We are not equidistant from this war. We stand with Ukrainian civilians. With the millions of defenceless children, women and men who are now under Putin's bombardment.

War against civilians is the form of all contemporary wars. To fuel its continuation in any way, to turn it into a massacre without end, to the point of the risk of a nuclear holocaust, is a folly and a responsibility that will be borne by those who fan the flames of rearmament, while the Ukrainian people will be meat for the slaughter.

Resistance to attackers

There is the Ukrainian resistance, which deserves all our respect. It is the resistance in a thousand forms of a people who will not give in to the unjustified aggression of a despot who has invaded their country with a devastating army and weapons. An autocrat whom Europe, the "cradle of democracy", has been pampering and enriching for twenty years. In this war, we repeat, there can be no equidistance for us: those who attack and invade with tanks and fire missiles and cluster bombs on cities, homes, universities and hospitals can have no justification. They can never have it.

On crimes against humanity and the right to self-defence

In the bewildering race of criminals threatening this planet, Putin is certainly at the top. Of course, the list of instigators and perpetrators of crimes against humanity is long and varied: from those who bomb children in Yemen with bombs also supplied by our country, to those who finance Libyan lagers where defenceless people are raped, tortured and killed. But one shame cannot be erased by another.

For us, the people in Ukraine and all over the world who are suffering because of all these criminals, all those who are defenceless against the shame and defeat of wars, are brothers and sisters. Those who try to defend themselves as best they can, to prevent the logic of force and violence from winning over every human right, every possible coexistence, have the right to do so. Just as they have the right to flee, to desert, to save themselves and their children, hundreds of thousands of people who in these hours are trying not to become targets or hostages and to reach the European borders. The legitimate right of resistance of the attackers cannot become an excuse for the European governments, which until yesterday were cowardly and silent in the face of Putin's crimes and busy doing business with his oligarchs, to wash their consciences and risk contributing to a further escalation of the war.

Fighting for peace: resisting, defecting, disobeying

Fighting for peace, against war, cannot mean sending weapons without taking courageous political and diplomatic initiatives: European governments must work for an immediate ceasefire and create the conditions for high-level negotiations involving all the players on the ground, offering them guarantees for a new order of possible coexistence in mutual respect, within a security framework that excludes the use of force. Resistance, defection and disobedience to war and its logic is the most difficult struggle today, but it is also the only one that can offer hope for the future of our imperfect democracies, including Ukraine's. The birth of a new Europe, of a new world, cannot be based on the umpteenth bloodbath: that is a road that has already been travelled, and that road has led us here, back to the brink of an abyss. The big arms manufacturers and sellers, who are making a killing while people are dying, should not have the power to decide the policies of contemporary societies, any more than the holders of energy monopolies, who, in order to guarantee their business, have no scruples about any dictatorship or crime anywhere on the planet.

For us, resisting, defecting and disobeying means supporting every effort to silence the guns now: encouraging negotiations and mediations, fighting for our governments to commit themselves to finding a political and geopolitical solution that will prevent the massacre that has been announced. This carnage is the aim of the "transversal party of war", whose cultural model still pursues the tragic illusion of military deterrence as the only system of balance and coexistence in Europe and on the planet. For us, resisting, defecting and disobeying means supporting the opposition and dissent to the war that thousands and thousands of people in Russia are courageously waging with terrible consequences.

Resistance, defection and disobedience means the implementation of concrete actions we are working on to facilitate the escape from war of refugees - all refugees without shameful ethnic or national distinctions - who are trying to reach the borders of Poland and Romania. Overcoming the infamous Dublin Regulations must become the established practice for Europe to welcome all people who arrive at its borders fleeing discrimination and persecution, economic and environmental disasters, violence and war.

For us, resisting, defecting and disobeying means continuing and relaunching the practice of civil rescue at sea in the central Mediterranean to help people trying to escape from the Libyan Lagers and who, like all women, men and children fleeing discrimination and violence, persecution and war, risk being forgotten in the current scenario.

Against the 'realpolitik' of inhumanity

They accuse us of living in a world of dreams and utopias because we do not take the positions of states and military headquarters, because we do not propose solutions that follow the patterns of realpolitik. But it is precisely this inhuman, supposed 'political realism' that has brought us to this point. So we answer that it is better to chase dreams and utopias than to cultivate nightmares and not to listen to any prophecy. We listen and we stand with Pope Francis in the practice of resistance, desertion and disobedience to war. We dream of a Europe that finally equips itself with a common foreign and defence policy, in the sign of the construction of a space that is not only economic but also social and political, transnational, projected towards the Euro-Asian and Euro-Mediterranean dimensions, capable of developing policies of peace and disarmament, starting with nuclear disarmament, of solidarity and cooperation between peoples, in the sign of respect and affirmation of the fundamental rights of human beings.

We owe this to our brothers and sisters who are currently suffering in Ukraine.