THE Communist Party of Britain has said it is “time to stop the war and start the peace” in Ukraine.

A peace settlement in Ukraine is long overdue, the party’s political committee heard on Tuesday night, following talks between the US and Russian governments in Saudi Arabia.

The party’s international secretary Kevan Nelson said: “It’s a bit rich for British and EU politicians to complain about their own exclusion from the Riyadh summit when they have spent two years fuelling the conflict instead of trying to initiate a peace process.”

He hoped an agreement to keep Ukraine out of Nato would “end the 20-year-long eastwards march of Nato and the EU to Russia’s western borders” and ridiculed PM Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal for British troops to be stationed in Ukraine as peacekeepers.

“In recent years, British forces have bombed or invaded Afghanistan, Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria in the name of peace, democracy and Western values,” Mr Nelson said.
  
The party reaffirmed its long-standing policy of withdrawal from Nato and opposition to any further EU militarisation in alliance with Britain.