 Over the weekend, massive demonstrations were organized across different European countries against the war in Ukraine. Protesters demanded that NATO and its allies should stop prolonging the conflict through the endless weapon deliveries to Ukraine. Instead, many stated that the money being spent on this death and destruction can be better utilized for social spending on homes, healthcare, food and fuel for the people. We're seeing all across the globe people raise their voices for peace, almost every nation in the global south, including the ones that make up the majority of humanity. We're now seeing across Europe rising anti-war demonstrations around the cost of living crisis in particular that has been sparked by the war and by the sanctions related to it. So everywhere we are seeing working class people, oppressed people, really everyone who is feeling the pinch of this unbelievable cost of living crisis start to question whether or not the endless fueling of war is part of the problem as opposed to a part of the solution. On February 24th, the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, China issued a 12 point proposal for peace, emphasizing the need for immediate resumption of talks between Ukraine and Russia. In this proposal, China confirmed its commitment to sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries and asked the world community to refrain from any kind of provocative acts. But any such attempts at negotiation and peace have been regularly dismissed by the West. If you look at the Ukraine war and this is a war between really NATO and Russia being fought in Ukraine, we'll realize that the larger agenda that the West had was how to go Russia into a war with continuous expansion of NATO. And this expansion of NATO obviously predates Ukraine. It started with the Baltics, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, a whole number of countries and also a number of design stations being put, particularly Romania and Poland, which Russians are objecting to. And then of course in 2008, the declaration that Georgia and Ukraine should be a part of NATO and bringing therefore NATO virtually the doorsteps of Moscow. Russia objected to that, Donbas as a region had Russian ethnic people, linguistic majority over there who did not want to have a unitary Ukraine imposed on that by which the language identity would also be white top, which is what the post to Maidan so-called revolution brought about for them. The declaration that Donbas region, the identity of the Russian ethnicity as well as linguistic identity would be raised and the fact that whole subset of things took place over there, which led ultimately to the revolt in the Donbas region and if you remember in 2014 that struggle didn't get resolved. It was resolved with the Minsk one Minsk to Accord, which would have promised that there would be a regional autonomy for them, which never materialized instead of which what the dead was, the best did was to arm Ukraine, make it the second largest military power in Europe and hope that by having this war with Russia, Russia would be weakened, the economic sanctions would take Russian economy down and therefore possibly a regime change would take place in Russia. That has not happened and unless Russia's basic arguments regarding what is going to be the European balance of power, military accords, how will they be treated? Will NATO stop expanding further? Will the Donbas region, the Ukraine, within Ukraine the sections which identify themselves as Russian speakers, Russian ethnicity have an autonomy like many other countries, the kind of autonomy that exists for instance in Belgium, Switzerland and so on. Can something like that occur? Those are the questions which are not being addressed completely and in fact the whole, this whole battle, this whole war is being pitched as Russian aggression against Ukraine without addressing the fundamental issue of the Donbas region, the people and also the fact that Russia has a strategic issue that how far can NATO come and when will they to stop its eastward march? The United States, European Union and other NATO members have supplied billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine including tanks. There are talks about the possible supply of war planes to Ukraine as well. The US alone has provided weapons more than 100 billion US dollars to Ukraine so far. This has come at the cost of the rights of the people of the country who now have to pay higher healthcare premiums and continue to incur student loan debt. The opposition to the war and US war efforts is steadily rising in the country. Well over 60 organizations are building here in the United States for the March 18 fund people's needs not the war machine demonstration on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. There is going to be an outwarning of people who are going to be saying no to endless war, no to a proxy war in Ukraine, no to all of this black hole money pit that the military industrial complex has become, fund people's needs, the critical things, housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure, jobs, all the things that our communities are being stuffed up. So March 18 here in the United States, I think we will see the US join many countries around the world and having significant people come out and raise their voices for people.