Protesters urge peace in Ukraine and an end to further military spending in Europe

Ireland should be pushing for peace in Ukraine and not “escalating expenditure on war”, People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd-Barrett said at a protest during the European Political Community meeting in Dublin.

Boyd-Barrett said the Russia-Ukraine conflict was “going nowhere” with hundreds of thousands of people killed.

“Young Ukrainians and young Russians are being conscripted into a hopeless war,” he said. “A neutral country like Ireland should be proposing peace and not escalating expenditure on war.”

Asked if Ukraine should surrender occupied territory as part of a peace deal, Boyd-Barrett said: “When this country signed a peace agreement with Britain, we didn’t give up our aspiration to unite this country.

“We did recognise that the military conflict was going absolutely nowhere. The same clearly applies, except on a bigger scale in Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands dead on both sides and there is really no movement. The military road has been a disaster, but we need to look at peace and negotiation.”

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Boyd-Barrett was one of the main speakers at a rally in Molesworth Street following a march from O’Connell Street by demonstrators who are pro-Irish neutrality and opposed to further military expenditure in Europe.

He alleged that 143 Ukrainian residents living in Ireland had to go back to Ukraine to fight in the war.

“They don’t want to fight in a war where they get slaughtered ... that was done to tens of thousands of Irish people in the first World War.”

There was a heavy garda presence along the protest route and demonstrators were blocked from marching down Nassau Street in the direction of the National Gallery where EU leaders along with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, British prime minister Andy Burnham and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney attended a dinner.

Approximately 1,000 people took part in the rally with speakers that included Social Democrats TD Sinead Gibney and the actor Liam Cunningham.

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