Putin's orphans in the European Union

Putin's orphans in the European Union.

It is a phrase with multiple interpretations that is interesting to explore.

The most immediate is attention to Ukrainian children who have lost, or will lose, one or both parents in the war unleashed without right, without justification and without scruples by the Russian president.

They are the priority.

The EU is right to adopt an open door policy without nuance, for them, and for all Ukrainian citizens.

The phrase can also refer to the Syrian children who were orphaned by the bombs of the Russian forces deployed in support of the dictator Bashar al-Assad.

It should not be forgotten that for them and their surviving relatives the doors of the EU did not open like they do now.

Multiple circumstances come together to generate the different treatment.

Racism and Islamophobia stand out among them.

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Live the last hour of the war in Ukraine

In another order, less dramatic, but also relevant, the phrase can point to those European leaders who have been orphaned by the conversion into the spirit of Hell of the Russian leader, with whom they had cultivated close relations, sharing some pedestrian pecuniary interests, and others a nationalist-conservative ideological line that wriggles in so many corners of the EU.

The names are remarkable.

France stands out, with a wide range of leaders with a record that is now unsustainable, from Marine Le Pen, who has had to throw away more than a million copies of an electoral brochure for the presidential campaign where a photo appeared from her with Putin, to Éric Zemmour, until recently a declared admirer of the Russian leader.

In Italy Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, is in the front row, historically sympathetic to the Kremlin and who now rejects the shipment of weapons to Ukraine.

"Not in my name," he said, in a curiously coincident position with that of the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra.

Berlusconi has also cultivated a close relationship with the Russian president for decades and Renzi has had to resign from the board of directors of a Russian company.

In Germany there are also figures that look really bad in the photo, such as former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and others that are quite blurred.

On the eastern flank, Viktor Orbán stands out, for a long time attentive to the relationship with the Kremlin to the point of being considered by some, in a sense, a potential Russian Trojan horse in the EU.

The invasion has changed all this.

The immediate effect is the cutting of relations with Russia, which means many things.

Of course, from the outset, the economic impact linked to the spiral of sanctions.

But also a repercussion in the political sphere.

Putin's nerve endings in Europe, with his troublemaking and divisive potential, have been short-circuited.

A dynamic electric current runs through the European project, promoting enormous and positive leaps in integration.

The flash of explosions makes it clear how the journey often ends at the end of the night.

The journey of exacerbated nationalism, of attachment to retrograde and excluding values, of the desire for order over that of rights.

The priority in Europe now is absolute unity in the face of Russian aggression and in support of Ukraine.

It will be good, later, to keep it so that,

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