President Petr Pavel spoke to thousands of people. “She didn’t want to (Ukraine – editor’s note) nothing but what we do, make your own decisions, decide your own future and not be manipulated by anyone who wants to rule the world their way. It was not possible for Ukraine, because it tried for its independence, for its independent path, in a time that was no longer as favorable as the time when we succeeded,” said President Petr Pavel on the Old Town Square.
“Ukraine got what President Putin has been saying for a long time, namely that the strong do what they can, and the weak do what they have to,” said Pavel. According to him, if we don’t want to put up with it, we have to take the side of Ukraine, whether we like it or not. “It’s a war against the way we live, against a world in which rules apply, against a world in which even the lesser ones are entitled to their place in the sun,” the president said.
After the president before the gathering, the organizers played a video greeting by British historian and political scientist Timothy Garton Ash, chargé d’affaires of the Ukrainian embassy Vitaly Usaty and actor Ondřej Vetchý, who is the face of the collection for drones for the Ukrainian army, performed. The testimony of a Ukrainian refugee from the city of Prymorsk on the coast of the Sea of Azov and a humanitarian worker of the organization People in Need, which operates in Ukraine. Both thanked the Czechs for their help and support. With a minute’s silence, the participants honored the memory of the victims of the war in Ukraine.
The gathering on Old Town Square is organized by four organizations, namely the European Congress of Ukrainians, People in Need, Million Moments for Democracy and Memory of the Nation. A video greeting from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena has been announced. The event is to end with the reading of the Memory of the Nation manifesto in the form of an appeal to European leaders to keep their promises regarding support for Ukraine. Othe video greeting of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and his wife Olena is reported.
Thank you for your attention to our online broadcast. We will be following everything related to Russian aggression in Ukraine from Sunday morning.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, people, companies and other institutions have sent aid to victims of the war in Ukraine and refugees approximately 2.4 billion crowns in the SOS Ukraine People in Need collection. The director of the organization, Šimon Pánek, said this tonight at a benefit concert at the Karlín Forum, which is part of the Day for Ukraine program. According to him, the organization since the beginning of the war two years ago from different funds helped 1.78 million people in Ukraine and another 200,000 refugees in the Czech Republic.
“While most organizations are only in the East, because that’s where the governments and international organizations want to work, we keep a little distance. We stayed a lot of work in western Ukraine, where there are 1.5 million internally displaced refugees. We help people settle down, open businesses, live normally,” said Panek. In the east, according to him, the organization provides humanitarian aid.
Part of the Ukrainian soldiers returned home today at least for some time as part of the rotation. These are pictures from the railway station in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region.
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Russia, which already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, launched another aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It was initially able to occupy only a quarter of the Ukrainian territory, part of which the Ukrainians recovered. According to estimates so far, the war has claimed hundreds of thousands of human lives, including civilians. The city of Buča became a symbol of Russian atrocities, where about 500 bodies of murdered civilians, including small children and teenagers, were discovered.
