Ukraine protest is mainly the success of new peace activists

Also read: Does Putin really want a nuclear war?

Between ten and fifteen thousand people, often young, often born in Russia, Ukraine or another Eastern European country, came to one of the largest anti-Putin demonstrations in the Netherlands so far on Sunday. Remarkable fact: it was not the traditional political peace organizations such as Pax who took the lead. The Complete Unknown Peace SOS of spiritual thinker and pacifist May May Meijer started last week, one of the first peace clubs issued a call on social media to come to Dam Square. “We want peace, love and light,” wrote Peace SOS: “A World In Which All Children Can Play. Feel free to bring hearts and doves of peace. It will be a silent expression of solidarity without speeches.”

So it was not the latter. On the waves of dismay at what is happening 2,000 kilometers to the east, and of fear of further (nuclear) escalation, thousands flocked to Dam Square and listened to sometimes fiercely pitched anti-Putin speeches. “Speaking out is necessary right now, silence kills,” said one of the speakers. All in all, the meeting became more political and somewhat less spiritual than presumably originally intended.

Absent

The peace movement in the Netherlands, or rather: what is left of it, was the conspicuous absence of citizen protests in recent days. Organizations such as the IKV or Pax Christi, which forty years ago got hundreds of thousands out on the streets against the arms race, left the initiative to peace clubs that are active on social media in which many young people participate, such as Migreat and Free Russia NL.

The IKV and Pax Christi largely merged into Pax years ago. That calls itself “the largest peace organization in the Netherlands” and also delivered a speaker on Dam Square on Sunday. Pax is no longer paid from church members’ collection bags, but from large donors such as the National Postcode Lottery and subsidy providers such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Pax’s position on the war in Ukraine resembles that of the cabinet. For example, unlike the small pacifist organization Kerk en Vrede, Pax spoke out strongly against Russian aggression in the neighboring country. “The invasion is unjustified and illegitimate, and the suffering and damage caused are Russia’s fault,” Pax said in a statement. She called on the warring parties to prevent civilian casualties, an important theme for the organization.

The Russia-critical stance fits in with the pro-Ukraine stance that Pax took earlier. In 2016, she supported the association agreement with Ukraine, on which the Netherlands held a referendum. A year later, hackers tried to break into the mailboxes of employees of the organization in Utrecht. The attack was widely interpreted as reprisal for Pax’s Ukraine stance.

‘Putinversteher’

With her outspoken anti-Russia stance, Pax had it easier than other traditional peace organizations. The small, pacifist Kerk en Vrede (1,000 members) in particular did not want to go along with the anti-Russia vote, but was faced with a dilemma. How critical can you be about American imperialism – a long tradition in Dutch peace thinking – without ending up in the camp of the ‘Putinversteher‘ such as Thierry Baudet of Forum for Democracy?

“Of course we struggled with that,” says Catholic pastor Henk Baars, chairman of Church and Peace, who took part in the meeting on Dam Square on Sunday. “We do not want to end up in Baudet’s camp.”

At the end of January, however, it seemed that way. Even before the start of the attack, Kerk en Vrede sent out a concerned press release with the headline: “If Russia doesn’t feel safe, then we aren’t safe either.” It was a plea for “inclusive” peace thinking that could easily be understood as Moscow-friendly. Baars: “That sentence did indeed provoke resistance.” In a new statement from last Friday, Kerk en Vrede is therefore more outspoken about the ‘Russian military aggression’, although the text also refers twice to the Western invasion of, for example, Iraq.

Anyone who might still think that Kerk en Vrede, together with Forum for Democracy, is on an anti-American line, is mistaken, says Baars: “Baudet thinks it is all wonderful what Putin is doing, we are not at all. Unlike Baudet, we want a truce, peacekeepers in the area and a conference on a new peace and security order in Europe like Yalta in 1945. For all that you need the Russians too, whether you like it or not.”

It’s May 1940 again

Pacifists like Baars want to make a contrary sound in what they believe to be a warlike climate. Sending weapons to Ukraine, as many countries now do (the Netherlands sends anti-aircraft missiles, among other things), believes Kerk en Vrede is “throwing oil on the fire.” Nor does his organization share the widespread admiration for Ukrainian President Zelensky’s pugnacious stance. “We do not believe in the heroism of a virtually impossible defense, however noble it may be,” Kerk en Vrede wrote on Friday. Baars explains: “The situation in Ukraine at the end of last week was somewhat similar to ours in May 1940. With such enormous force majeure it is better to stop to prevent more deaths and suffering.”

Church as connecting piece

In all the differences between peace demonstrations then and now, Sunday turned out to be an important constant. Karel Burger Dirven, honorary consul of Ukraine in the Netherlands, appealed in his speech to the Catholic and Protestant churches in the Netherlands. They have to write a letter to the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, sometimes visited by the faithful Vladimir Putin, with an urgent plea to stop the war.