Three years have passed since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, three years of relentless war without a single day of respite, three years of Mediterranea Saving Humans' solidarity presence in those territories.

The most credible estimates speak of one million people dead or wounded along the entire front. Over 40,000 civilians were killed. The reality we see is that of people living in refugee camps in Lviv, in informal shelters, or emigrating abroad to escape not only war but also poverty.

Ukraine is a victim of Putin's expansionist aims, battered daily by the Russian war machine, but also gripped in the grip of inflation, poverty and debt. The military and economic aid received has indebted the country for the next 100 years to the US and European countries, including Italy. An endless debt that will be paid on the skin of Ukrainians. The country's reconstruction plan is nothing but the gutting of strategic resources, infrastructure and economy, prey to European and US private capital. Trump has launched the blackmail of rare earths in exchange for aid, simply making what has been going on for three years more visible.

War is an abomination. War is death and destruction, of course, but it is also poverty, hunger, misery, brutalisation of human relations, racism, segregation, hatred.

In these three years we have seen all these things. We have seen everything except the one thing we need: peace.

None of the international actors have ever worked for peace. The columns of weapons that we continue to see every time we cross the Ukrainian border go hand in hand with the decrease in humanitarian aid. But most of all, the international diplomatic effort has been almost non-existent. The Ukrainian population is the victim of the Russian invasion and bombs, and certainly does not find in the selfishness and cynicism of the West the support it needs.

Peace is the only necessity, peace is the only prospect for the future. Not blackmail, not selling out the country, not bombs. Only peace.