Candles, flags, monuments illuminated in yellow and blue: several hundred people gathered on Friday February 24 in several French cities to show their support for Ukraine, a year after the start of the Russian invasion.
In Marseille, several hundred people gathered in front of the Town Hall, in a swarm of Ukrainian flags, carrying placards "
all the world stand by Ukraine
" (everyone supports Ukraine) or "
every country is suffering of his illness.
That of Russia is without remedy
”, noted an AFP journalist.
'Terrible war crimes'
This gathering was held not far from the anchor offered by the Ukrainian city of Odessa and repositioned for a year on the Old Port to recall the twinning between the two port cities.
A little earlier in Toulouse, a city twinned with kyiv, a hundred people had gathered near the Place du Capitole.
"
Putin's army has committed terrible war crimes and threatens not only Ukraine but the whole region, Europe and also the whole world,
" Artemiy, a 30-year-old Russian, told AFP. who has lived in Albi since September and prefers not to mention his last name.
Rally in support of Ukraine on Place de la République in Paris, February 24, 2023. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
Already the day before, a flash-mob had gathered 600 people on the Place du Capitole who had formed a luminous heart by lowering and raising the flashes of their telephones twelve times, to symbolize the twelve months that had elapsed since the start of the Russian invasion.
Place de la République in Paris, hundreds of people showed their support for the "
heroic
" resistance of the Ukrainian people in the evening.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: how do countries position themselves in the world one year after the invasion?
"
I have all my family in Ukraine ... and we've been holding on for a year
," Khrystyna Gabuzian, 35, a computer scientist who has lived in France for 13 years, told AFP.
“
We hold on and we resist, and it's so incredible because they thought they were going to take us in three days...
”, she said, starting to cry, overwhelmed with emotion.
In Rennes, some 250 people gathered in the center, in particular deploying a Ukrainian flag of about twenty meters, while lighting candles and chanting "Slava Ukraini"
(
"
Glory to Ukraine
").
In the morning, a hundred people had attended a ceremony in Lille organized on the bridge of Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine with which the northern city is twinned, with the organization of a minute of silence punctuated by the Ukrainian anthem.
"
I believe that the whole world today admires the Ukrainians
," said Mayor Martine Aubry.
“
They are a people of courage, who never gave up despite the horrors.
The city's public monuments were decked out in Ukrainian colors on Friday.
“Infamy for Russia”
In Strasbourg, several hundred people took part in a rally in front of the Council of Europe.
February 24, 2022 "
is a date that will remain marked by infamy for Russia
", declared Thordís Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir, Icelandic Foreign Minister and current Chair of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, paraphrasing the Statement by US President Franklin Roosevelt after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
Ukraine's ambassador to the Council of Europe, Borys Tarasyuk, called for “
more weapons
” to defeat the Russian invasion.
At the end of January, the deputies representing the 46 countries of the Council of Europe, from which Russia was excluded last year, unanimously demanded the creation of a special international court in order to prosecute the Russian leaders, but also Belarusians, considered responsible for the war.
