Russian and Ukrainian environmental activists have made a joint call for a European embargo on Russian oil, gas and coal, as children and young people prepare to take part in the latest wave of climate crisis school strikes and protests around the world.
Arina Bilai, 16, of Fridays for Future Ukraine, and Arshak Makichyan, 27, of Fridays for Future Russia, said a ban on trade in Russian fossil fuels would starve its invasion of Ukraine of crucial funds, while accelerating Europe’s transition to clean energy.
“We have now a problem, we have a huge problem. We have war,” said Bilai, who fled Kyiv for Warsaw earlier this month. “The war is happening right in Europe, and Europe is sponsoring it. Europe sends €700m a day to Russia. It’s like fuelling war, it’s exactly like fuelling war.”
Bilai was part of a delegation of young activists from Ukraine, Poland and Hungary who travelled to Brussels to meet politicians at special Nato and EU council summits.
“We are here in Brussels, because we demand [an] embargo,” she said on Thursday. “And we demand strong action [by the] European Union against trading and investment in Russia and investment in fossil fuels.”
Makichyan fled to Europe this week to avoid a crackdown on anti-war protesters after he spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine. He arrived in Berlin two days ago.
He said Europe’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels had financed Vladimir Putin’s repressive government. “Our government was using this money not only to buy yachts [and] build palaces but also for munitions for the police, to beat up civil society in Russia for years, or to arrest us, to kill Russian civil society people. And they are using this money to buy arms for upcoming wars,” he said.
Bilai and Makichyan spoke in an online joint briefing arranged by the Global Strategic Communications Council, a philanthropically funded public relations network that helps climate scientists and campaigners promote their work.
Their call came ahead of plans for a wave of climate strikes on Friday, with activists saying they expected more than 1,000 actions worldwide. A map on the Fridays for Future website listed about 700, including more than 300 in Europe and about 160 in North America, 80 in Africa and the Middle East, nearly 40 in South America and more than 100 in Oceania.
Although events in Ukraine proved impossible to ignore, the protests were slated to march under the slogan “people not profit” and a statement linking climate breakdown with capitalism and colonialism. In Europe, big events were expected in Brussels, and also in Berlin, Germany, where more activists from Ukraine and others from Uganda, were due to attend.
But in the UK, the response to the call out was muted. An interactive map listed 36 strikes across the four nations, but most appeared to be registered by dedicated enthusiasts rather than mass organisations. The Guardian was unable to reach any organisers of UK events.
Thirty actions were planned in the US, with the biggest expected in Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, Liv Schroeder, of Fridays for Future USA, said. She added that mobilising people had been difficult after the pandemic.
The school strike movement started in August 2019 when Greta Thunberg, then 15, held a solo protest outside the Swedish parliament. Since then 116 million people have taken part in 143,000 strikes in 213 countries, according to data collected by Fridays for Future. Three years ago, 1.4 million people worldwide took part in one Friday strike.
