It is an honour and a privilege to be able to address you today. The European Parliament is not only a great house of European democracy; it has also been my political base for four years. So here I feel at home, among friends.
#Estonia #Kallas #NATO #Ukriane #Russia #war
Sadly, our fellow Europeans in Ukraine cannot say the same. They are fighting for their homeland, for their loved ones, their freedom to choose their own destiny. The Ukrainian armed forces are putting up a fierce resistance that President #Putin did not expect.
Ordinary people are on the streets showing the flag to the invading army, inviting them to go home. Ukrainian farmers have become famous for towing captured tanks back home. One story circulating on social media even speaks of a woman who downed a Russian drone from her balcony by throwing a jar of pickles at it. (She contested that it was actually pickled tomatoes) “How,” asks the commentator, “did they expect to occupy this country?”
At the same time, many others are streaming across borders—over 2 million have reached safety in the European Union.
These refugees will keep coming. In the words of one humanitarian worker, “in a conflict, always watch which way the refugees are going.” In the current war, they are headed for the EU, not Russia.
Putin's war is an act of raw military aggression against an independent and sovereign country that wants nothing more than to fulfil its own European dream. The aim is to terrorise civilians. We have seen it before in Grozny and Aleppo: kindergartens, hospitals, residential buildings are targeted, in contravention of international humanitarian law.
You have been doomscrolling on your phones just like I have. So I do not need to tell you of the atrocities taking place now, everyday, in places like Kharkiv, Mariopul as well as Kyiv, where many people are without water, electricity, food.
Putin’s war has also left ordinary Russians without access to the truth, they are living in isolated infospace. We thought that in times when we have the internet, this is no longer possible. But it is. Our task is to break this wall of lies. It is a complicated task, we need to mobilize our technological potential to win the war for truth. And it goes without saying that global Internet platforms have a huge role to play.
If you allow me Madam President, I would also like to address the Russian people directly.
Dear Russian friends, the European Union is not acting against you. Our measures are intended to isolate President Putin and his government, which is conducting a brutal war against Ukraine. You are now seeing only the beginnings of a deprivation which will become much worse as our sanctions kick in. Your government is already instituting practices that are familiar to me from the Soviet times. Like censorship. Like threatening journalists with 15-year prison sentences for speaking about the war. Like rationing of foodstuffs. Like asking teachers to report on the political sympathies of their pupils and their parents. Global companies are pulling out of Russia, airlines are no longer flying, you can no longer use your VISA and Mastercards.
None of this is directed against you. It is directed against President Putin and his government. We understand that it hurts you, as it also hurts us.
It hurts you because autocrat does not care for the people, he only cares for his power. That is something that is so hard to understand in the democratic world.
Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitri Muratov called this a question between, and I quote, “people for the state, or the state for the people.”
Dear Russian friends, we continue to hope for a democratic and stable Russia that is respectful of its neighbours and is governed by the Rule of Law.
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Madam President, dear Members,
Since the 24th of February, which coincidentally was the 104th anniversary of Estonia’s independence, the world has changed. President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a period of insecurity on our continent that we have not seen since 1939. And like we saw after the Second World War, our world will not return to the status quo ante.
Russia’s relationship with the outside world will be different.
How to restore the trust in respecting international law and order? European attitudes toward security will be different and our institutional set-ups will need to adjust. And we might just have re-discovered what the liberal, international rules-based-order was all about in the first place.
In short, we will, in the future, speak of the Before Times and the After Times.
The free world has already begun to respond. And the European Union has been at the forefront of this response. Which itself is a welcome change. The EU is not normally seen to be a particularly nimble organisation. But in terms of security, we have changed more in the last couple of weeks than during the previous thirty years.
[ Ссылка ] #eudebates
