Good morning.
Good to be in sunny Dublin. We have a lot of discussions on the table today. We will talk about democratic resilience. We will talk about connectivity, all the things that unite us here in Europe and wider European Political Community.
But of course, what is on everybody’s minds is the talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Unfortunately, we do not see any goodwill from the Russian side. There should be a right sequencing first to have a ceasefire so that the bombing of the civilians really stops, and then sit down, talk over the peace agreement, and only then we can talk about peace or security architecture of Europe.
What I want to stress is that we already have a European security architecture in place. It has been written in several documents – if you think about the Helsinki Final Act, the Paris Agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, where Russia has also agreed to the European security architecture.
The problem just is that Russia is not keeping to those agreements. So right now, the focus should be on how we make sure that Russia actually keeps to their obligations that they have taken under several agreements, international agreements, and they do not attack another country again.
But what I want to stress is the sequencing is super important. First, the ceasefire, then the peace agreement, and then any kind of other discussions.
Right now, taking the focus to the European security architecture is actually diverting the attention away from where it actually should be, which is ceasefire stopping the killing in Ukraine.