The only way for evil to win is for good people to do too little
On October 24, 2024, Riga, the Third Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea Platform was held in Riga, the capital of Latvia, gathering over 70 delegations, including 36 heads of parliaments, both in-person and online.
The summit participants discussed current challenges related to the occupation of Crimea, human rights violations in the occupied territories, and the international response to Russia’s actions.
ZMINA publishes the speech of Miloš Vystrčil, Speaker of the Senate of the Czech Republic, at the Third Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea Platform.
We need to realise the time in which we all live. It has been eighty years since Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea. It has been ten years since Vladimir Putin ordered the unlawful annexation of Crimea. More than three years have elapsed since our first meeting in Kyiv at the summit [of the Crimea Platform], where we started to strive to de-occupy Crimea. Before that, we were not heard much.
More than two and a half years have elapsed since the invasion of Russia against Ukraine. I am convinced that only then have democratic countries sobered up and realised they had made a serious error.
A part of European countries lived in error. They mistakenly believed that lasting coexistence with non-democratic nations could be secured through economic cooperation, rooted in mutual economic interests.
But we know that it doesn’t exist. Our task is to learn from this mistake and understand that, as Ruslan Stepanchuk [head of the Verkhovna Rada] said, the struggle between democracy and tyranny is taking place today across the world.
We have to support the countries that fight for democracy. And Ukraine is one of these countries. Ukraine is the center of the struggle between tyranny and democracy, and the decisions made here will determine the outcome of this struggle.
We do not realise this in our countries. We are losing battles in economy and competitiveness. Not only that, but we are not good enough at informing our people, who are then influenced by populists and extremists.
All this is in front of us, and we have to face it. First, we have to support Ukraine, support the struggle of Ukraine, because this strugle in Ukraine is also for us. Ukraine’s future is our future. If we fail to see this, Ukraine will lose, and then we will all lose.
An old saying goes that for evil to prevail, it is enough for good people to do nothing. I would be even stricter: it seems that for evil to prevail, it only takes good people doing too little. So please, let’s do more than we have been doing.
Glory to Ukraine.
