End War in Ukraine” Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly
Common Dreams, BY MEDEA BENJAMIN – NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES, 30 Sept 22,
We have spent much of the past week reading and listening to speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Most of them condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter and a serious setback for the peaceful world order that is the UN’s founding and defining principle.
But what has not been reported in the United States is that leaders from 66 countries, mostly from the Global South, also used their General Assembly speeches to call urgently for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine through peaceful negotiations, as the UN Charter requires. We have compiled excerpts from the speeches of all 66 countries to show the breadth and depth of their appeals, and we highlight a few of them here.
African leaders echoed one of the first speakers, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, who also spoke in his capacity as the current chairman of the African Union when he said, “We call for de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, as well as for a negotiated solution, to avoid the catastrophic risk of a potentially global conflict.”
The 66 nations that called for peace in Ukraine make up more than a third of the countries in the world, and they represent most of the Earth’s population, including India, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil and Mexico.
While NATO and EU countries have rejected peace negotiations, and U.S. and U.K. leaders have actively undermined them, the leaders of five European countries – Hungary, Malta, Portugal, San Marino and the Vatican – joined the calls for peace at the General Assembly.
The peace caucus also includes many of the small countries that have the most to lose from the breakdown of the UN system that recent wars in Ukraine and the Greater Middle East represent, and who have the most to gain by strengthening the UN and enforcing the UN Charter to protect the weak and restrain the powerful.
Philip Pierre, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, a small island state in the Caribbean, told the General Assembly,
“Articles 2 and 33 of the UN Charter are unambiguous in binding Member States to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state and to negotiate and settle all international disputes by peaceful means.…We therefore call upon all parties involved to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.”
Global South leaders lamented the failure of the UN system, not just in the war in Ukraine but throughout decades of war and economic coercion by the United States and its allies. President Jose Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste directly challenged the West’s double standards, telling Western countries,
“They should pause for a moment to reflect on the glaring contrast in their response to the wars elsewhere where women and children have died by the thousands from wars and starvation. The response to our beloved Secretary-General’s cries for help in these situations have not met with equal compassion. As countries in the Global South, we see double standards. Our public opinion does not see the Ukraine war the same way it is seen in the North.”
Many leaders called urgently for an end to the war in Ukraine before it escalates into a nuclear war that would kill billions of people and end human civilization as we know it. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, warned,
“…the war in Ukraine not only undermines the nuclear non-proliferation regime, but also presents us with the danger of nuclear devastation, either through escalation or accident. … To avoid a nuclear disaster, it is vital that there be serious engagement to find a peaceful outcome to the conflict.”
Others described the economic impacts already depriving their people of food and basic necessities, and called on all sides, including Ukraine’s Western backers, to return to the negotiating table before the war’s impacts escalate into multiple humanitarian disasters across the Global South…………………………………………………
At the end of the debate on September 26, Csaba Korosi, the president of the General Assembly, acknowledged in his closing statement that ending the war in Ukraine was one of the main messages “reverberating through the Hall” at this year’s General Assembly.
You can read here Korosi’s closing statement and all the calls for peace he was referring to.
And if you want to learn more about the “legions working together in solidarity… to impose the unconditional option of peace on the war lobbies,” as Jean-Claude Gakosso said, you can find out more at https://www.peaceinukraine.org/. https://qoshe.com/common-dreams/medea-benjamin/-end-war-in-ukraine-say-66-nations-at-un-general-assembly/147104931
The world in denial about the climate crisis
Climate breakdown is far more intense in 2022 than even many scientists
expected, yet the world still isn’t treating this like a crisis. I
underestimated the depth and intransigence of society’s collective
climate denial. Despite climate breakdown being far more intense by 2022
than I thought it would be – it all feels like a decade or two ahead of
schedule, somehow – the world still isn’t treating global heating like
the emergency it is.
To understand what an emergency we are now in, the
scale and variety of the climate damage we’ve already incurred, you only
need to look at a few of the most recent disasters. Hurricane Ian has just
pummeled Cuba and Florida. The full extent of the disaster will only be
revealed in the coming days and weeks, although first looks are shocking.
But we do know with certainty that Ian was supercharged by global heating
through several well-understood fundamental physics pathways.
Or consider the record extreme heat, fires, and drought that have hammered arid
subtropical regions such as California, Spain, China and elsewhere this
summer.
The planet has heated by about 1.3C on average since fossil fuel
burning began in earnest 150 years ago, and is now increasing by 0.1C every
five years. These mean values roughly double over the planet’s land
surfaces. That extra heat also supercharges heatwaves. In addition, global
heat is expanding the Hadley cell circulation and moving subtropical storms
poleward, causing a permanent increase in subtropical aridification.
All of this tends to dry out soils, kill trees and worsen wildfires. Or consider
the biblical flooding in Pakistan from a few weeks ago. Or the “doomsday
glacier” in Antarctica which promises “big changes over small
timescales”. Or record melt of the Greenland ice sheet. Or the crazy and
deadly disintegration of glaciers in Europe. In short, it has been a summer
of climate insanity.
But even so, this will be, on average, the coolest
summer with the least climate chaos for the rest of your life. That is just
the nature of trends. It should be terrifying.
Guardian 1st Oct 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/01/climate-emergency-hurricane-ian-crisis
King Charles abandoned plans to speak at Cop27 climate summit, now will not attend, on instruction from Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Liz Truss advised King Charles to stay away from Cop27 climate summit. The
King, a passionate environmental campaigner, has abandoned plans to attend
next month’s Cop27 climate change summit after Liz Truss told him to stay
away. He had intended to deliver a speech at the meeting of world leaders
in Egypt. Truss, who is also unlikely to attend the Sharm el-Sheikh
gathering, objected to the King’s plans during a personal audience at
Buckingham Palace last month.
Times 1st Oct 2022
King Charles III has reportedly abandoned plans to attend and deliver a
speech at the Cop27 climate change summit on the advice of Liz Truss. The
monarch, a veteran campaigner on environmental issues, had been invited to
the 27th UN climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, next
month. But the prime minister is understood to have raised objections
during a personal audience at Buckingham Palace last month, according to
the Sunday Times. Buckingham Palace has confirmed King Charles III will not
attend the summit.
Guardian 1st Oct 2022
Going for “green gold:” WA mine taps solar, wind and battery to reach 100 pct renewables — RenewEconomy
Bellevue Gold inks solar, wind and battery deal in bid to become Australia’s first publicly-listed gold miner to generate net-zero emissions. The post Going for “green gold:” WA mine taps solar, wind and battery to reach 100 pct renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Going for “green gold:” WA mine taps solar, wind and battery to reach 100 pct renewables — RenewEconomy
Energy windfall tax offers much better economic relief than petrol excise, study finds — RenewEconomy
New study finds a tax on the super profits of oil and gas companies would deliver much more effective economic relief than the discount on petrol prices. The post Energy windfall tax offers much better economic relief than petrol excise, study finds appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Energy windfall tax offers much better economic relief than petrol excise, study finds — RenewEconomy
October 2 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “IEA Head Fatih Birol: Electric Cars Are Transforming The Auto Industry. That’s Good News For The Climate” • The global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing hardship around the world and shining a spotlight on the flaws in today’s energy system. But the current crisis can be a turning […]
October 2 Energy News — geoharvey
TODAY. My biased coverage of Ukraine war and Donbass referendums.
Why do I repeatedly give the pro Russian view of these events?
Well, it’s simply because the avalanche of Ukraine news and views in the prevailing English-language media is stridently anti-Russian, and heroically pro-Ukraine..
Think about it. We, the anglophone nations, plus Europe, are NOT at war with Russia. There might be some excuse for this appallingly bad coverage if we were formally at war.
Universally, it would seem, we swallow the story that the Donbass referendums are a sham. And where do we get our news from – it’s always Kiev – the heart of pro Ukraine propaganda, and hundreds of kilometres away from the Donbass region.
And what is our news avalanche like in style and content? Well on Australian TV media they showed the effect of the gas leak (attributed of course to Russian sabotage), as a close-up of a baby crying.! All we get is emotional coverage of unhappy people. Now this is true, and Ukrainian people are suffering. But it’s not a factual picture, and not the whole picture, of how the war is going.
And as for the history, the background to this war, and why it came about – forget it! All we get is unrelenting USA and NATO propaganda.
And for the future – like silver-tongued Anthony Blinken, and his Australia’s mimic Richard Marles – all we get is the mantra we must keep the “Global-Rules-Based-Order” !
Somebody has to raise questions about a view that differs from this avalanche. So that is why I, and a few others, do it
Sanctions against Russian exports – but that doesn’t apply to NUCLEAR EXPORTS, (while they bring in funding for Russia’s war!)
ED note. When will they all wake up? The nuclear industry is essential for the nuclear weapons so beloved by the governments that have them.
Keeping the nuclear industry going is essential for the wealth, power and influence of the global nuclear lobby, and the future of all their crackpot super-costly ‘advanced’ nuclear gimmicks.
Apparently we can all accept cutting back gas, oil, food ……. but must not let anyone curtail that sacred cow – the nuclear industry
Russia’s nuclear trade with Europe flows despite Ukraine war, By SYLVIE CORBET, September 30, 2022,
PARIS (AP) — While the European Union has agreed to curtail its use of Russian oil and gas, its member nations continue to import and export nuclear fuel that is not under EU sanctions — to the chagrin of the Ukrainian government and environmental activists.
A cargo ship carrying uranium that departed from the French port of Dunkirk traveled across the North Sea on Thursday, heading toward the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga. It was the third time in just over a month that the Panama-flagged Mikhail Dudin ship docked in Dunkirk to transport uranium from or to Russia.
Environmental group Greenpeace France denounced the ongoing shipments and called for stopping all trade in nuclear fuel, which it said was “financing the war in Ukraine, extending (Europe’s) energy dependence and delaying the transition to renewable energy.”
The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, did not propose targeting Russia’s nuclear sector in its latest sanctions package presented Wednesday.
“France ensures strict compliance by economic players with all the European sanctions adopted against Russia. Civil nuclear power is not affected by these sanctions,” the French Foreign Affairs Ministry told the Associated Press.
The ministry that EU nations “did not consider this to be a relevant area for ending Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
Ukraine, meanwhile, is pushing for European sanctions in that area. The Ukrainian president’s economic adviser, Oleg Ustenko, said Wednesday that “in terms of uranium, we think it’s extremely important to impose sanctions, not only on Russian oil.”
“Oil, gas, uranium and coal, all this should be banned. Because they are using this money in order to finance this war,” Ustenko said.
According to Greenpeace France, reprocessed uranium meant to be transported to Russia were loaded onto the Mikhail Dudin on Wednesday. Pauline Boyer, an energy campaigner at Greenpeace France, said the ship’s repeated trips between Russia and France show “the extent to which the French nuclear industry is trapped in its dependence on Russia.”
French authorities have repeatedly said the country does not depend on Russia to supply the nuclear power plants that provide 67% of its electricity — more than any other nation………………………………………..
The Lingen plant is operated by Framatome, which is majority-owned by French utility giant EDF. It is supplying nuclear fuel to plants in France, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain, Spain, Sweden and Finland.
Faced with activists’ protests, the German government took a critical view toward the uranium shipment but said it couldn’t stop the fuel from being processed because it isn’t covered by the EU’s war-related sanctions on Russia.
At the end of last month, enriched uranium unloaded from the Mikhail Dudin in Dunkirk was destined for the Rhone valley in southern France, which is home to major sites of the French civil nuclear industry, according to Greenpeace France.
The French nuclear sector has a series of contracts with Russian state-controlled energy giant Rosatom, including some to import enriched uranium destined for European nuclear power plants and to export reprocessed uranium to Russia. Rosatom is one of the world’s biggest actors in the nuclear energy market.
Multinational company Orano, headquartered in France, has a contract with Rosatom to buy reprocessed uranium to convert it into nuclear fuel at its Seversk plant, in Siberia, and ultimately use it in reactors to produce energy.
The U.S. power industry also imports uranium from Russia to feed its nuclear plants.
AP recently tracked millions of dollars worth of shipments of radioactive uranium hexafluoride from Russian state-owned Tenex JSC, the world’s largest exporter of initial nuclear fuel cycle products, to Westinghouse Electric Co. in South Carolina. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trade-only-on-ap-business-c521f2248c823f69f0a677735a78e89d
Uncle Sam’s Long Trail of Wreckage
the Biden administration opted to use Ukraine in a Western proxy war against Russia.
Washington and London appear to have sabotaged a possible peace accord between Moscow and Kiev.
The Biden administration is risking nuclear war with Russia to assist a corrupt, authoritarian regime in a country of little importance to the United States.
Until the early 1990s, Ukraine wasn’t even an independent country, much less a U.S. vital interest.
Very few policymakers even concede that Washington’s overseas military adventures often have not turned out as planned.
The American Conservative, Ted Galen Carpenter, Sep 28, 2022, The leaders and most of the news media in the U.S. seem to believe that Washington’s foreign policy over the past several decades has been a success and benefitted both the United States and the world. That assumption wasn’t really true even during the Cold War, although that confrontation eventually resulted in the peaceful demise of America’s nasty totalitarian adversary. There was plenty of collateral damage along the way, with the suffering caused by Washington’s conduct in Vietnam and Afghanistan being the most glaring examples.
The performance of U.S. leaders after the Cold War has been even worse. An array of disruptive, bloody tragedies—most notably those in the Balkans, Afghanistan (again), Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—mark Uncle Sam’s global trail of wreckage. The Biden administration’s decision to use Ukraine as a pawn in Washington’s power struggle with Russia is fast becoming the latest example.
Very few policymakers even concede that Washington’s overseas military adventures often have not turned out as planned. The news media, which is supposed to serve as the public’s watchdog, have routinely ignored or excused America’s foreign-policy disasters. Instead, when one intervention fails, they simply move on to lobby for the next crusade pushed by U.S. leaders. Consider how few news accounts now deal with the ongoing violence and chaos in places such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen, even though Washington was a major contributor to all of those tragedies.
Paul Poast, a scholar with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, aptly describes the conflict in Syria as America’s “forgotten war.” “That the war in Syria has become the “forgotten war,” he observes, “points to a more disturbing trend in U.S. foreign policy: The United States is so engaged in wars and interventions around the world that a conflict involving the U.S. military that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians does not even register with the American public anymore.”………………………………………
The turmoil in Iraq is less severe, but is still damaging the country. Political disputes and mass demonstrations against the current government regularly surface in Iraq. Pro-Iranian militias continue to play a prominent role in the country’s government, and the three-way split among Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds is becoming ever more contentious. Political violence among rival factions shows no signs of subsiding, nor does public resentment against the presence of U.S. troops. Washington so lacks trust in its “ally” that officials once threatened to seize the country’s bank reserves if Iraqi leaders continued to press for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
The level of human tragedy in Libya and Yemen is horrifying. Washington and its NATO allies bear almost exclusive responsibility for the situation in Libya………………………
The latest application of Washington’s meddlesome policy is in Ukraine. U.S. leaders ignored repeated Russian warnings that making Ukraine a NATO member or even an unofficial NATO military asset would cross a line that threatened Russia’s security. When Moscow finally responded to the provocations with an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration opted to use Ukraine in a Western proxy war against Russia.
The conflict has already done enormous damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and taken thousands of lives. Worse, Washington and London appear to have sabotaged a possible peace accord between Moscow and Kiev.
The U.S. foreign-policy record over the past three decades could hardly be worse. It is crucial not to let policymakers and their media mouthpieces get away with convenient collective amnesia and imitations of Pontius Pilate. Instead, they need to be held fully accountable for their blunders and deception.
Future U.S. policymakers also need to avoid repeating the faulty performance of their predecessors. To do so, they must make three significant changes to U.S. foreign policy.
First, Washington should utterly renounce nation-building. Trying to remake alien societies by force and impose Western political, economic, and social values is the essence of folly.
Even when the United States has not yet been drawn into a new war to enforce crumbling nation-building goals, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, such armed social experiments are an exercise in futility and frustration. Worse, nation-building missions frequently worsen conditions in the targeted country, and the predictable failure of U.S. objectives even can lead to Washington’s outright humiliation. The debacle in Afghanistan is a stark reminder of that danger.
Second, the United States must avoid the temptation to engage in regime-change wars. Such offensives often are a prelude to disastrous nation-building ventures. That was the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Those wars not only made matters worse for the populations in the three countries, but worsened the security situation for neighboring states and even the United States. In both Iraq and Libya, U.S. actions toppled secular dictators, paving the way for chaos that strengthened the position of Islamic jihadists. Granted, the secular dictators were brutal and sometimes caused problems for the United States, but Washington’s “solution” clearly made matters worse, not better.
Third, U.S. leaders must do a much better job of distinguishing vital national interests from secondary or peripheral ones. Washington’s current policy of using Ukraine as a proxy for a war against Russia is a troubling example of the failure to make such basic distinctions. The Biden administration is risking nuclear war with Russia to assist a corrupt, authoritarian regime in a country of little importance to the United States.
Until the early 1990s, Ukraine wasn’t even an independent country, much less a U.S. vital interest. To accept the risks the Biden administration is incurring is irresponsible and violates the U.S. government’s responsibility to the American people.
Unless these policy changes are made, it is just a matter of time until a new set of officials repeat the disastrous blunders of their predecessors. If they do, the consequences to America and the world will be equally damaging. Indeed, the Ukraine adventure reveals that the consequences could be even worse than the wreckage already wrought by Uncle Sam. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/uncle-sams-long-trail-of-wreckage/
Eva Bartlett describes Ukraine’s unspeakable genocide of Donbass FULL INTERVIEW (Graphic Content Warning)”
Interview I did on Redacted on September 22.
**Warning: This video contains graphic images of civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling of completely civilian areas of Donetsk.**
Quinbrook bags huge profit on sale of US wind, solar and battery company — RenewEconomy
Australia’s Quinbrook has locked in big profits from the sale of a US wind, solar and storage company it bought as a start-up five years ago. The post Quinbrook bags huge profit on sale of US wind, solar and battery company appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Quinbrook bags huge profit on sale of US wind, solar and battery company — RenewEconomy
September 30 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “The hurricane problem Florida could have avoided” • After Hurricane Andrew, thirty years ago, Florida got new building codes. They may have somewhat protected against damage and enhanced survivability, but other disaster factors, such as rapid population growth and climate change, have tipped the disaster scale in the wrong direction. [CNN] Housing in […]
September 30 Energy News — geoharvey
India makes sure that China withdraws proposal against AUKUS nuclear submarines plan at IAEA
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/china-withdraws-proposal-against-aukus-nuclear-submarines-plan-at-iaea-122100100002_1.html 30 Sept 22, China withdraws proposal against AUKUS nuclear submarines plan at IAEA, China withdrew a draft resolution at the IAEA against the AUKUS grouping seeking to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines following India’s objective view on the issue, sources said.
China on Friday withdrew a draft resolution at the IAEA against the AUKUS grouping seeking to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines following India’s objective [?] view on the issue, sources said.
China tried to get the resolution passed at the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which took place in Vienna from September 26 to 30.
The AUKUS (Australia, the UK and the US) security partnership announced in September last it would facilitate Australia getting technology to build nuclear-powered submarines.
The sources said India’s “deft and impactful” diplomacy was deeply appreciated by IAEA member states, particularly the AUKUS partners.
Canada and the International Fools-Based Order
https://worldbeyondwar.org/canada-and-the-international-fools-based-order/?utm_content=buffer7ff3e By Cymry Gomery, Coordinator, Montreal for a World BEYOND War, September 21st, 2022
Statement for World Peace Day, September 21st, 2022
On September 18, 2022, Canadian Minister of National Defence Anita Anand was interrupted as she made a speech promoting Canada’s participation in the war in Ukraine. Caught by surprise when an activist raised a banner with the words, ”Trudeau, Freeland, Anand, Joly : Stop the War – Peace with Ukraine and Russia” Anand invoked the NATO mantra: ”We are defending…. we are defending the International rules-based order to protect you, and everyone in this room, and our country safe [sic] ”
What is this rule-based order that politicians seem to call on whenever they are promoting war?
Some say that the rules-based order is only a vague concept invented by G7 countries to lull us into accepting their presumptive international hegemony. Nonetheless, there is a formal international body that sets rules: the United Nations. And, when it comes to war, or the potential for war, Chapter VI of the UN Charter enjoins all countries to seek to resolve their disputes through peaceful means. If this doesn’t work, they are to refer it to the UN Security Council (UNSC), which could recommend solutions.
But what if countries are considering war and they know in advance that the UNSC would not offer a resolution in their favor, because of their self-serving motives? Take, for example, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, widely considered to be a U.S. proxy war. However, not only the U.S., but also Europe, Canada, Australia and China—just about everyone with an army–has economic interests in this war, which can be seen as a geopolitical tug-of-war for valuable commodities like lithium, gas, and wheat.
How do Canadian interests stand to benefit from the Russia-Ukraine war? It is already happening :
- Canada increased oil and gas exports in 2022 as Russia’s former customer nations sought alternative energy supplies;
- The US, EU, Canada, Australia, China, and Russia are all very interested in the Lithium deposits in Ukraine, which are among the largest in the world. The outcome of this war determines which players nab the market for this key climate-change era mineral.
- Before the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia was expected to become one of the world’s largest exporters of hydrogen, and was poised to supply hydrogen fuel to Germany. However, Russia is now faced with economic sanctions and the unwillingness of the world’s most powerful nations and largest economies to do business with Russia. All this appears very convenient for Justin Trudeau and his government, who can now scoop up hydrogen exports to the EU.
So, how can we really keep a straight face when Anand invokes the International Rules-based order? Perhaps we should call it what it really is, an attempt to hoodwink the gullible public into thinking the Canadian government is sending weapons to Ukraine for altruistic, morally sound reasons, when in fact the Liberals are just doing what they do best : looking after the ”economy” (read corporate profits) and protecting their own assets.
On this International Day of Peace, we will put on our good faith hat (not to be confused with a fools cap) and respectfully ask the Canadian government to take these measures :
As the image below suggests, (Anand’s comment about our safety notwithstanding), defense spending is more indicative of a nation’s geopolitical aggressiveness than its concern for the well-being of its citizens.
The Canadian government (our representatives, in case they forgot) could use the money thus saved to implement the Green New Deal and basic income, to address climate change, to build houses, to protect Canada’s remaining wild spaces, to make national parks into Indigenous protected areas, and so much more.
We will need a nationwide consultation to decide on how best to spend this money creatively, in a life-affirming way, which is something we are not yet that experienced doing. But I am sure we will manage.
So, on this day dedicated to world peace, let’s chart a new course. Let us repudiate a foolish, nihilistic world order predicated on militarism and destruction, and vow henceforth to champion and advance a hopeful, loving world order that outlaws war.
New Zealand Calls It Quits On Aiding Ukraine’s Military
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/new-zealand-calls-it-quits-aiding-ukraines-military BY TYLER DURDEN, WEDNESDAY, SEP 28, 2022.
At a moment Washington continues what’s essentially an endless arms and financial aid pipeline to Ukraine, and as some defense officials express concerns over the Pentagon’s own dwindling stockpiles, one country says it’s giving up on arming Kyiv.
New Zealand, which is one of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partners which includes the US, now says it can no longer keep up with supplying what Ukraine is asking for without depleting its stockpiles.
“The New Zealand government has expanded sanctions on key Russians, but cannot provide further military assistance as it has nothing Ukraine wants,” The Canberra Times reports Tuesday.
Defense Minister Peeni Henare said his country stands “ready to provide further lethal aid if Ukraine’s needs matched its stockpiles.”
The top defense official then confirmed it is currently the case that the military cannot keep up:
Asked on Tuesday whether New Zealand had considered further military support, Mr Henare said the requests didn’t match “on our current assessment and according to the requests in the donor meetings I’ve been on”.
“On those donor calls, they’ve come asking and it’s for HIMARS, land-to-air defence systems and also land-to-sea defence systems,” he said.
So far, New Zealand’s contribution has been meager – given also it’s a tiny Pacific island nation – compared to European countries, and has been focused on defensive equipment such as body armor.
“If they were things we were to procure, they would take years but that hasn’t stopped us providing military aid,” PM Jacinda Ardern commented this week on the logistical challenges in procuring and then shipping weapons abroad.
But as a major non-NATO ally of the United States and major intelligence-sharing partner, New Zealand is without doubt assisting the US mission in support of Ukrainian forces in this arena. It is also vowing more sanctions, and has typically signed off on whatever fresh US and EU anti-Russia sanctions are rolled out.
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 