Only the liberation of Ukrainian territories guarantees the protection of human rights and the preservation of human lives. This was stated by Ms.Olha Skrypnyk, Head of Crimean Human Rights Group, on March 19, 2024, in the European Parliament during the discussion: “A Decade of Occupation of Crimea. European security held hostage by Russian imperialism”.
Starting her speech, Ms. Skrypnyk expressed her gratitude, first of all, to all the defense and security forces of Ukraine for their daily heroism. She emphasized that thanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine every shell or tank supplied to Ukraine by the EU member-states was defending the peaceful life of European countries.
Having described all the repressive and imperialist practices used by Russia in the occupied Crimea, Ms. Skrypnyk concluded that regardless of the 10-year’s persecution and the Russian propaganda influence, Crimea had not become Russian, the evidence of this being resistance movements and individual protests of Crimeans.
The human rights activist called on the EU countries to strengthen cooperation in order to develop a mechanism to release and return civilian hostages.
“The political prisoners of Crimea must be released, the creation of an effective prosecution mechanism for international crimes must be supported otherwise atrocities against the civilian population will be repeated, and not only in Ukraine. Only the liberation of our territories guarantees the protection of human rights and the preservation of human lives. Putin himself will not stop in Ukraine, as all democratic countries are a threat to him. Only Ukraine will manage to stop him, and to do this we need the maximum military support of our partners,” Ms. Olha Skrypnyk emphasized.
Therefore, the human rights defender appealed to the EU countries with a request to continue supplying the necessary weapons to Ukraine.
Ms. Anna Fotyga, MEP (Poland), pointed out that occupation of Crimea would have been a wake-up alarm for the collective Wets.
“We should understand that without a decisive defeat of Russia in Ukraine, we will be facing challenges across the world. And not only in our vicinity, in the Eastern neighborhood, but also in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and other places,” the MEP said.
The military power is the only way to stop Russia and return Crimea, this statement was advocated by other discussion participants, too, including Mr. Robert Pszczel, ex-Head of NATO Information Office in Moscow (NIO) and Senior Fellow, Centre for Eastern Studies.
“The previous NATO conciliatory initiatives failed. I was a NATO official for 20 years and worked a lot on the partnership. At that time, it was an attempt to develop a certain form of normal cooperation with the hope of building the so-called foundations of the European security architecture, which did not work,” Mr. Pszczel emphasized.
The event was organized thanks to the support of Ms. Anna Fotyga, a Member of the European Parliament from Poland, who always steadfastly supports Ukraine. The discussion was held by the “Ukrainian Prism” Foreign Policy Council, the Expert Network of the Crimea Platform, ECR Group.
