The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, yesterday made no secret of his criticism of his United Podemos partners for their opposition to sending arms to Ukraine, while the Minister for Social Rights, Ione Belarra, called the PSOE a “party of war”.
Both public acts served to highlight the differences within the coalition government, and even within the Podemos party, because while the socialists closed ranks around their leader, Pedro Sánchez, in Unidas Podemos, the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, and the Minister for Universities, Joan Subirats, distanced themselves from the criticism of the head of the government.
Sánchez used his speech at the extraordinary meeting of the PSOE’s Federal Committee to address the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the measures adopted by the European Union to stress that it is necessary to distinguish who is the aggressor and who is the victim, and that he believes that, with its actions, the government is on “the right side of history”.
He recalled that it had been 11 days since Putin invaded Ukraine in an “unjust and unjustified” manner, and stressed that the “savage aggression” came from the Russian President, of whom he said that, while the international community was engaged in diplomacy, “the aggressor was preparing the aggression”.
For this reason, without expressly quoting Unidas Podemos, but in a response that was aimed at his government partners for their opposition to sending arms to Ukraine, he stated that “there has been no lack of diplomacy, what has been left over is aggression”.
The PSOE leader affirmed that his party is opposed to all wars, and even more so when they are “unjust and illegal”, which is why they opposed the Iraq war in 2003 and now oppose “Putin’s war”. Thus, he said, they have opposed and will continue to oppose any “imperialist aggression”, no matter which empire promotes it. “Our credibility depends on that,” he said.
He also stated that their conscience is “raw” because of the suffering of the Ukrainian people and the images of injustice, and said that the PSOE will never get used to the cruelty of war and as long as the conflict continues it will not disappear from the “forefront” of their conscience.
Meanwhile, during a feminist event on the eve of International Women’s Day, the Minister for Social Rights and Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, widened the gap with her partner in government by saying “to the parties of war that send weapons”, in a clear reference to the PSOE, that peace in Ukraine requires diplomacy.
“The most useful way to help the Ukrainian people is to bet everything on diplomacy”, she insisted.
In the same vein, the Minister for Equality and Podemos Secretary for Government Action, Irene Montero, highlighted what she considered to be Belarra’s courage in defending peace, “at the only time it is possible, which is in war”. Montero stressed that the “only effective and real way to stop Putin and help the Ukrainian people is to defend the diplomacy of precision and the highest politics, as former president Rodríguez Zapatero used to say”.
Both ministers advocated negotiation and international observation of the dialogue that is taking place between the envoys of the Russian and Ukrainian governments.
