kalba konferencijoje "Demokratijos kryžkelėje"

Speech at the conference „Democracy at a Crossroads: New politics and civil society in Ukraine‟, Kiyv, 2015-04-06

 Dear Colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen!

 Let me say, welcoming the Conference, some points in rather direct terms. Step by step, we are realizing the times we live in. It is just a grim beginning of an epoch which in some future will be called the epoch of Putin’s wars. Its time already counts fifteen years, and the third subsequent war is just ongoing against Ukraine.

 Some 200 years ago there were the times of Napoleon wars shattering Europe. That distant epoch of making and remaking the world has left at least one brilliant heritage – the Napoleon Code. „Putin wars‟, entering to destroy all codes, will leave only ruins, if any.

 No effort should be avoided, if it is able to temper and stop the ongoing disaster. Among many talking think tanks, kicked at by the aggressor, is also our Conference, called for and opening here, as one more of those good-will efforts, to prevent the worst.

 Sometimes I wonder why that real war between Ukraine and the instructed and intervening Putinists is not presented properly for international awareness and opinion in figures and pictures.

Where are the lists of Putin’s war victims or „Putin‘s victims‟? - the title of the book would be given by a publisher. Names and dates of victims that perished on both sides – Ukrainian defenders or Putinists, should be carved on.

 Where are photo albums presenting the Ukrainian villages and towns in their calm everyday life before Mr. Putin came, and burned ruins after he did?

 Where is UNO’s decision to name the new humanitarian disaster in Eastern Ukraine with over a million of homeless refugees, its true name? Of course, it should then be followed by a real international aid, not that fake one with unknown content, sent by the aggressor into the areas of his own war, plus using white trucks recalling the colour of skeletons?

 What more to say about so much needed aid for the assaulted by a street hooligan, to enable him, the victim of the assault, to defend himself?

 Ones does not understand, allegedly, that to stop Russian tanks you need something more of helmets and medicine, plus boots not in a pair.

 To urge for reforms is nice, and they are needed, but, please, remember the leader who had said: „Tear this wall out, Mr. President!‟

 No similar word – President, stop the war! – is said today, and what that situation means?

 Hey, there is the result of your fake armistice accord signed in Minsk by the Russian government but constantly breached by Putinists and their suppliers in Moscow, thus extending the list of Ukrainian–Russian victims. Who‘s guilty?

 The President of Russia has said explicitly: „who was beaten, he‘s guilty“. With such a statement, we are back in the Stone Age.

 Normally, it should be seen: armistice accord, when breached again and again, really does not exist. It became a history, so, let‘s talk anew or kill each other without joker’s talk.

 Welcoming the Conference once more, I hope, it may help us to proceed with some realism in the wording about the issue and to open the narrow gates for Ukrainian peace.