JOSEP BORRELL FONTELLES
IT IS almost six weeks since the invasion of Ukraine. We now contemplate the images of refugees, now more than four million, and indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets. Putin's blitzkrieg has turned into carnage. Russian troops, unable to take cities, are destroying them, as they are doing with Mariupol, the European Aleppo.
Ukraine, Putin tells us, has no right to exist as an independent nation. But this brutal invasion does not affect only Ukrainians. Nor is it only Europeans because we are closer. It affects the entire international community, which at the UN has twice condemned, by a very large majority, the Russian aggression and is calling for a halt in the war.
In my speech before the European Parliament, one day before the first vote at the United Nations, I recalled that when a powerful aggressor attacks without justification a much weaker neighbour who aspires to live in freedom, "no one could look the other way." And Latin America and the Caribbean did not look the other way. They responded like no other region in the world. Only four countries abstained and no one voted against. Yes, Latin America and the Caribbean were on our side. But "our side" is not the "European side."
This is not another distant-sounding war between Europeans. The Latin American and Caribbean region was on the side of international law, of the United Nations Charter, of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and in short, of the values that unite us in peaceful and respectful coexistence.
Ukraine has the right to determine its own future, to secure its own internationally recognised borders and to trade and deal with whomever it wants. It is the same sovereignty that the countries of the Americas and the Caribbean treasure with such aplomb.
Ukraine is far away, but the implications for all of us, on both sides of the Atlantic, are the same and equally profound. That is why we have not needed to ask for whom the bell tolls; we know it tolls for us too, and that is why we help Ukraine and sanction Russia. And Putin's imperial and belligerent outbursts, pretending to justify his invasion to "denazify" Ukraine, have not fooled a region where, since 1969, the Treaty of Tlatelolco has outlawed nuclear weapons.
This unjustified war has brought Europeans to agree on the need for a geopolitical Europe. Suddenly, our strategic compass, anchored in a past that had inoculated us against war, has been recalibrated to cope more and better with our responsibilities. This awakening will help us better locate and appreciate our partners and allies. In a world pivoting towards the Pacific, this conflict reminds us of the centrality of the Atlantic, North and South, and its strategic importance for Europeans, Latin Americans and Caribbean people.
Although Ukraine is now the focus of our efforts, it is time for Europe to project with greater force, conviction and pragmatism its commitment to the world and especially to our partners in Latin America and the Caribbean. We do not want to
