BERLIN (Dispatches) -- People across Europe have marched to protest against the war in Ukraine. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Brussels and Paris, Berlin and London to protest against supplying Ukraine with weapons.
Thousands of people took part in a demonstration in central Berlin to protest against giving more weapons to Ukraine, urging the German government to deescalate the crisis by paving the way for negotiations with Vladimir Putin instead.
Police estimated there were 13,000 people at the Uprising for Peace, at the Brandenburg Gate, organized by Sahra Wagenknecht, a renegade member of the Links party, and veteran feminist campaigner Alice Schwarzer.
The organizers claimed as many as 50,000 took part. Similar demonstrations took place in other German cities.
In a speech at the protest, Wagenknecht spoke of “the start of a citizens’ initiative” and a “starting signal for a new, strong peace movement in Germany”. She said the demonstrators had been united by the fact they did not feel represented by the government of Olaf Scholz and his foreign minister Annalena Baerbock over their decision to provide Ukraine with weapons.
Protesters carried banners reading: “Helmets today, tanks tomorrow, the day after tomorrow your sons,” in reference to the manner in which the coalition government has increased its military support for Kyiv, initially donating 5,000 helmets and more recently agreeing to send German-made Leopard II tanks.
Other banners read: “Diplomaten statt Grenaten (Diplomats instead of grenades)”, “Stop the Killing” and “Not My War, Not My Government”.
“We are like the slaves to war and the warmongers,” said Norbert, a former soldier, declining to give his surname, who held a banner reading “The real enemy sits in the City of London and New York,” a reference he said to the financial powers who he claimed were behind the war and had no interest in it ending. Germany, he said, had no right to participate in another war, after the second world war.
In London, protesters chanted anti-war slogans as they held banners against sending more weapons to Ukraine as well as Russia. The group later marched toward Trafalgar square.
Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labor Party leader and member of parliament for Islington North, was among the attendees at the anti-war protest.
Dalia Sanchez, an anti-war activist, said that she just wanted to see the end of the war as so many people have lost their lives, regardless of which side they are on.
“I don’t agree with sending weapons [to Ukraine] because, it extends the war,” she said, adding both NATO and Russia should engage in talks to prevent more escalation and deaths.
John Clark, another participant at the demonstration, also said that he thinks NATO’s eastern expansion is not right.
“I am here today just because I think we need to stop war mongers and we need to reconsider what is happening,” he added. “I want to see ceasefire and talk for the peace,” said Clark, adding: “We should be sending diplomats, not weapons.”
Talia, an activist who only gave her first name, said: “The U.S. is manipulating the world for its own interest.”
“I think we should stop sending weapons, we should start talking, because it doesn’t bring us a solution,” she added.
Thousands of Italians also demonstrated across the country in Rome, Florence and Genoa against Western sanctions imposed on Russia and transfer of lethal military hardware to Ukraine.
The protesters chanted “No to war” and “Peace”, demanding an end to the war and urging the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government stop supplying Kyiv with weapons.
Anti-war protesters also held demonstrations in Milan, Italy’s second-largest city, Pisa, Florence, and Lecce among several other cities.
“We represent the majority of public opinion that does not want war but wants peace. We are not only pacifists, we are radically against any war and the goal we want to achieve is to overcome war as an instrument for regulating conflicts between states,” said Maurizio Landini, a socialist in Rome.
In Genoa, people took to the streets and chanted “Exit Italy from NATO”, calling for Italy’s withdrawal from the European Union and NATO. Other slogans such as “Down the guns, raise the wages” were also shouted.
“We know well that the problem is another and it is this system that produces this war. We are workers, students, we are different souls. As the polls also show, there is 60% of Italians who are against the sending of arms and against this military adventure,” said one protester