THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
Meeting between Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, 1st April 2022
photo: @European Union 2022, Source: EP
We can no longer afford national reflexes
Putin’s war of aggression and its implications for European security and defence by Michael Gahler MEP, European Parliament, Brussels/Strasbourg
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most notably China. Furthermore, Putin’s war aims at a Ukraine that decided to pursue the European path, the path of freedom and democracy that threatens Putin’s increasingly totalitarian system. Accordingly, the community of liberal democracies is called upon to defend our values and to deny Putin a victory by any means necessary short of direct military confrontation.
February this year marks a turning point in European as well as global security. With its illegal and unprovoked attack against Ukraine, Russia’s dictator Putin did not The west was not prepared… only bring war – including tremendous human suffering – back At the same time, Russia’s readiness to pursue its goal by to Europe, but he also endangered the rules-based internameans of force raises for us Europeans the question of our tional order. 77 years after the end of the second world war, preparedness to defend ourselves against possible further Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seems like a dark shadow of a aggressions. We might not always be as lucky as to have an time we all believed had been American president on our side overcome, thus jeopardising who is as committed to defendthe core principle of the internaing Ukraine as the current one. Michael Gahler MEP tional system: the prohibition of This war on our eastern border has been a Member of the Europethe use of force in international therefore once again illustrates an Parliament since April 1999. relations. To prevent an erosion the urgent need to concretely Born in 1960 in Frankfurt/Main, he of this principle is why Russia work for a real European Defence is currently a member of the Foreign must not be allowed to win this Union! In order to achieve it, we Affairs Committee, serves as the war or achieve any gain from it. need to combine the political will EPP Group Coordinator in the Subphoto: private Even partial success of such an of the Member States as already committee on Security and Deact of aggression could encourage expressed in multifold initiatives fence, and is a substitute member of the Transport and Putin to go further and would set with a financial commitment Tourism Committee. a dangerous precedent for others, to such a common European th
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