Check against delivery! 

Good afternoon,  

This is going to be a very important [Foreign Affairs] Council meeting. We have with us the Secretary of State [of the United States] Antony Blinken. We also have the Ministers of the United Kingdom [Elizabeth Truss] and Canada [Mélanie Joly] and Foreign Minister [of Ukraine, Dmytro] Kuleba, who will explain to us the situation on the ground. 

Today what we see is the ugly face of war erupting again on our borders. The Russians are bombing and shelling everything – hospitals, houses, schools. [There have been] a lot of civilian casualties. This is a barbaric way of doing war. And the UN Human Rights Council will soon launch a mission in order to assess the violations of human rights that are happening in Ukrainian territory. 

This is [President of Russia, Vladimir] Putin’s war and Putin has to stop this war. 

We remain united in order to ask for this war to stop, to stop and avoid killing of innocent people. 

We are providing arms to Ukraine for them to defend their soil, their rights, their nation. We are providing help to the refugees. Already 1 million people have been crossing our borders and probably more will come. We are putting sanctions that are going to really affect the Russian economy, the value of its currency. It is going to have massive effects, as we have already said before. 

So, sanctions, help to the refugees, arms for Ukrainian people to defend themselves; stopping the violations of human rights, and a strong unity among Europeans, and with our transatlantic partners in the NATO framework. 

That is why you are here [Antony Blinken], thank you very much for being with us.  

Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-220002