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UK unions must go to Ukraine to support their counterparts [1]

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Date: 2023-07

I have just returned from my seventh trip driving supplies from Wales to Ukraine to support the Ukrainian miners’ union, many of whose members are currently fighting Russian forces.

These units need military equipment, medical kit, drones, power packs and rations on a daily basis – and Welsh political parties, businesses, trade unions and individuals have stumped up to provide it.

I’m the Senned member for Pontypridd, on the edge of the Rhondda Valley, heart of the traditional coal mining area of South Wales.

Officials from the local NUM and Bectu unions, Alun Davies (the Senned member for Blaenau Gwent – another historic coal mining district) and I drove pick-up trucks and equipment 2,000 miles across Europe, to the mining town of Pavlograd in the east of Ukraine.

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Solidarity means showing your face and demonstrating to Ukrainian miners and trade unionists that they are not alone in fighting Russian fascism.

More than 30 people were injured in Pavlograd in May, when a Russian missile attack hit the town. Yet, when I was there a few weeks later, a strange normality had returned to this predominantly Russian-speaking city in the western Donbas.

Eight coal mines are still working, with the support of 15,000 miners. Employee numbers were closer to 20,000 before the Russian invasion, but 5,000 miners are now fighting on the front line. They have lost 260 men so far, but are adamant they will win.

We handed over the Isuzu pick-up truck to a deputy battalion commander who had come straight from the Bakhmut front where Ukrainian forces are – slowly and painfully – advancing. He immediately took the vehicle back to the front, where it will be used to deliver supplies and provide support to the wounded. He is also a coal miner, from Bakhmut, as are most of his comrades.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-uk-trade-unions-solidarity-support/

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