This next week marks the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The people of Ukraine continue to suffer because of this war. Russia has attacked Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and made drone strikes on Chernobyl. Large swaths of Ukraine are contaminated with explosive remnants and landmines (supplied by the U.S. and others) and tens of thousands of civilians are injured and dead.
Continued war is not the answer. As FCNL and other Quaker agencies stated in 2022, “Justice with peace requires binding frameworks of international law and restorative justice, as well as global investment in violence prevention at the community level. We know that all of these have been insufficient to prevent the injustice in Ukraine, and must be strengthened to win peace.”
President Donald Trump has moved quickly since his inauguration to engage with the Russian government about the war in Ukraine. Unfortunately, thus far his administration has not included the Ukrainian government, or civil society in Ukraine or Russia, in the dialogue.
FCNL’s Ellie Kline explained the state of play. Last week, we learned of a phone call between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin and heard statements by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth which broke dramatically from past U.S. Ukraine policy. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Trump posted insulting attacks on Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Dialogue is good. But a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia must include Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the conversation.
As Ellie put it, “Peace is more just, equitable, and durable when affected communities are meaningfully involved in peacemaking processes.”
Elsewhere
Secretary of Defense Requests Major Pentagon Cuts
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered senior Pentagon officials to make a plan to cut 8% of their budget every year for the next five years. These cuts would pave the way for increased spending on modernizing nuclear weapons, militarizing the border, and new weapons technology.
As an overall matter, FCNL supports cuts to the bloated Pentagon budget. Secretary Hegseth seems to be intending to simply reallocate funds within the same toxic system. We need to systemically change our approach to “choose peace over war and human needs over militarization.”
Gaza Ceasefire Holds; More Hostages Released
The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continues to hold, albeit with tensions. This week, Hamas claimed to have returned the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two small children who were kidnapped in the October 7, 2023 attacks. However, the body purported to be Shiri Bibas’s was found in fact to be another unidentified woman. The Bibas family is a household name in Israel as symbols of the children and babies killed or kidnapped on October 7th.
More hostage returns and prisoner releases are planned as the first phase of the ceasefire continues. Negotiations for phase two, a more lasting ceasefire, are continuing.
Trump Administration Attacks Climate Priorities
As FCNL’s Anna Aguto lays out in this month’s “Inside the Greenhouse” newsletter, the Trump administration has targeted climate and environmental policy and justice in its first month in office. These attacks have a broad scope: freezing federal grant spending, putting funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (P.L. 117–169) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (P.L. 117-58) at risk, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, and freezing foreign aid, impacting international climate programs.
In the past week, employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been under particular attack, with many being abruptly fired last Friday, and some being hired back this week.
All of these actions have serious implications for our ability to address the climate crisis and find the world we seek: an Earth restored.
