PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE explains why opposing war is inseparable from defending jobs, wages and public services – and why readers should come to the London Peace Conference on Saturday June 20
THOUSANDS of peace protesters demonstrated in Athens this week in the largest display yet of opposition both to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to any escalation of the conflict by Nato.
The march from the university area to the parliament had the blessing of the full range of the left in the country: from the main opposition party Syriza, through the party of former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, to the Communist Party (KKE) and forces of the anti-capitalist left.
The KKE had last week called a demonstration from the Russian to the US embassy against what the party general secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas has described as an inter-imperialist war “in which working people are told to choose between rival robber camps.”
While 69 per cent of Ukrainians want negotiated peace, Western leaders are cynically prolonging the war for their own strategic and economic goals, to the immense detriment of Ukraine and Europe, write BOB ORAM and MAGGIE SIMPSON
Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES


