Ukraine - it is time to use diplomacy, not weapons - Senate Speech 25.10.22

If the carnage and human tragedy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have taught us anything, it's that everyday people are made to suffer at the hands of elites who lack the empathy to understand the true horror of war. Rather than learn from the failure of the Middle East occupations, it seems we are doomed to repeat them.

The origins of the war in Ukraine didn't start this year but in late 2013, with the decision by the then Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, to suspend an association agreement with the EU. As stated by Yanukovych, parts of the EU deal were inadequate, and Ukraine did not have the money to upgrade to European standards. To quote an MP from the Party of Regions, the governing party:

If we had signed, we would have opened our borders and killed our own manufacturers.

The decision to delay this decision led to riots and the eventual overthrow of the democratically elected president in the early months of 2014. The Party of Regions represented Ukrainians from eastern Ukraine, where significant manufacturing took place. It was quite within the governing party's right to act in the best interests of their constituents. This, however, wasn't enough for the antigovernment protesters, who spent the next four months protesting outside the Ukrainian parliament. The protests turned violent, and many members of the governing party fled the capital and even the country...

Read more at: https://gerardrennick.com.au/ukraine-it-is-time-to-use-diplomacy-not-weapons/