It's our war: this simple premise lacks much of the reasoning we hear these days in debates about European security and how we should contribute, and that's why they're lacking. To understand this, it's perhaps enough to look at Sweden, which captured the significance of Russian aggression and the occupation of Crimea and part of Donbas in 2014. Sweden quickly reclaimed the strategy of "total defense"—which, beyond military defense, meant necessary defense. After the attempted total invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army in February 2022, total defense is now a strategy that has led government agencies, local communities, and civil society entities to develop plans to continue their work in the event of war. Sweden's accession to NATO was not a sudden decision: since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Swedes understood the danger and, since 2017, have reintroduced a form of compulsory military service, which will be completed by 8,000 young people this year. We're talking about a neutral country for more than two centuries and an exemplary diplomatic tradition in the defense of peace and human rights. We could continue to illustrate this with other member states of the European Union: Finland, the Baltic states, Poland...
It's our European war. In London, Paris, Berlin, or Prague, very few have any doubts. Donald Trump's rapid shift in American alliances has left European security exposed. A European and pro-European country like Catalonia should be able to internalize that our model of society—the rule of law and the fight against corruption, union at the European level thanks to multilateralism, the welfare state and care for all citizens without exception, democratic decision-making that includes the possibility of changing government through voting—is the chosen enemy. It's because it's European that Ukraine is attacked. All forms of hybrid warfare are compounded across Europe: planned disinformation, cyberattacks, support for Brexit and for anti-European far-right and far-left parties, with the infiltration of propaganda that distorts everything. From this perspective, the "anti-war" manifestos that ignore the Kremlin's inception are self-important.
On the border of Europe, for three years now—contrary to what almost everyone expected—the people of Ukraine have been resisting. That's why it's our Ukraine war. On the third anniversary of Russia's attempted total invasion, at the Model memorial in Barcelona, the Ukrainian Embassy of the Arts (a diaspora civil society association) convened us. The consuls of Finland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Ukraine attended, along with representatives of the European Parliament and a supportive audience. Where was the Catalan government? Our Parliament? The thickness of Catalan civil society? At the memorial service for the hundreds of thousands of victims of three years of war, we screened the film Culture vs War (Culture Against War), a documentary that gives a voice to Ukraine's cultural figures. Reporters, filmmakers, photographers, poets, actors, and musicians spoke there, defending their country and capable of describing the horror. As I listened, I thought about my writer friends who are also on the front lines or who have died at the hands of the Russians, and I couldn't get the previous Sunday's demonstration out of my mind.
From the European Commission Representation on Passeig de Gràcia, we were marching down the street behind the banner "Barcelona with Ukraine," and I couldn't stop thinking about the absences. Before peace can be translated into a balance of power, or the stability of the system, or debates about military spending, doesn't it perhaps need to become the gaze and gesture of one person for another? Why did so many people and organizations working to stop the war decide, as early as 2014, that their actions would not support Ukrainians resisting Russian aggression? Did they forget that, since Putin came to power with the second Chechen war in 1999, it has been sustained by constant war? Blinded by American imperialism, have they been unable for more than a decade to face Russia's neo-imperialist war? Why, now that Europe has finally taken the step to stop it, are they so disoriented? The proliferation of torture centers, summary executions, mass rapes, the deportations of tens of thousands of children, or the banning of the Ukrainian and Tatar languages in Russian-occupied territories—do they not catch their attention? The manifesto of the 800 organizations is crystal clear from this point of view: it doesn't even mention Ukraine and the daily suffering of its population. While the bombs keep falling, couldn't we refocus the conversation and the action?
