02/10/2025 | 17:19:24 Distinguished guests and colleagues, This report wants to be a manual for revitalising political parties. It speaks with admirable civility about youth engagement, transparency and digital primaries. It reads very well on paper. It would make a lovely brochure. It would also, I'm afraid, make a terrible defence manual. Why? Because, and here I must be blunt, it studiously refuses to look at the largest and most dangerous elephant in the room. The deliberate capture and weaponisation of... 01/10/2025 | 19:00:41 Dear Mister Chairman, Dear Mister rapporteur, What entertains me for some time already is the fact that the Russian political elite, the current Russian political elite of Vladimir PUTIN's regime, the elite considers itself to be the pinnacle of democracy, that shows off by having staged elections for some reason, keeping their money in Swiss banks, their children in British schools, their yachts in the French Riviera, and so on and so forth. Why not keep it all in Russia? Why not keep all... 01/10/2025 | 17:32:27 Thank you dear Chair, I would like to thank Lord Richard KEEN for his brilliant work and a brilliant report, together with his team. I think that this is one of the boldest attempts to return the practical weight of this Parliamentary Assembly in global politics, not just from the philosophical side, not just from the side of values, not just from the side of theoretical debates, but from a very practical and material side. If this Commission were to start working, that would mean that this... 24/06/2025 | 17:54:14 Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. I would like to start with a quote: "There's an old rule that wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that's ours". These are the words of Vladimir PUTIN said on 20 June 2025 – four days ago – at an economic forum in Saint Petersburg. Another quote, and I draw the attention of one of the rapporteurs, the highly esteemed Mr KROSS, as an Estonian citizen: "Should Russia actually invade Estonia, the alliance clause in Article 5 applies. If it's a relatively small... 09/04/2025 | 12:47:00 Dear Minister Bettel, thank you for your consistent support for Ukraine and for standing up for us. It's a true pleasure. Just days ago, a Russian missile strike killed nine children playing on a playground in Kryvyi Rih. It’s a tragedy that begs for justice. The ICC has issued a warrant for Mr Vladimir PUTIN, but we know that without a dedicated tribunal for the crime of aggression, a major gap remains. And the EU and the Council of Europe have endorsed the creation of such a tribunal, but... 08/04/2025 | 19:04:34 Mister President, Dear colleagues, Unfortunately, this report, along with its recommendation, does not seem to strengthen the rule of law. On the contrary, it risks undermining it. One might argue that we are witnessing not a principled human rights work, but lawfare: the weaponisation of international legal norms to undermine legitimate state sovereignty and paralyse legitimate border control. Let’s be honest. Europe’s borders are under attack, and not by migrants per se, but by regimes that... 03/10/2024 | 11:33:48 Dear President, thank you very much, dear colleagues, for this report, to Mr Knut ABRAHAM, to Lord Richard KEEN. The report reminds us that there has been no repentance, no repentance throughout history for all the crimes committed by Russia, the Russian Empire, the USSR, whatever it has been called throughout history. What matters is that the spirit stays the same. An imperial colonial spirit, an autocratic spirit, a spirit that was driven by destruction, by death. And the Holodomor... 02/10/2024 | 17:32:10 Esteemed Chairman, esteemed colleagues Mariia, thank you very much for this report. It's extremely important that this honorary Assembly becomes the voice of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians, and not just Ukrainians, people who are on the side of Ukraine, whose work, voices otherwise will never be heard, because we might never hear from them again. And this is precisely what we should avoid doing. Like the voice of Oleksandr ANTONENKO, who has been freed just a couple of days ago. He spent... 02/10/2024 | 16:18:51 Dear colleagues, dear President, I would like you to forget for a moment that this has anything to do with a specific person, specific country, or a specific political group. This has to do with something that has been announced here by a previous speaker, and he said it very precisely. It's about setting a pattern. It's about setting a pattern. It's about creating a precedent. And this is why we should deal with this with utmost care. We should be extremely careful in how this vote will be... 13/10/2022 | 11:32:05 Thank you very much. Dear Mr Chairman, Thank you, dear Mr Emanuelis ZINGERIS for your brilliant work I think you have done with this report. I am sorry to say that at 11 o'clock Strasbourg time, my mother just told me that in a small village 20 kilometres from Kyiv, where they live, an Iranian Shahed drone sent by Russia has hit a residential building again. Now, why is this happening despite today's address, yesterday's resolution by the United Nations and all other steps that the...