Ukraine must win this war: Resolution of the VIII Regional Meeting of PEN Centres

We, representatives of PEN Georgia, PEN France, PEN Netherlands, and Catalan PEN, gathered in Kyiv in the second part of May 2024. We travelled to the capital of Ukraine despite Russia’s continued shelling of the Ukrainian lands, its insatiable wish to destroy Ukrainian cities and erase the Ukrainian culture and identity. By gathering in Kyiv, we show that the spirit of solidarity among different PEN centres remains strong and courageous and that the act of physical presence in places in which life reveals its immense fragility, but also immense value, has crucial importance.

We see Russian aggression as directed not only against Ukraine, but against the very idea of culture, with its intrinsic value of the capacity to create, and against the idea of civilisation, with its intrinsic value of the capacity to live together. But this is not an "Ukraine war" or "war in Ukraine"; this is war in and against Europe. Against the fragile but inalienable spirit of freedom upon which Europe’s very idea has been built. Russia is killing Ukrainian men and women, children and elderly; it erases Ukrainian cities and villages, it commits acts of genocide and ecocide. But foremost it is also trying to build a whole new world, where the ideas of freedom and dignity will no longer be valid, and where all human relations will be based upon fear, violence and humiliation. We should not let this world come back again.

We reiterate the crucial importance of the PEN Charter which keeps its validity, even more so during times of war. We also stress that protecting freedom of speech and cultural expression implies protecting the lives of those who speak and create culture. The lives of human beings and other living creatures. When the struggle becomes so existential that it goes beyond a struggle for a simple right to speak and becomes a struggle for the lives of those who speak, our solidarity and our mobilization should become even more intense.

We believe that in this war not only Ukraine is threatened, but also Europe with all its rich cultural legacy. Therefore, helping Ukraine to withstand the Russian aggression and win this war is not a ‘humanitarian aid’ given out of empathy and compassion (which, of course, are of crucial importance) but is an existential act for Europe, which should consolidate all our efforts to defend what is dear for us, and what is dear for our diverse and profound cultural traditions.

Ukraine must win this war.

May 15-18, Kyiv