Hack-G

French-Ukrainian singer Paul Manandise: "Leaders of Europe, I am addressing you from Kyiv. And at the same time, I am addressing you from the depths of my European heart. I was taught, just like you, what the words "never again" mean. I was taught to be proud of a continent that had experienced barbarism, absolute horror, but that emerged from it with values: human dignity, freedom, solidarity, and justice. I carried these values like an inner flag. I deeply believed in Europe. I believed in your oaths, your history lessons, your commemorations, your speeches about human rights. Never would I have imagined that one day Europe would look away while a terrorist regime led by Vladimir Putin commits absolute horror at its own borders. Because things must be called by their proper names. What Putin is doing is not a 'military' operation. It is a war of terror. It is a policy of annihilation. He wants to break a people - my people, the Ukrainians. He wants to extinguish an entire nation, to dissolve it through fear, hunger, cold, and darkness. He deliberately bombs power plants, our power plants, not for any real military advantage, but as collective punishment. So that families shiver from the cold in their own homes. So that hospitals struggle to keep machines running. So that children, instead of learning to read and write in peace, learn what it means to shiver from the cold, from the roar of missiles, what endless darkness means. Imagine for a moment a European child - French, German, Italian, or Belgian - doing homework by candlelight, because someone, out of pure hatred, decided to destroy all your power plants. Imagine your parents in darkness, your grandparents in the cold, your cities plunged into an artificial and hostile night not because of a natural disaster, but because one person, sitting in his bunker, decided to turn electricity into a weapon of collective torture. That is what we are living through. This is not an excess. It is not an accident. It is a strategy. And this strategy has a name: terror. State terrorism. Vladimir Putin is targeting civilians. Deliberately. He is targeting residential buildings, residential areas, hospitals, schools, and vital infrastructure. He wants to kill Ukrainian civilians. He wants to eradicate every Ukrainian. Absolute horror is not only the sound of explosions; it is also the silence that follows them, when a mother no longer knows how to keep her child warm. It is an old man wearing three coats to get through the night. It is a little girl who flinches at every shadow, at every rustle, because for her, the sky is no longer a place of dreams, but a place where death can fall at any moment. In the midst of all this, there is us, the Ukrainians. We resist. We repair. We rebuild. We restore power lines under shelling, again and again. We keep our flags raised, our language alive, our songs, our books, our schools. The Ukrainian heart beats. It beats louder than the explosions. It beats for freedom, for dignity, for the basic opportunity of living normally. But there is another pain. It is seeing Europe betray itself. I say this to you as a European at heart: I never thought I would see the continent of human rights, the continent that honors the memory of the mass graves of the past, hesitate, waver, calculate, maneuver, while the same European people are being tortured, while absolute horror is repeated using methods that your history books described long ago. I was told that Europe is about solidarity. That they don't leave a neighbor who has been attacked alone. That a child who is cold somewhere in Europe is not indifferent to every capital, every government, every conscience. And yet today, as Putin bombs our power plants, systematically destroys our energy system, tries to make us freeze, break us with exhaustion and fear, I see hesitation, compromises, fear of executioner being "provoked too much" - as if what is already happening is not enough to call it a horror. I say this without hatred, but with great sadness: when Europe retreats, it betrays not only Ukraine. It betrays itself. It betrays the lessons it teaches the rest of the world. Because if European values do not apply to Kyiv, if they do not apply to these children who are cold, if they do not apply to those civilians whom Putin is deliberately targeting, then what are they really worth? The Ukrainian heart has not betrayed Europe. It is fighting for it. Every day. Every night. Under bombings. In darkness. In the cold. Our soldiers on the front line, our engineers repairing power lines, our doctors performing surgery by generator light, our teachers continuing to teach in school basements - we all still believe in the values we were taught: freedom, dignity, justice. What Putin is doing is an absolute horror. What history is putting before Europe today is an absolute test. So I ask you, the leaders and citizens of Europe: What do you really believe in? Are you ready to defend what you claim to believe in, or are these values nothing more than words on commemorative plaques and in official speeches? Here, in Ukraine, we have already answered. We have chosen to endure. We have chosen to remain standing, even on the edge of darkness. Now it is your turn to decide whether, in the face of the absolute horror of what Putin is doing, Europe will remain true to itself or whether it will accept becoming a spectator to its own betrayal." 📹 & 🖋: Paul Michel Manandise/Facebook