism and imperialism.

A cross-party group of Senedd members and supporters, Senedd4Ukraine, is about to make its 13th delivery to Ukraine, driving another 5 vehicles deep into Eastern Ukraine.

They will leave the four-by-four pick up vehicles behind for the front-line defenders and rescue workers together with tens of thousands of pounds of medical and humanitarian aid.

This will bring the total number of vehicles delivered to 44 since the start of the war.

Supported by trade unions, businesses, Senedd members and individuals the total aid delivered can be valued at well in excess of one million pounds.

As the Senedd goes into its summer recess the convoy will set off for the 2,000 mile drive across Europe and into Ukraine.

Russia, emboldened by Donald Trump’s intransigence and apparent complicity with his friend Vladimir Putin, has launched thousands of drones and missiles at targets across Ukraine.

In 2024 they launched around 2,000, so far this year it is an estimated 20,000! Most are aimed at civilian buildings, schools, hospitals and residential blocks.

Missiles

When the Ukrainian rescue teams arrive, further missiles are launched… a double tap tactic aimed at killing first responders, rescue workers, firemen and ambulance medics.

The US response has been to intermittently reduce arms supplies to Ukraine, in particular patriot missiles and other defence weapons.

To their credit Keir Starmer, Macron, Merz and other European leaders have stepped up to the mark to replace the deficit. Russia is guilty of war crimes and its programme of genocide has been made clear by Putin that in his eyes Ukraine does not exist.

He claims it is part of Russia despite the fact that Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine was a leading European city hundreds of years before Russia and Moscow even existed.

At the start of the war, I met with Kyiv mayor Vladimir Klitschko who expressed his anger at the assertion from Putin that he was going to take Kyiv back.

“Russia has never had Ukraine,” he stated, “We were a leading European city whilst Moscow was still a swamp”.

In fact, it is only since the time of Peter the Great that Muscovy renamed itself Russia.

Russia has lost an estimated 1 million dead or wounded. It controls less of Ukraine now than in the first months of the war.

Putin’s response to this failure is to destroy cities and to terrorise the Ukrainian people.

Were he to win this war it is clear his intentions go much further, restoring a Russian empire along the border of the former Soviet Union beginning with Moldova and the Baltic states.

Aid

The aid we are bringing is just a drop in the ocean of what is needed, but there are many such drops from communities all over the world.

Wales is doing its bit. The EU must do its bit and prepare to defend itself from the new fascism which has emerged. Ukraine is the frontline of European democracy.

Thank you, Wales. Slava Ukraini.

Senedd4Ukraine has set up a crowdfunder account to raise funds for the journey and for future support.

Mick Antoniw is the MS for Pontypridd. His father was a refugee from Ukraine after the war and he taught Mick Ukrainian, which he speaks fluently.