EU Ambassador to Ukrainians: ‘Europe has stood with you, stands with you, and will continue to stand with you’

“These difficult times are an opportunity for us to not only support you, but also take our security and our future into our own hands,” EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katharina Maternova said in an op-ed published following the Munich conference and ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine.

“For three years, Ukraine has fought daily for the kind of mornings Europeans will wake up to in the future. Ukrainians are not only defending their homeland. They are defending the freedom of all of Europe,” Mathernova wrote.

She also expressed her alarm at the statements made at the Munich 2025 conference. To her, who was born in former Czechoslovakia, Munich holds a deep resonance.

“In 1938, through the Munich Agreement, European powers attempted to prevent the war by ceding Western Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. The infamous blueprint for ‘about us without us’. We know how it ended. In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, Vladimir Putin made a troubling speech, framing NATO expansion as a hostile act against Russia. He made his intentions clear, signalling his departure from the West. We did not take his words seriously,” Mathernova said. “Now, at Munich Security Conference 2025, we learned that Europe may be absent from the table where decisions about Ukraine’s fate — and by extension, the future of European security architecture — will be made.”

At the same time, she highlighted the strong commitment of the EU leadership, voiced in Munich, to continue its support for Ukraine: “Europe has stood by you, stands by you, and will continue to stand by you.”

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