Fra:
KUBILIUS Andrius [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt:
30. maj 2022 16:18
INVITATION
– Europe’s geopolitical choice: to win the war or to save Putin’s face?
- United for Ukraine
Network - 2 June 2022, 13.00-14.30 CEST (Brussels time) via Zoom
Dear Colleagues,
Herewith, let me cordially invite you to a discussion
“Europe’s geopolitical choice: to win the war or to
save Putin’s face?”
organised by the Global Network of Parliamentarians “United for Ukraine” (U4U). The
discussion is organised in cooperation with the Friends of European Russia Forum.
Today, Ukrainians defend not only their homes and their land; they are dying for the values, on which the EU
is built. Therefore, this war is also Europe’s war. European countries must give Ukraine all the support it needs
- this is the opinion of the vast majority of European citizens across the EU.
Part of the responsibility for Putin’s
war on Ukraine lies with the collective West and European leaders, many
of whom promoted dialogue with V. Putin in different forms and under different titles - from reset to selective
dialogue - for years. Many voices had warned that the lack of robust reaction
to the Kremlin’s acts of aggression
would only embolden it. They were not listened to, neither after the 2008 war on Georgia, nor after the 2014
military invasion into Ukraine. 8 years later, this brought about Putin’s all-out
war against Ukraine and against
the West in general. This war proved in the most painful way that not only was the appeasement approach
morally wrong; it was also damaging to the security of the European continent, since it inspired Putin to go for
this war against Ukraine.
As Russia is losing in the battlefield in Ukraine and starts to face the consequences of both, the economic
sanctions as well as increasing deliveries of Western military support to Ukraine, the narrative of the need to
engage Putin creeps back into EU’s political discourse. Actually, the higher Russia’s losses in the war, the
louder the voices become calling to save Putin’s face not to allow Ukrainians to defeat him and his army, and
even pressing Ukraine to sign immediate cease-fire and concede parts of its territory to the occupier.