Two years have passed since 24 February 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

Since that day, the public debate has been poisoned by a bellicose logic that has ended up disfiguring the very face of the European Union. We at Un Ponte Per joined the 'STOP THE WAR NOW' caravans , bringing solidarity to the aggrieved population and strengthening our conviction - demonstrated by the festering conflict - that there is no military solution to the war.

We never called for the surrender of Ukraine, which has, of course, the right to resist the invader. But we have reminded governments to read in full Article 51 of the UN Charter, which states the right of the attacked country to defend itself; but until the UN Security Council, i.e. the international community, has taken the necessary steps to restore peace and security through negotiation and diplomacy. Instead, for the past two years we have witnessed the total cancellation of all acts of diplomacy and the renunciation of politics to choose other paths than that of arms and military confrontation.

After two years of war, more than 14 million people in Ukraine are in need of humanitarian assistance, some 6.5 million have left the country and 3.5 million are displaced. In Russia, Putin is stepping up the repression of dissent and the criminalisation of pacifists - as evidenced by the sentencing of Boris Kagarlistky to five years in prison - while he continues to hide the numbers of soldiers killed or wounded, estimated at around 300,000.

The massacre on both fronts must be stopped and wemust continue to demand the withdrawal of the occupying Russian forces.

From the beginning we have been active in supporting the Ukrainian people in dealing with the dramatic consequences of this war and in defending pacifists and conscientious objectors in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

We have supported Russian activists who have fled abroad in building counter-information and condemnation campaigns against the war to be spread within the country.

Together with our local partners, we now work in Ukrainian schools to strengthen the social cohesion of young people, with programmes dedicated to trauma management, psychological first aid and peace education. We have involved more than 200 schools in this process. The schools themselves have been involved in the production of podcasts, so that the children can tell their stories, with the hopes and wishes of those growing up with bombs in their ears.

With our Civil Peace Corps, we are working on theinclusion of the Ukrainian refugee community in Romania, with a particular focus on women and young people.

In the last 6 months we have continued to support the legal costs of threatened pacifists, such as Olga Karatch of 'Our House', who has been fighting for human rights in Belarus and for the right to conscientious objection to military service for years. Olga is persecuted and faces the death penalty in her own country, where she is considered a 'terrorist'. Just yesterday she was awarded the Alexander Langer prize in Montecitorio.

We join Olga's appeal, launched from a stage in Rome last October: 'The European Union must return to its role for peace, standing firmly for a cease-fire and working for a political solution to the conflict'. Words we have made our own.

Let us stop this self-destructive spiral, let us shout together our NO to war. Only peace is a good investment.