Dear Comrades and Friends!

Capitalism is in a deep, prolonged crisis, and we can see militarist tendencies emerging once more. This is a dangerous situation for humanity while, at the same time, being an opportunity for communists and other progressive forces to confront capitalism and its policies, the threat of imperialist wars and to fight in defence of peace. Not only does capitalism lack any solution to the dangerous crises that humankind currently faces, it is itself a root cause of these problems. Expanding and protecting global capitalism requires massive militarism. The sustained development of militarism and increased military capabilities, the maintenance of enormous armed forces and powerful armament industries, the establishment and expansion of permanent military bases across the world, are all manifestations of imperialist aggression. 

Here in former Yugoslavia the reality of imperialist aggressiveness was shown openly 23 years ago. We must never forget the crimes of imperialism against the people of Yugoslavia. NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia lasted 78 days and resulted in at least 2500 dead civilians, plus 1008 dead soldiers and policemen and more than 12500 wounded. NATO launched projectiles from ships in the Adriatic Sea and four military bases in Italy, all with the support of strategic air bombers which took off from bases in Western Europe and later in the Unites States. The bombing caused damage to 25000 houses and apartment buildings and destroyed 470 kilometers of roads and 595 kilometers of railway tracks. A total of 14 airports were damaged, as well as 19 hospitals, 20 health care centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges, while 38 more were completely destroyed. During the campaign, 2300 air attacks were carried out on 995 facilities around Serbia and 1150 fighter jets fired nearly 420000 missiles to the total weight of 22000 tons. NATO fired 1300 cruise missiles, dropped 37000 cluster bombs. NATO forces also used banned depleted uranium missiles. A third of the electric energy capacity of the country was destroyed, two oil refineries, in Pančevo and Novi Sad, were bombed, and NATO forces used for the first time so-called graphite bombs to disable electrical power systems. There is practically no city in Yugoslavia which was not targeted on a number of occasions during the 11-week aggression. During last two decades Yugoslavia was followed by several other countries – victims of imperialist aggressiveness for instance Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria…

This is why we have to confront today the NATO, which is the biggest war machine in history. NATO is the largest military organization in the world. It is an imperialism’s key military instrument. NATO is an extension of United States military power and acts according to its interests. It was founded in 1949, four years after the end of World War II and six years before the creation of the Warsaw Pact. At the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century, the charade about its proclaimed “defensive character” became even clearer: the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact was not followed by the dissolution of NATO, but rather by its reinforcement. It is now a superstructure on a planetary scale. It is a powerful military organization under the United States domain, gathers three dozen states in North America and Europe and maintains diverse partnerships with dozens of countries in all continents. There is also a need to mark a deep link between NATO and other imperialist international structure – the European Union, the European Union that declares in the Lisbon Treaty its status as the “European pillar” of NATO. From its founding days is NATO an offensive, military alliance and it is always ready to intervene. NATO’s expansion and provocations are directly responsible for the destabilization, tensions, violence and war.

Its clear that also today’s conflict in Ukraine is the result of NATO’s expansion to the East, the NATO and European Union – directed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine’s war of aggression against the people of Donbass, which has led to more than 15,000 deaths, targeted destruction of the infrastructure of the Donbass by the Ukrainian army in almost eight years. The actual confrontation can´t be separated either from its historical roots that go back 30 years, when the Soviet Union social state based on fraternity of nations was dissolved. We continuously emphasise our long lasting demand for a solution of the situation in Ukraine by a peaceful way and insists on the termination of all military operations that are in contradiction with international law. At the same time we bring into attention the fact that the guilty side for the current situation is not by far only the Russian Federation, but the United States, European Union and NATO military pact that are standing behind the Kiev regime. We support all the initiatives leading to the peaceful solution of the Ukrainian conflict. This is also why we strongly protest against the pro-war policy of the contemporary Czech government. We oppose vehemently the sending of massive weapons supplies by Czech authorities to Kiev Regime. We mobilize people against the governmental attempt to establish the permanent Unites States military base in the Czech Republic, against which we already collected enough signatures to raise this issue in the parliament. Most recently we demonstrated this week in Prague against training of around 4000 of Ukrainian soldiers on the territory of our country. Finally, I have to underline one of our principal goals that is the end of the Czech Republic’s membership in NATO. 

Comrades and Friends!

While we demand peace and disarmament and the end to military blocks, we recognise that for as long as capitalism exists the reality of war is ever present. The resistance can only be truly successful if as many people as possible become aware that only an overcoming of capitalism, a path to socialism, can solve the problems.

Long live the international anti-imperialist solidarity!