A year of war against Ukraine

February 24 2022 will forever be remembered as the day Russia started its brutal, unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine.

This remains a case of pure aggression and a clear-cut breach of the United Nations Charter. This war is neither ‘just a European issue’ nor is it about the ‘West versus the rest’.

It is about the kind of world we all want to live in: no one is safe in a world where the illegal use of force  by a nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council would somehow be ‘normalised’.

That is why international law must be enforced everywhere to protect everyone from power politics, blackmail and military attack.

In Malawi, like in most of our African partner countries, the war in Ukraine has caused or exacerbated severe price shocks for imported foods, energy, fuel and fertiliser, hitting economies that had just started recovering from the blows of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The war is a major humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people and is hampering sustained economic development, disrupting supply chains, production and businesses. This renders livelihoods unpredictable.

More broadly, the Russian invasion has underlined the need for both Europe and Africa to avoid excessive dependencies. And it has reinforced our commitment to leverage our partnership to build more resilient and inclusive economies, protect our democracies and strengthen social cohesion.

A year on, there is a risk that people become accustomed to the images of war crimes and atrocities that they see. The words we use start to lose their significance because we have to repeat them so often. Then we get tired and weaken our resolve because time is passing and the task at hand is hard.

We cannot let this happenbecause every day, Russia keeps violating the UN charter, creating a dangerous precedent for the whole world with its imperialist policy.

Every day, Russia keeps killing innocent Ukrainian women, men and children, raining down its missiles on cities and civilian infrastructure.

For the European Union and our partners, there is no alternative to staying the course of our ‘triple strategy’: supporting Ukraine, asking Russia to stop its illegal aggression and helping the rest of the world cope with the fallout.

This is what we have been doing for one year now, and successfully so.

We have adopted unprecedented sanctions; cut European dependency on Russian fossil fuels and reduced by 50 percent the energy revenues the Kremlin gets to finance its aggression.

We are also offering significant macro-financial and humanitarian aid to support the Ukrainian people. This goes hand in hand with continued support to our African partners.

Working together, we are mitigating the global ripple effects with food and energy prices declining, partly thanks to our Solidarity Lanes and to the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

It is not enough to say that we want Ukraine to be able to defend itself. It needs the means to do so.

So, for the first time ever, the EU has supplied weapons to a country under attack. In addition to providing financial and material support, we have decided to respond positively to Ukraine’s request to join the EU.

Finally, we are working to ensure accountability for the war crimes that Russia has committed.

Ukraine has shown its remarkable resilience, partly thanks to this support. And Russia has grown more isolated, thanks to global sanctions and the international condemnation by the overwhelming majority of States in the UN General Assembly.

Our collective goal is and remains a democratic Ukraine that prevails, pushing out the invader, restoring its full sovereignty and, with that, restoring international legality.

We want peace in Ukraine, a comprehensive and lasting peace that is in line with the UN charter and international law. Supporting Ukraine and working for peace go hand in hand.

History and justice are on the side of Ukraine. But to accelerate history and achieve justice, we need to amplify our ‘triple strategy’. This is a collective task.

That is why the EU is calling on all its partners to act in a spirit of joint responsibility and solidarity to ensure that aggression fails, international law prevails and peace is restored.