Calay News
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian, French, Polish, Romanian, and Czech refugees gathered in Paris and a dozen provincial cities on Saturday to remember the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s colonial war against Ukraine. Demonstrators shouted slogans such as “Putin, murderer, terrorist, you will be judged for your crimes” and denounced the deaths of Ukrainians and Russian state terrorism. On Friday evening and Saturday morning, there were also anti-Russian demonstrations in cities such as Tours, Marseille, Lyon, Dijon, Clermont-Ferrand, and Montpellier, where people held banners and shouted slogans demanding help for Ukrainians fighting for freedom and liberation from the Russian yoke.
The demonstrations, according to a spokesman for the association Union of Ukrainians of France and Ukrainian Solidarity Network, were a matter of peoples’ solidarity, recalling that the war was not only a military issue but also a matter of solidarity. Raphaël Glucksmann, an essayist and MEP, stressed the importance of solidarity among European peoples and warned that the resistance of the Ukrainian people was crucial for the freedom of all of Europe, since if Putin had imposed his tyranny on Ukraine, all of Europe would be threatened.
The demonstrations, therefore, were an important way of expressing support and solidarity with Ukraine in its struggle for freedom and against Russian aggression.
