AN AIRLIFT TO SAVE UKRAINE, AS IN BERLIN IN 1948
We believe the time has come to say enough, now, to the massacre. It is no longer possible to watch this massacre helplessly. Enough of this mass murder, this inhuman destruction of a people considered an enemy. Enough.
Appel of the Movimento Federalista Europeo, Endorsed by the Federal Committee of UEF, Online 11 December 2022.
Russia's inhuman aggression against the Ukrainian people continues. Having failed to win on the battlefield, Putin is systematically attacking and destroying the Ukrainian infrastructure, in particular power plants and everything else that can be used to endanger the very lives of millions of people.
We believe the time has come to say enough, now, to the massacre. It is no longer possible to watch this massacre helplessly. Enough of this mass murder, this inhuman destruction of a people considered an enemy. Enough.
It is time for the free world to do as it did for Berlin. After the USSR had closed all access to the city, in order to bend it, the US, France and England created an airlift to bring food, water, medicine, electricity and oil. From June 1948 to September '49, they defied Stalin and supplied Berlin for 425 days. 278,228 flights were made, averaging at one point 1000 missions per day.
The same thing we must build now, for Ukraine, for our honour, for freedom and for peace. Ukraine is not isolated in a foreign territory, as Berlin was then in Soviet territory, it borders Poland, Slovakia, Romania to the west, and is therefore also accessible by land.
What we need to do is to organise an airlift to save Ukraine, so that Russia understands that Ukraine will not succumb this winter or ever. We must bring everything that is needed to that tortured land of Europe, to that edge of our common European homeland: thousands of electric generators, tons of food supplies, clothes and medicine. You cannot challenge Europe at home, you cannot do such monstrous damage with free hands.
That is why the European Federalist Movement, born more than seventy years ago amidst the rubble of war and from the hope for a free and united world, in the name of Altiero Spinelli and the great founding fathers of the United Europe, calls on the European Union, its highest institutions, to organise a massive airlift to save Ukraine and the free world, alongside the military support that is indispensable to counter Russian aggression.
It is time to guard the future, to strongly affirm the principles of peace and civil coexistence.
We should not be afraid. World War III did not break out in 1948, it will not break out now either. Courage Ukraine, courage Europe!