Opposition Leader in Ukraine Natalia Vitrenko Urges the West to Stop Inciting War

The Central Committee of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) issued an Open Letter on Jan. 19, ripping apart the fraud of those pushing for confrontation with Russia on the pretext of allowing the people of Ukraine to “write their own future,” under the title “Stop Supplying Weapons and Using Political Blackmail To Incite Ukraine To War With Russia!”. The letter was signed by the Chairwoman of the PSPU, economist Natalia Vitrenko, who has supported many Schiller Institute initiatives for economic reform over the past decades. It is addressed to the Heads of State of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Poland and NATO General Secretary Stoltenberg, with copies to the Secretaries General of the UN, Council of Europe, and OSCE, along with the Presidents of Ukraine and Russia.

Mrs.Vitrenko begins: “The Central Committee of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, expressing deep concern over the socioeconomic catastrophe in Ukraine, considers it unacceptable and dangerous, for both the citizens of Ukraine and the entire world community, to use political blackmail in inciting Ukraine to war with Russia. Countries of the West, led by the USA and NATO, are inciting our country in that direction.”

More than 15,000 innocent civilians, Natalia Vitrenko notes, have already been killed in the “fratricidal warfare” unleashed inside Ukraine since 2014 by those rewriting history to make “heroes out of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA) collaborationists who abetted Hitler”, and adopting as state policy “the ideology of Ukrainian ‘integral’ nationalism (fascism),” she charges.

“The split in society and deceiving of our population have been intensified by the policy forced upon our country of seeking to join the EU and NATO. In 1991 Ukraine’s sovereignty was recognized by the world community on the basis of the norms and principles set forth in the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which was twice affirmed by our people in nationwide referendums (17 March and 1 December 1991). The legal force of this Declaration still has precedence. That means that the world community…is obliged to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine as a neutral, non-bloc state, committed to a foreign policy of creating a union state with the former republics of the USSR.

“We understand that you, the leaders of countries in the West, do not like that kind of sovereignty for Ukraine and it does not benefit you in geopolitical terms. But that was the choice of our people, as against the false choice of the Ukrainian puppet regime that has been dragging the country towards joining the EU and NATO.”

Peace will only be established, she concludes, “by implementing the Minsk agreements, by recognizing that Ukrainian ‘integral’ nationalism is a criminal ideology, and by the denazification and democratization of our country.”