Speech by Gerald E. Connolly, President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly скачать в хорошем качестве

Speech by Gerald E. Connolly, President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly

The Crimea Platform continues the rubric with the speeches of the participants of the plenary session of the First Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea Platform, which took place on October 25, 2022 in Zagreb, Croatia. This time, the publication is dedicated to the speech by the President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Gerald E. Connolly. In his speech, Mr. Connolly accused Russia of starting a large bloody war in Ukraine. He added that this is a war not only for the freedom of the European continent, but for the preservation of the global democratic regime. "We have been living in war for eight months now. Vladimir Putin is stained with blood. For eighty years, this continent has not seen such brutality with which Ukrainian cities and villages are being destroyed, innocent people who see the Kremlin 'leader' and confidently say: "We are free people." It is not a sin to want freedom. Some people want to believe that despite the bloody war, it is still possible to negotiate with Putin. Tell this to the victims in Bucha, tell this to the victims in Mariupol, tell this to those who died in Zaporizhzhya. Every generation has to come to some kind of truth. Not everyone has been successful in doing so when confronted with it. We have examples of such failures in Europe. But this generation must achieve its goal. After all, something much bigger than mere geography is at stake, democratic values, independence and freedom are at stake. The alternative to the aggressor is the complete suppression of these freedoms. What kind of life do we want to choose for ourselves? We must support Ukraine, stand in solidarity with it, promoting these democratic values and paving the way for freedom. When the generation of our children starts asking where we were when the issue of Crimea was raised, when Russia started its horrific campaign of destruction of Europe and the whole world, I would like to answer: "I stood by Ukraine."