Ukraine's Struggles Amid Ongoing Conflict

Here in Europe, it has become patriotic to keep silent

about,

about what is happening inside Ukraine.

Borders closed to men have turned life into a cage for countless

families. Corruption of colossal scale, a scale you simply cannot

imagine, reaching the president's closest circle,

set against

total poverty, is about to kill the very motivation to

resist

Russia.

The hunting of men, the torture in recruitment offices,

men beaten

to death by conscription officers, and sometimes killed by their own

commanders, all of it resembles a brutal gladiatorial

spectacle

in which ordinary Ukrainians have a single aim, to survive.

Men flee across mountains and rivers.

Our own services pull out the bodies of those who didn't make it.

And ahead lies another terrible winter without heating and without

light. You are told of resilience,

dignity, and unbreakable spirit.

Which of the things I have just described reflects any of that?

To ignore this suffering in the name of grand ideas, to

conceal it behind beautiful words, that is

inhumanity. In dark times, the hardest thing of all

is to remain human. And I remind you again, sooner or

later, each of us will be known by the fruit we

bear

today.