Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Ukrainian ambassador to the Chamber. We as politicians in this House stand in full solidarity with her country. This building and its roof know better than any other place that every country has a full and unequivocal right to independence and not to be interfered with by any outside nation. We stand in full solidarity with the people of Ukraine, both tonight and in the days and weeks that will follow.

Before I came to the Chamber, I was flicking through television news channels and saw footage of Druzhkivka, a town in eastern Ukraine where children in school No. 1 Druzhkivka were being taken by their teachers from their classrooms and down a corridor into a bomb shelter as a drill exercise. They used to have to do that drill exercise every few years; now it has become a feature of daily life in the school. These are children of five or six years of age, probably in the equivalent of junior infants or senior infants. I abhor what I saw on the news tonight.

Vladimir Putin is the thug of the international schoolyard of geopolitics. He is not bringing independence or peace; he is bringing war, death and suffering to these poor people, including children, in Druzhkivka and other small towns and villages in Ukraine. The last time we saw something like this happen in Europe, eyes turned the other way and things were allowed to happen. I am a lover of history and reading history books. We know how this happened and manifested itself in the 1930s and 1940s. It certainly did not stop in the neighbouring nations to Germany; they went and they went again. Vladimir Putin is hell-bent on restoring the old imperial Russia. He very much has his eyes on the nations that lie to the west of its international boundaries.

In 2002, I had the great honour of studying in the Czech Republic while it was on its way to acceding to the European Union. I studied central European studies and post-communism studies at Palacký University Olomouc. The people of that country, those of Ukraine and those of central and eastern Europe have democratically chosen a pathway in recent years that involves looking westwards, looking towards the European Union and, for some nations, looking towards NATO. That has to be respected. They certainly did not choose to see Russian tanks or insurgents. They did not choose to have Russian military troops taking off their patches, putting on balaclavas and pretending they are some sort of happy peace-keeping group coming in. They are not. They are an invading force and the nations of Europe and the world need to react as such.

Through the years, all bullies become emboldened and push the boundaries more if there is a limp attitude towards them. I have seen that limp attitude in recent weeks. As we have turned on the television night after night, we have seen the European Union say it will wait and see what happens next; it will wait for Russia's next move; and it will wait to see if it invades further. We even saw such an attitude in this country when we actually thanked the Russian ambassador for Russia carrying out ballistic test exercises beyond our exclusive economic zone. We thanked him. That is ludicrous. We should be telling him where to go; not thanking him for moving further out with his vessels. We have also seen it from Sinn Féin. In 2015, when a Russian presence first began moving into Ukraine, there were sanctions at stake in the European Parliament but the Sinn Féin MEPs voted against those sanctions. It is limp attitude after limp attitude. That has only served to embolden Vladimir Putin to the point where tanks and troops are now crossing the border into other nations. Many actors had a part to play in how we have reached this stage.

I wish to mention Belarus. At the moment, it is a puppet state with a dictator president. Like many Members of the House, I have adopted a Belarusian political prisoner. His name is Siarhei Hatskevich. I want that on the record of the House. He is 17 years of age. He should be completing his final state examinations in high school this year. Instead, he is spending his second year in prison. He has missed the funerals of his father, his grandfather and his aunt. A year ago, there were 180 Belarusian prisoners. There are now 283. These are people who were holding placards on the street; they are not people who took up guns and balaclavas to try to bring some moral authority to their streets. These are people who are standing up for fundamental rights. The political prisoner who was adopted by my colleague Deputy Haughey died in custody in suspicious circumstances. We need to stand up time and again. Let there be no more limp attitudes from Ireland, the European Union or western nations when it comes to Russian aggression.

I received an email from Iryna Zaritska, a Ukrainian national living in my community. She stated that the Ukrainian nation is very grateful to both the Irish people and Europe for amassing support and is against any military conflicts. She stated that all Ukraine wants is to be a free, independent and strong European state. People want to live in their own land, admire their history and speak their language.

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