Al Gore: 'We have to deal with the democracy crisis in order to solve the climate crisis', SF Climate Week keynote - 2025

21 April 2025, San Francisco, California, USA

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, thank you. I appreciate that fulsome and overly generous introduction. Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate that, Evan. To all of your colleagues at Climatebase, what a terrific organization. I really appreciate it.

I want to thank Morgan Campbell and all of her colleagues for organizing what I know is going to be an extremely exciting week of events. I looked at the lineup, it’s incredible what you all have got in store. Thank you very much for the energy and passion and enthusiasm. That’s what it needs. This is a time to double down and triple down, and that’s what we’re doing.

I also want to thank the Exploratorium team for hosting us here tonight. I’ve been here before; it’s a great organization. Thank you very much.

I especially want to acknowledge the presence here of my dear friend, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. She’s – she gets a little embarrassed when I use this phrase, but everybody’s using it – the greatest Speaker of the House of Representatives in the history of the United States.

And I want to acknowledge Paul Pelosi, who is my dear friend, thank you.

Nancy, you and I have attended a lot of events over the years where we will hear this person or that person described in a grand, enthusiastic way. And sometimes, there have been times when I think, “well, that’s a little bit over the top.” But that’s not the case with Nancy Pelosi. She is the absolute greatest and best, and thank you very much.

And I want to acknowledge a rookie public servant who is only three months into the job, Mayor Daniel Lurie. You are doing a great job. I remember when I was three months into my first job as an elected official as a member of the House. You can tell early on, and I’ve been getting such great reports from my friends all over the city and all walks of life, every parts of the city. So, keep it up, keep it up. We’re for you, we’re for you.

And I want to acknowledge, if you’ll let me, acknowledge two organizations that are very, very important to me. There is a group of climate leaders trained by The Climate Reality Project’s Bay Area Chapter, and I appreciate you guys being here. One is here from the first 50 that were trained, oh gosh, 20 years ago.

And I’m very grateful to my partner, Colin Le Duc, and our team from Generation Investment Management, which is based here in San Francisco for the US headquarters. Generation is the sustainable investment firm that I co-founded with Colin and David Blood and four other partners back in 2004. We have been here since 2017, and San Francisco is such an important hub for Generation, because we fully recognize the absolutely unique role that the Bay Area plays in shepherding the transition to a sustainable economy.

There is a distinct and diverse blend here of innovators, entrepreneurs, academics, investors, policy leaders, and executives who are dedicated to saving the climate and dedicated to implementing sustainability solutions. And in fact, many of the most successful investments we’ve made in our 21-year history have been right here in the Bay Area. That won’t come as a surprise to you.

It’s great to be in the presence of so many friends and colleagues and to be a part of this great community this evening.

Before I launch into my remarks here, I want to pause to acknowledge the loss last night of one of the most powerful moral voices our world has ever heard: Pope Francis. His humble and historic leadership for social and economic justice, and especially on the climate crisis, fueled a moral movement that continues to light the way forward for humanity.

His encyclical, Laudato Sí’, remains the single most inspiring text on the climate crisis that I have read. I fully recommend it if you have not read it. It’s long, it’s very tightly organized, it’s very deep in its analysis and its moral power, and I urge everyone to read it.

And his moral teaching is especially important right now in our nation because, as we have seen in the past few months, the climate movement in the United States is under attack.

It is abundantly clear, after only three months and one day, that the new Trump administration is attempting to do everything it possibly can to try to halt the transition to a clean energy future and a deep reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, basically 80% of it.

Many of you here today have likely felt the chilling effect of the policies and the rhetoric coming from Washington, D.C. and what the effect has been on businesses and investors and far beyond.

The Dow Jones, of course, today fell another thousand points and since Donald Trump’s inauguration it’s gone down six thousand points. But while the most visible impacts of what the new administration is doing may be in the market for stocks and bonds, that’s not the only thing that he has caused to crash.

The trust market has crashed.

The market for democracy has taken a major hit.

Hope is being arbitraged in the growing market for fear.

Truth has been devalued and confidence in U.S. leadership around the world has plummeted.

We are facing a national emergency for our democracy and a global emergency for our climate system.

We have to deal with the democracy crisis in order to solve the climate crisis.

The scale and scope of the ongoing attacks on liberty are literally unprecedented. With that in mind, I want to note before I use what is not a precedent, I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it.

But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil, and here is one that I regard as essential. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a small group of philosophers who had escaped Hitler’s murderous regime returned to Germany and performed a kind of moral autopsy on the Third Reich. The most famous of the so-called Frankfurt School of Philosophers was a man named Jurgen Habermas – best known, I would say. But it was Habermas’ mentor, Theodor Adorno, who wrote that the first step of that nation’s descent into Hell was, and I quote, “the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.” He described how the Nazis, and I quote again, “attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.”

The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality. They say Ukraine attacked Russia instead of the other way around, and expect us to believe it! At home, they attack heroes who have defended our nation in war and against cyberattacks as traitors.

They say the climate crisis is a “hoax” invented by the Chinese to destroy American manufacturing.

They say coal is clean.

They say wind turbines cause cancer.

They say sea level rise just creates more beachfront property.

Their allies in the oligarchic backlash to climate action argue that those who want to stop using the sky as an open sewer, for God’s sake, need to be more “realistic” and acquiesce to the huge increases in the burning of more and more fossil fuels (which is what they’re pushing), even though that is the principal cause of the climate crisis.

You may not be surprised to learn that this propagandistic notion of “climate realism” is one that the fossil fuel industry has peddled for years.

The CEO of the largest oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco has said “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.”

His colleague, Exxon CEO Darren Woods, has claimed that “the world needs to get real. … The problem is not oil and gas. It’s emissions.”

The American Petroleum Institute says that we need “a more realistic energy approach” – one that, you guessed it, includes buying and burning even more oil and gas.

So, allow me to put this question to all of you: What exactly is it that they want us to be realistic about?

Their twisted version of “realism” is colliding with the reality that humanity is now confronting.

The accumulated global warming pollution (because these molecules linger there on average about 100 years and it builds up over time), it’s trapping as much extra heat now every single day as would be released by the explosion of 750,000 first generation atomic bombs blowing up on the Earth every single day!

Is it realistic to let that continue?

Is it realistic to think that if we opt out of taking action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, we’ll be able to just wish it away and continue with business as usual? Well, Mother Nature makes a pretty good case against that argument. Every night on the TV news is like a nature walk through the Book of Revelation.

Is it realistic, for example, to continue stoking the risk of wildfire in California, after what has already happened to so many communities in Northern California? And just look at the devastation caused by the Los Angeles wildfires in January.

Is it realistic to tell homeowners around the world that the global housing market is expected to suffer a $25 trillion loss in the next 25 years? Fifteen percent of all the residential housing stock in the world if we do not change what we’re doing? Is that realistic in their view?

Is it realistic to continue quietly accepting 8.7 million deaths every single year from breathing in the particulate co-pollution that also comes from the burning of fossil fuels? That is the number of people who are already being killed. According to health experts, it is, and I quote, “the leading contributor to the global disease burden.” When you’re burning coal, oil and gas, it puts the heat trapping pollution up there and it puts the particulate and PM 2.5 pollution into the lungs of people downwind from where the facilities are burning the fossil fuels.

Is it realistic, in their view, for governments to manage 1 billion climate migrants crossing international borders in the balance of this century? That’s how many the Lancet Commission estimates will be crossing borders in the decades to come, if we continue driving temperatures and humidity higher and making the physiologically unlivable regions of the world vastly larger by continuing to put 175 million tons of man-made heat-trapping pollution into that thin shell of the troposphere surrounding the planet. You know what that blue line looks like, that thin blue shell is blue because that’s where the oxygen is. And it’s so thin, if you could drive a car straight up in the air at highway speeds, you’d get to the top of that blue line in five to seven minutes.

That’s what we’re using as an open sewer. Is that realistic? I don’t think it is.

We’ve already seen, by the way, how populist authoritarian leaders have used migrants as scapegoats and have fanned the fires of xenophobia to fuel their own rise to power. And power-seeking is what this is all about. Our Constitution, written by our founders, is intended to protect us against a threat identical to Donald Trump: someone who seeks power at all costs to get more power. Imagine what the demagogues would do as we continued toward a billion migrants crossing international borders. We could face a grave threat to our capacity for self-governance.

Is it “realistic” to continue inflicting the financial toll that the climate crisis is taking on the global economy? According to Deloitte, climate inaction will cost the economy $178 trillion over the next half century. And is it realistic to miss out on the economic opportunity that we could seize by going toward net-zero? Over that same period, climate action would increase the size of the global economy by $43 trillion.

A question with particular relevance in nearby Silicon Valley: is it realistic for the semiconductor industry to experience losses of up to 35% of annual revenues due to supply chain disruptions caused by the stronger and more severe cyclonic storms and supercell storms?

Is it realistic to continue with a system of financing that leaves the entire continent of Africa completely out? Right now, the entire continent of Africa, fastest-growing population in the world, has fewer solar panels installed than the single state of Florida in the United States of America. That’s a disgrace to the makeup of our financial system. But Africa has three times as many oil and gas pipelines under construction and preparing for construction to begin than all of North America. It is ridiculous to allow this system to continue as it is. How is that realistic? Or fair? Or just?

Is it realistic for us, all of us here, to consign our children and grandchildren to what scientists warn us would be Hell on Earth in order to conserve the profits of the fossil fuel industry? The predictions of the scientists 50 years ago have turned out to be spot on correct. Their predictions just a few decades ago have turned out to be exactly right. Should not that cause us to listen more carefully to what they’re warning us will happen if we do not sharply and quickly reduce the emissions from burning fossil fuels?

Is that unrealistic to listen to a proven source of advice?

This newfound so-called climate realism is nothing more than climate denial in disguise. It is an attempt to pretend there is no problem and to ignore the reality that is right in front of our faces.

What’s never present in any of this so-called “realism” is any credible challenge whatsoever to the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. They never address that. They just wish it away and say, “Oh it’s unrealistic to actually do anything about it.”

I wish we could wish it away, but we cannot.

The hard reality is that the fossil fuel industry has grown desperate for more capital. They’re seeing their two largest markets wither away: electricity generation, number one and transportation, number two. They’ve been losing their share of investment in the energy market to renewables and so they’re panicked.

That explains why they are so aggressively using their captive policymakers to block meaningful solutions. Of course, as you know, they’re way better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions. They’ve grown very skillful at that.

They are the wealthiest and most powerful industry lobby in the history of the world. They make the East India Company look like a popcorn vendor. They are the effective global hegemon.

They have used their war chests and their legacy network of political and economic power to block any reductions of fossil fuel burning emissions – whether at the international conferences that we call the COPs, the Conference of Parties in the UN process, or at the global negotiations for a plastic treaty. They blocked anything there, too.

Why? They’re losing the first market of electricity generation because 93% of all the new electricity generation installed worldwide last year was solar and wind. They’re losing that market steadily. EVs are rising dramatically. They say they’ve slowed down. Well, we just got the new figures – an 18% increase year-on-year here in the United States. In many countries much faster than that.

And so, their third market – they’re telling Wall Street that they’re going to make up all of the expected lost revenue in their first two markets by tripling the production of plastics over the next 35 years.

Well, we might have a word to say about that. Is that realistic? Because we’ve already found – the scientists say – that some seabirds are manifesting symptoms like Alzheimer’s disease from the plastic particles in their brains and they found that it crosses the blood-brain barrier in humans, and the size of the amount has doubled just in the last decade.

Do we really want to continue that?

It’s crazy, but they are blocking action at both of these international forums and they’re blocking action in the deliberations of nation-states, even in states and provinces, and even at the local level. Anywhere in the world where there is an effort to pass legislation or regulations that reduces the burning of fossil fuels, they are there with their money, with their lobbyists, with their captive politicians, blocking it as best they can.

And the solution is what you’re doing here at Climate Week here in San Francisco. We have got to rise up and change this situation.

That’s also why they are ballyhooing ridiculously expensive and hilariously impractical technologies like building giant mechanical vacuuming machines to suck it back out of the atmosphere after they put it up there. Could that someday be a realistic part of the solution? Perhaps, perhaps. But not now! Not even close.

They use it as a bright, shiny object to distract attention and say, ‘see this, see this, this could be so miraculous, we don’t have to stop burning fossil fuels at all! We can actually continue to increase the burning of fossil fuels because look at this bright, shiny object. We’ve got this vacuuming machine.’

Well, CO2 is 0.035% of the molecules in the air. You’re gonna use an energy-intensive, ridiculous, expensive process to filter through the other 99.965% of the molecules? It’s absolutely preposterous.

In reality, the Sustainability Revolution is powering more and more of our global economy. It has the scale and impact of the Industrial Revolution and is moving at the pace of the Digital Revolution.

By the way, in Texas, which used to have a free market for energy, over 90% of all their new electricity generation last year was solar and wind. And, you know, they’ve got captured politicians there. They’re pushing legislation in Texas to legally require any developers of solar and wind to spend time and money developing more oil and gas before they’re given permission to develop renewables.

That’s not realism, that’s pathetic.

That is a sign of desperation.

They don’t trust the free market. They’re just relying more and more on the politicians who will jump when they tell them jump and ask how high when they tell them to jump again.

So, around the world, the market is transforming. Since the Paris Agreement, the cost of solar has dropped 76%. The cost of wind is down 66%. Utility-scale batteries are down 87%.

In 2004, when Generation was founded, it took a full year for the world to install one gigawatt of solar power. Now it takes one day to install one gigawatt of solar power.

And it’s not just renewables. We’re seeing the Sustainability Revolution rapidly take hold across the rest of the global economy from transportation, to regenerative agriculture, to circular manufacturing, and so much more.

So, as we gather here to kick off Climate Week and as we gather on the eve of Earth Day, we have to treat this moment as a call to action.

So, I’m here not only to respond to the invitation for which I’m grateful, Morgan and others and Evan.

I’m here to recruit you.

Many of you are already working on this, but those of you who are not, I’m here to recruit you. We need you. This is the time and this is a break glass moment. This is an all hands on deck moment.

Now is the time to look at every aspect of your businesses, your investments, and your civic engagement to determine whether or not you can contribute even more to solving the climate crisis.

It’s easy to adopt our own versions of climate realism to say that the challenge is too great. Some people worry about that. To say that our individual role is too small to have an impact. Some use that as an excuse: that if the government won’t act, what can any of us do about it?

Well, just as the climate crisis does not recognize borders between countries, it does not either recognize delineations between the duty of government and businesses and all significant participants in the global economy.

Climate change is already impacting your life and work and will more so through disrupted supply chains, increased liability, changes in consumer demand, and more.

This is a moment when we all have to mobilize to defend our country. And remember the antidote to climate despair is climate action. It was in this city in the 1960s that Joan Baez first said that the antidote to despair is action. And we need to remember that now.

And during a time of when people were tempted to despair in the struggle for civil rights in this country, Martin Luther King said something about overcoming the forces that try to discourage you and halt progress. He said this: “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving.”

And that’s where we are.

Every one of the morally based movements in the past had periods when advocates felt despair. But when the central choice was revealed as a choice between right and wrong, then the outcome at a very deep level became foreordained.

Because of the way Pope Francis reminded us we have been created as God’s children.

We love our families.

We are devoted to our communities.

We have to protect our future.

And if you doubt for one moment ever that we as human beings have the capacity to muster sufficient political will to solve this crisis, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource.

Thank you very much.

Adolf Hitler: 'We must overcome the demoralization of Germany by the Communists', first radio address as Chancellor - 1933

1 February 1933, Berlin, Germany

On February 1, 1933, two days after he was appointed chancellor, Hitler spoke over the radio to the German people about his vision for the future of the country:

Over fourteen years have passed since that unhappy day when the German people, blinded by promises made by those at home and abroad, forgot the highest values of our past, of the Reich, of its honor and its freedom, and thereby lost everything. Since those days of treason, the Almighty has withdrawn his blessing from our nation. Discord and hatred have moved in. Filled with the deepest distress, millions of the best German men and women from all walks of life see the unity of the nation disintegrating in a welter of egotistical political opinions, economic interests, and ideological conflicts.

As so often in our history, Germany, since the day the revolution broke out, presents a picture of heartbreaking disunity. We did not receive the equality and fraternity which was promised us; instead we lost our freedom. The breakdown of the unity of mind and will of our nation at home was followed by the collapse of its political position abroad.

We have a burning conviction that the German people in 1914 went into the great battle without any thought of personal guilt [for the start of the war] and weighed down only by the burden of having to defend the Reich from attack, to defend the freedom and material existence of the German people. In the appalling fate that has dogged us since November 1918 we see only the consequence of our inward collapse. But the rest of the world is no less shaken by great crises. The historical balance of power, which at one time contributed not a little to the understanding of the necessity for solidarity among the nations, with all the economic advantages resulting therefrom, has been destroyed.

The delusion that some are the conquerors and others the conquered destroys the trust between nations and thereby also destroys the world economy. But the misery of our people is terrible! The starving industrial proletariat [working class] have become unemployed in their millions, while the whole middle and artisan class have been made paupers. If the German farmer also is involved in this collapse we shall be faced with a catastrophe of vast proportions. For in that case, there will collapse not only a Reich, but also a 2000-year-old inheritance of the highest works of human culture and civilization.

All around us are symptoms portending this breakdown. With an unparalleled effort of will and of brute force the Communist method of madness is trying as a last resort to poison and undermine an inwardly shaken and uprooted nation. They seek to drive it towards an epoch which would correspond even less to the promises of the Communist speakers of today than did the epoch now drawing to a close to the promises of the same emissaries in November 1918.

Starting with the family, and including all notions of honor and loyalty, nation and fatherland, culture and economy, even the eternal foundations of our morals and our faith—nothing is spared by this negative, totally destructive ideology. . . . One year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany. The richest and most beautiful areas of world civilization would be transformed into chaos and a heap of ruins. Even the misery of the past decade and a half could not be compared with the affliction of a Europe in whose heart the red flag of destruction had been planted. The thousands of injured, the countless dead which this battle has already cost Germany may stand as a presage of the disaster.

In these hours of overwhelming concern for the existence and the future of the German nation, the venerable World War leader [President Paul von Hindenburg] appealed to us men of the nationalist parties and associations to fight under him again as once we did at the front, but now loyally united for the salvation of the Reich at home. The revered President of the Reich having with such generosity joined hands with us in a common pledge, we nationalist leaders would vow before God, our conscience and our people that we shall doggedly and with determination fulfill the mission entrusted to us as the National Government.

It is an appalling inheritance which we are taking over.

The task before us is the most difficult which has faced German statesmen in living memory. But we all have unbounded confidence, for we believe in our nation and in its eternal values. Farmers, workers, and the middle class must unite to contribute the bricks wherewith to build the new Reich.

The National Government will therefore regard it as its first and supreme task to restore to the German people unity of mind and will. It will preserve and defend the foundations on which the strength of our nation rests. It will take under its firm protection Christianity as the basis of our morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation and our state. Standing above estates [groups that make up society’s social hierarchy] and classes, it will bring back to our people the consciousness of its racial and political unity and the obligations arising therefrom. It wishes to base the education of German youth on respect for our great past and pride in our old traditions. . . . Germany must not and will not sink into Communist anarchy.

In place of our turbulent instincts, it will make national discipline govern our life. In the process it will take into account all the institutions which are the true safeguards of the strength and power of our nation.

The National Government will carry out the great task of reorganizing our national economy with two big Four-Year Plans:

Saving the German farmer so that the nation’s food supply and thus the life of the nation shall be secured.
       

Saving the German worker by a massive and comprehensive attack on unemployment.

In fourteen years the November parties have ruined the German farmer. In fourteen years they created an army of millions of unemployed. The National Government will carry out the following plan with iron resolution and dogged perseverance. Within four years the German farmer must be saved from pauperism. Within four years unemployment must be completely overcome . . .

Our concern to provide daily bread will be equally a concern for the fulfillment of the responsibilities of society to those who are old and sick. The best safeguard against any experiment which might endanger the currency lies in economical administration, the promotion of work, and the preservation of agriculture, as well as in the use of individual initiative.

In foreign policy, the National Government will see its highest mission in the preservation of our people’s right to an independent life and in the regaining thereby of their freedom. The determination of this Government to put an end to the chaotic conditions in Germany is a step towards the integration into the community of nations of a state having equal status and therefore equal rights with the rest. In so doing, the Government is aware of its great obligation to support, as the Government of a free and equal nation, that maintenance and consolidation of peace which the world needs today more than ever before. May all others understand our position and so help to ensure that this sincere desire for the welfare of Europe and of the whole world shall find fulfillment.

Despite our love for our Army as the bearer of our arms and the symbol of our great past, we should be happy if the world, by restricting its armaments, made unnecessary any increase in our own weapons.

But if Germany is to experience this political and economic revival and conscientiously to fulfill its duties towards other nations, a decisive act is required: We must overcome the demoralization of Germany by the Communists.

We, men of this Government, feel responsible to German history for the reconstitution of a proper national body so that we may finally overcome the insanity of class and class warfare. We do not recognize classes, but only the German people, its millions of farmers, citizens and workers who together will either overcome this time of distress or succumb to it.

With resolution and fidelity to our oath, seeing the powerlessness of the present Reichstag to shoulder the task we advocate, we wish to commit it to the whole German people.

We therefore appeal now to the German people to sign this act of mutual reconciliation. The Government of the National Uprising [the Nazi-led government] wishes to set to work, and it will work. It has not for fourteen years brought ruin to the German nation; it wants to lead it to the summit. It is determined to make amends in four years for the liabilities of fourteen years. But it cannot subject the work of reconstruction to the will of those who were responsible for the breakdown.

The Marxist parties [political parties including the Social Democrats] and their followers had fourteen years to prove their abilities. The result is a heap of ruins. Now, German people, give us four years and then judge us.

Let us begin, loyal to the command of the Field-Marshal. May Almighty God favor our work, shape our will in the right way, bless our vision and bless us with the trust of our people. We have no desire to fight for ourselves; only for Germany.

Adolf Hitler: 'Now the German Volk has awakened!', closing speech at Nazi congress - 1938

12 September 1938, Nuremberg, Germany

Today we feel doubly close to those times because first of all, in our midst we see the fighters of the eldest German Ostmark who until recently were subject to a like persecution because of their National Socialist conviction. They stand amongst us today as Volksgenossen and citizens of the German Reich. What have they not had to go through, suffer through?! How many of their comrades were slain, how many injured in body and spirit, how many lost their livelihoods for many years, and how many ten thousands were imprisoned in jails, penitentiaries and Anhaltelagers?! The second reason for which we reflect upon these times with particular emotion is the fact that the events we experienced and suffered in our own nation at the time are precisely those we are witnessing on the world stage today.

And above all: our enemies today remain weltanschaulich the very same ones.

Almost every year, we could step before the nation with quiet confidence and await its judgment. The greatest approval ever granted the leadership of a Volk became ours on April 10 of this year. The Volk acknowledged and confirmed that it regards the new form of state and its leadership as institutions that strive to the best of their abilities to serve the Volk and to lead it once more to freedom and greatness and to ensure its economic well-being.

And still, what we are witnessing today on a larger scale is precisely the same we experienced in the decades of internal struggle. Ever since the day we assumed power, we have been surrounded by a hostile environment. The connivance between the gilded, capitalist democratic movement in our parliament on the one hand and with Marxism on the other in their war on National Socialism is today mirrored in a like conspiracy, albeit on a larger scale, involving the democracies and the Bolshevists as they make war on the state constituted by the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft.

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence of the insincerity of their fight against the National Socialist Party as it struggled for power at the time is the fact that no matter whether they were bourgeois nationalists, capitalist democrats, or Marxist internationalists, they formed a unitary front against us in all decisive battles. At the time, many of our Volksgenossen were forced to realize just how dishonest the political battle was and of how little import morals were in this fight as they saw those parties fighting us on nationalist grounds, yet were not reluctant to conspire with Marxist internationalists to that end.

And vice versa, our Volksgenossen had to realize just how dishonest and fraudulent those parties were who claimed to persecute us for socialist reasons and then went to ally themselves with the worst proponents of capitalism prior to entering into the unitary front against us. The Center Party claimed to be fighting us because we were hostile to the Church, and yet to this end it entered into a holy alliance with atheist Social Democrats and did not shrink from uniting with the Communists. And on the other hand, Communists fought us because, as they claimed, we represented the Reaktion in their eyes. Yet they cast their ballot together with the true reactionaries against the vote of the National Socialist Party in the Reichstag.

It was indeed a display of such duplicity that one could only turn from it in disgust. Today we feel equally repelled as we watch the so-called international world democracies who supposedly advocate liberty, fraternity, justice, the right to self-determination of the peoples, etc., as we see these states ally themselves with Bolshevist Moscow.349 One day, perhaps someone will ask why we concern ourselves so much with the democracies and why we treat them in so negative a manner. This is the case because: First, as those attacked we are forced to counter.

Second, the conduct of these phenomena is so revolting.

Dishonesty sets in the minute these democracies claim to represent government by the people and decry authoritarian states as dictatorships. I believe that I can confidently state that today there are only two world powers who can honestly claim to have 99 percent of their people backing the government. What in other countries goes by the name of democracy is in most cases little other than the apt manipulation of public opinion by means of money and the press, and the equally apt manipulation of the results hereby achieved. How easily, however, are these supposed democracies stripped bare of their pretenses when one takes a close look at their stance in matters of foreign policy which constantly change to suit the purpose of the moment. There we witness how truly repressive regimes in small countries are actually being glorified by these democracies if it suits their needs. Yes, they even go so far as to fight for them, while on the other hand, they themselves actively repress inconvenient rallies in those states where such protest does not suit them. They fail to acknowledge this activism, attempt to subvert it or simply misinterpret its significance. And this is not all: these democracies even glorify Bolshevist regimes if it happens to suit their purpose, and this in spite of the fact that the latter style themselves as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In other words, these supposed democracies decry regimes that are backed by 99 percent of their constituents as dictatorships, while at the same time they praise other countries as highly respectable democratic institutions even though these call themselves dictatorships and even though these can only subsist on the basis of mass executions, torture, etc. Is it not one of the greatest ironies in history that in the midst of upright prototype democrats in Geneva, the blooddrenched proponent of one of the cruelest tyrannies of all time moves about freely as a highly respected member of the Council?350 We in Germany have already witnessed the alliance of Jewish capitalism with an abstract version of communist anti-capitalism, and we have seen the Rote Fahne, the Vorwarts and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung march hand in hand here. It is the same all over the world. Bolshevist Moscow has become the highly revered ally of capitalist democracies! [-] For fifteen years, they have acted in gruesome defiance of the most natural interests of their peoples, yes, acting contrary to any standards of human dignity. Indeed, they drew up Diktats with a pistol in hand only to, at a later date, lament the “unilateral” transgression of holy rights and the breach of all the more holy contracts. Without so much as a thought for the opinion of the natives, they have led a drive for the bloody subjugation of entire continents.

However, the minute that Germany mentions the return of its colonies, they declared that-out of concern for the indigenous people there-one could not possibly abandon the natives to so horrid a fate. At the same time, they did not distance themselves from dropping bombs out of planes onto their own colonies. And all this to use the force of reason to persuade the dear colored compatriots to submit to the foreign rule a hit longer. Of course, the bombs thus employed were bombs with civilizing warheads which one must absolutely not confuse with those brutal ones Italy used in Abyssinia.

Throughout the democratic countries, one laments the unimaginable cruelty with which first Germany, and now Italy as well, are striving to rid themselves of the Jewish element. However, all these great democratic empires have altogether little more than a few persons per square kilometer. In Italy and in Germany this number exceeds 140 persons. For decades, Germany nevertheless took in hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of Jews without batting an eyelid.

Now that the burden has become overbearing and the nation is no longer willing to have its life blood sucked out of it by these parasites, it is now that there is great lament abroad. However, not a word is heard in these democratic countries about replacing this hypocritical lamentation with a good deed and assistance. No, to the contrary, all one hears is cold reasoning claiming that in these states there is regretfully no space either! Evidently, they expect us to bear up under this burden of Jewry despite our 140 persons per square kilometer, while the democratic world empires with their few people per square kilometer could not possibly shoulder this burden. Alas, no help. But morals! And thus we find the National Socialist Reich faced with the same phenomenon and forces that we had fifteen years to get to know as a party.

Insofar as this is indicative of the hostile attitude of the democratic states toward Germany, this matters little to us. Besides, why should we fare any better than the Reich before us? On a side note, I will admit quite openly that I find it easier to bear insults from someone who can no longer rob me than to be robbed by someone who praises me for letting it happen. Today we are insulted. Yet we are in a position-praise the Lord-to prevent Germany from being ravaged and raped. The state before us was blackmailed for fifteen years.

For this, admittedly, it received compensation-the somewhat sparse recompense, at least in my eyes-of praise for having been a good little democratic state.

This comportment becomes unbearable for us the minute a major part of our Volk is placed at the mercy of impertinent abusers, ostensibly without any means of defending itself, while the brunt of democratic rhetoric pours forth as a threat to our Volksgenossen. I am speaking of Czecho-Slovakia.

This state is a democracy, that is to say it was founded on democratic principles. The majority of its people was simply forced to submit to the structure construed at Versailles without any one asking for its opinion. As a true democracy, this state immediately began to suppress the majority of its people, to abuse there and to rob them of their inalienable rights. Gradually, one attempted to impress upon the world that this state had a special military and political mission to fulfill.

The former French Minister of Aviation, Pierre Cot,352 has explained this to us recently. According to him, Czechoslovakia exists for the purpose of providing a base, in the event of war, for launching aerial attacks and dropping bombs upon German cities and industrial plants. Needless to say, we may assume that these will once again be equipped with those warheads of the famed civilizing variety.

However, this mission stands in opposition to the desires of the majority of the inhabitants of this state, and is alien to their philosophy of life and contrary to their vital interests. That is why the majority of its citizens were silenced. Any protest against this fate would have been an assault upon the aims incarnate in this state and hence would have been in violation of its constitution. Drawn up by the democrats, this constitution was less suited to realizing the rights of the people affected and was instead more tailored toward accommodating the political expediencies of the people’s oppressors. Political expediency necessitated as well that a structure be construed that accorded the Czech people a position of preeminence in this state. Whoever protested against this usurpation became an “enemy of the state” and hence, in accordance with democratic norms, he was outlawed. Providence has thus called upon the socalled people of the Czech state-admittedly voicing its intent through the good offices of the architects at Versailles-to stand guard lest someone rise in opposition to this ultimate purpose of the state.

Should someone nevertheless venture to step forth from amongst the majority of the oppressed peoples in this state and voice opposition to this end, then it is naturally permissible that he be beaten hack with the full force at the state’s disposal and, if so desire or need be, he could also simply be murdered.

If this now did not concern us, if this were some foreign affair, we, like so many others, might take note of it simply as a most interesting display of the democrats’ understanding of the rights of peoples to self-determination.

However, the nature of the affair involves an obligation of us Germans.

Amongst the suppressed minorities in this state, there are also three and a half million Germans, roughly as many people of our race as Denmark has in inhabitants.353 These Germans are God’s creatures as well. The Almighty has not created them so that the construction arrived at in Versailles might place them at the mercy of an alien power they hate. And He has not created seven million Czechs either so that they may reign over these three and a half million, keep them in tutelage, and even far less did He create them to ravage and torture.

The situation in this state has become unbearable, as is well known. In a political context, three and a half million people there are robbed of their right to self-determination in the name of the right to self-determination as construed by a certain Mister Wilson. In an economic context, these people are being ruined methodically and hence are subject to a slow but steady extermination.

The misery of the Sudeten Germans defies description. One desires to destroy them. In a humanitarian context, they are being oppressed and humiliated in an unprecedented fashion.

When three and a half million members of a Volk of eighty million may not sing a song they like because the Czechs dislike it, when they are beaten until they bleed simply because they wear stockings which the Czechs care not to see, when they are terrorized and abused because they greet one another in a fashion the Czechs cannot bear even though they were merely greeting one another and no Czech, when they are persecuted because of every little detail connected to the expression of their nationality, and when they are hunted down as though animals, yes, then this may leave those renowned representatives of democracy cold, who knows, they might actually enjoy it since those affected are a mere three and a half million Germans. All I can say to these representatives of democracy is that this does not leave us cold, no, if these tortured creatures can find neither justice nor help by themselves, then they will receive both from us. There must be an end to the injustice inflicted upon these people! I have already stated this quite openly in my speech of February 20. It was a short-sighted enterprise which the architects of Versailles conceived when they gave birth to the abnormal structure of the Czechoslovakian state. It could pursue its mission to ravage and rape a mass of millions of other nationalities only as long as the brother nations themselves suffered from the abuse inflicted upon the world at Versailles.

However, to believe that such a regime could continue to sin eternally and endlessly means to succumb to an inconceivable delusion. In my speech before the German Reichstag on February 20, I had pointed out that the Reich will no longer stand for any further oppression and persecution of these three and a half million Germans. And I implore all foreign statesmen not to think this mere rhetoric.

For the sake of peace in Europe, the National Socialist State has made enormous sacrifices, enormous sacrifices for the entire nation. It did not harbor any thoughts of so-called revenge; rather, it has banished all such thoughts from all private and public spheres of life. In the course of the seventeenth century, France slowly penetrated Alsace-Lorraine and took it from the Old German Reich in the midst of peacetime.

Following a dreadful war in 1870–71 which had been forced upon Germany, the Reich reclaimed these territories, and they were returned to it. They were lost once more after the World War. To us Germans, the cathedral in Strasbourg means a lot. And when we did not pursue the matter any further, we refrained only in the service of a lasting peace for Europe. No one could have forced us to cede these claims voluntarily had we not wished to give them up in the first place! We gave them up because we willed an end to this constant argument with France once and for all. The Reich has espoused a similar stance and has taken similarly determined steps along its other borders as well. Here National Socialism acted highly responsibly and set an example. We made the greatest of sacrifices and distanced ourselves voluntarily from any further demands so that Europe might enjoy a peaceful future and so that a passage might be cleared, at least on our part, for reconciliation of all peoples worldwide. We acted in an exceedingly loyal fashion.

Neither press, silver screen, nor stage were allowed to propagate a diverging opinion. Not even in literature did we allow for an exception. In a related spirit, I offered solutions for a reduction of tensions in Europe, an offer that was refused for reasons we still fail to comprehend. We voluntarily restricted our power in this important realm in the hope that we should never again be forced to use arms against this one other state in question.354 This did not happen because we would not have been able to produce 55 percent more ships; it occurred because we wished to contribute to a final reduction of tensions and to a pacification of the situation in Europe. Since we found a great patriot and statesman in Poland willing to enter into an agreement with Germany, we immediately seized the opportunity, and arrived at a treaty that no doubt is of far greater import to peace in Europe than all the talk in the halls of the League of Nations’ temple in Geneva.

Germany today possesses many a completely pacified border and Germany is determined, and has stated as much, to accept these borders as inviolable and unchangeable in order to give Europe a feeling of security and peace.

Apparently, however, this self-denial and self-discipline on the part of Germany has been misinterpreted as a sign of weakness. Hence today I would like to set things right: I do not believe that we would be rendering peace in Europe a great service if we pronounced our disinterest in all European affairs. In particular, Germany would not be doing anyone a great service if it remained unmoved by the suffering and plight of three and a half million Volksgenossen and if it did not take an interest in their fate. We understand when England and France pursue their interests in the world.

I wish to point out to the statesmen in Paris and London that there are German interests as well and that we are determined to pursue these under all circumstances. At this point I would like to remind them of my speech before the Reichstag in 1933, in which I openly avowed before all the world that there were questions of national concern in which our path was clearly predetermined. I would rather submit myself to any ordeal, danger, or torment than to fail in the fulfillment of such prerogatives.

No European state has done as much as Germany in the service of peace! No one has made greater sacrifices! One must bear in mind, however, that there is a limit as to how much one can sacrifice, and one should not confuse National Socialist Germany with the Germany of Bethmann-Hollweg and Herding.

When I make this declaration, I do so because of an event that occurred in the course of this year, an event that forces all of us to reconsider our stance to date. As you well know, my Party Comrades, Czechoslovakia has finally announced local elections to be held this year after infinitely postponing any form of plebiscite. Even Prague has finally admitted to the untenable nature of its present position. It fears the unity of the Germans and of the other nationalities. It is convinced that it has to resort to extraordinary measures in order to exert pressure in the election process and thus to manipulate the outcome of the election. Evidently, the Czechoslovakian Government has concluded that this can be achieved only through a brutal policy of intimidation.

Apparently, the Czech state felt that a display of its military might was particularly well suited to this end.

This was especially geared toward the Sudeten Germans to serve as a warning not to speak up for their national interests and to vote accordingly. In order to somehow justify this attempt at intimidation before the eyes of the world public, the Czech Government, i.e. Herr Beneš, fabricated the lie that German troops had been mobilized for an invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In this context, let me today state the following: the creation of such lies is nothing new. About a year ago, the press in a certain country invented a story according to which 20,000 German soldiers had landed in Morocco.356 The Jewish proponent of this lie in the press hoped to thereby cause a war.

At the time, it had sufficed to address a short statement to the French Ambassador to resolve the situation. And in this instance as well, we immediately assured the ambassador of another great power of the falsehood of the Czech allegations. The statement was issued once more, and the Prague Government was immediately informed of its content. Nevertheless, the Government in Prague exploited this deception as a pretext for its terrorist blackmail and manipulation of the election.357 All that I can do in retrospect is to assert that, for one, not one German soldier had been called up other than those serving anyway at this point in time.

Secondly, not one regiment, not one additional unit, had marched to the border.

Indeed, not one soldier served in a garrison other than the one assigned to him for peacetime during this period.

To the contrary, orders were issued to avoid taking any steps that might be construed as a means for exerting pressure on Czechoslovakia on our part.

Nonetheless, a base and vile campaign against us was launched in which all of Europe was organized in the service of a government in pursuit of criminal goals. This government’s sole ambition lay in the manipulation of the election by the exertion of military pressure in an effort to intimidate its citizens and thus rob them of their right to vote. And all this was merely a means of obtaining moral legitimacy which this government felt it needed. Indeed, it had no scruples to cast suspicion on one great state, to alarm all of Europe and to, if need be, plunge Europe into a bloody war.

The Reich Government undertook no such steps, and, in fact, Germany had no such intentions; quite to the contrary, it was convinced that the local elections would do justice to the Sudeten German cause. This lack of activity was then construed as a sign that the German Government stepped down because of the determined stance of the Czechs and of the early intervention by England and France.

You will understand, my Party Comrades, that a great power cannot tolerate such a base incursion [the partial mobilization of Czechoslovakian troops on May 20/21] a second time. As a consequence, I have taken the necessary precautions. I am a National Socialist and as such I am accustomed to strike back at any attacker. Moreover, I know only too well that leniency will not succeed in appeasing, but will merely encourage the arrogance of so irreconcilable an adversary as the Czechs.

Let the fate of the Old German Reich be a warning to us. Its love for peace drove it to the brink of self-destruction. Nonetheless, the Old Reich could not prevent the war in the end. In due consideration thereof, I took steps on May 28 which were very difficult: First, I ordered a far-reaching intensification and the immediate implementation and execution of the reinforcements announced for Army and Luftwaffe. Second, I ordered the immediate expansion of our fortifications to the West. I can assure you that ever since May 28, the construction of one of the most gigantic fortresses of all time has been underway there.

To this end, I entrusted Dr. Todt, the Generalinspekteur for road construction in Germany, with a new commission. Within the framework of the projects undertaken by the fortress construction inspectorate, he has achieved one of the greatest accomplishments of all time, thanks to his extraordinary organizational talents.

Let me point out a few figures to you. At present at work on the fortification of our Western frontier, a project actually begun over two years ago, are: 278,000 laborers in the Todt organization in addition to 84,000 [other] laborers, in addition to 100,000 men of the Reich Labor Service and numerous pioneer battalions and infantry divisions. Besides the materials that are brought to the construction sites via different transportation routes, the German Reichsbahn alone transports 8,000 freight cars a day.

The daily consumption of gravel amounts to over 100,000 tons. The fortification of Germany’s western border will be completed prior to the onset of winter. Its defensive capacity is already assured as of this day. Once completed, it will consist of over 17,000 armored plates and concrete structures. The German Volk in arms stands behind this front of steel and concrete made up of three fortified lines and in some locations actually consists of four fortified lines up to fifty kilometers deep. I have made this greatest effort of all time in the service of peace. Under no circumstances, however, am I willing to quietly stand by and observe from afar the continued oppression of German Volksgenossen in Czechoslovakia.

It’s all tactics. Herr Beneš talks, wants to organize negotiations. He wishes to resolve the question of procedure in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and hands out little favors to placate the people. Things cannot go on this way! This is not a question of empty diplomatic phrases. This is a question of right, the question of a right not granted. What we Germans demand is the right to self-determination, a right every Volk possesses, and not an empty phrase. Herr Beneš is not supposed to grant the Sudeten Germans any favors. They have a right to their own way of life, just as any other people do.

The consequences will be grave ones should, perchance, the democracies persist in their conviction that they must continue to, by any and all means, accord their protection to the oppression of German men and women! I believe it to be in the service of peace, if I leave no doubts as to this fact.

I am asking neither that Germany be allowed to oppress three and a half million Frenchmen, nor am I asking that three and a half million Englishmen be placed at our mercy. Rather I am simply demanding that the oppression of three and a half million Germans in Czechoslovakia cease and that the inalienable right to self-determination take its place.

We would truly regret if this were to cloud or damage our relations to the other European states. Yet the fault would not be ours. It is the business of the Czechoslovakian Government to come to terms with the true representatives of the Sudeten Germans and, in one way or another, to reach some form of understanding with them. Nevertheless, it is my business and, my Volksgenossen, it is the business of all of us to take care that justice not be perverted into injustice. After all, this matter involves our German Volksgenossen. I am not in the least willing to allow foreign statesmen to create a second Palestine right here in the heart of Germany. The poor Arabs are defenseless and have been abandoned by all. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenseless nor have they been abandoned. Please note this fact.

I feel compelled to broach this topic at that Party Congress in which the representatives of our German-Austrian Gaus participate for the first time.

Better than anyone else they know how painful it is to be separated from the mother country. Easier than anyone else they will grasp the full import of my exposition on this day. With greater enthusiasm than any, they will agree with me when I state before the entire Volk that we would not deserve to be Germans if we were not willing to take such a stance, and to bear up under the consequences one way or another.

When we bear in mind the intolerable impertinence with which even a small state dared to approach Germany in the last months, then we realize that the only explanation possible is revealed in the unwillingness to recognize that the German Reich is more than just a peace-loving, upstart state.

Standing in Rome in the springtime, I felt deep inside that we assess historic developments in far too restricted a manner, investigating time periods far too short to be revealing. One thousand or fifteen hundred years are no more than a few dynastic successions.

What exhausts itself in a certain period, can rise again in the same time period. Today’s Italy and today’s Germany are living proof of this. Both are nations that have regenerated, indeed, that might be regarded as new nations in this context. However, their roots spring not from the grounds of more recent ages but rather they reach back into ancient history. The Roman Empire breathes once more. The phenomenon of Germany as a state is not new either, although it has made its appearance more recently.

I had the insignias of the Old German Reich brought to Nuremberg for a reason. I wish to call to mind, and this not only for the benefit of the German people but also for that of all peoples, that more than half a millennium prior to the discovery of the new world, a gigantic Germanic-German Reich358 stood on these grounds. Dynasties came into being and dissipated. Outward forms changed. Yet while the Volk has been rejuvenated, its essence has remained the same it has always been. The German Reich has long been dormant.

Now the German Volk has awakened and once more bears its crown of 1,000 years high on its head. All of us who bear witness to this historic resurrection feel great pride and happiness. We stand before the Almighty in humble gratitude.

For the rest of the world this should be an inspiration as well as a lesson learned, an inspiration to reflect upon history from a more elevated point of view, and a lesson not to succumb to the same mistakes as in the past.

In truth the new Roman-Italian empire and the Germanic-German Reich are ancient structures. You need not love them and yet no power on earth shall ever again remove them.

Party Comrades! National Socialists! The first Reich Party Congress of Greater Germany ends at this hour. All of you are still under the spell of the great historic events of these past days. This demonstration of our Volk’s power and determination has reinforced the nation’s pride and your confidence in it.

Return to your homes now and carry in your hearts that same faith which you have cherished throughout almost two decades as Germans and as National Socialists.

You now have the right to proudly carry your heads high again as Germans.

It is the duty of all of us to never again bow our heads to any alien will. To this let us pledge ourselves, so help us God!

This depends exclusively on the power of our own weapons and, therefore, depends upon the carriers of those weapons themselves.

No negotiations, no conferences and no other agreement has accorded us Germans the natural right to unity. We had to take justice into our own hands, and we were able to do so thanks to your existence, my soldiers! And it is thus that the two greatest institutions of our Volk must fulfill two identical missions. National Socialism has to educate our Volk within to form this Vol ksgemeinschaft. The Wehrmacht has to instruct this same Volk to defend this Volksgemeinschaft outwardly. So it is you, my soldiers, who were immediately charged with the fulfillment of a mission in this new Reich. And this fulfillment has earned you the love of the German Volk. It relied upon you and it has realized that it can rely upon its sons in uniform. For you carry the best weapons available today, you receive the best training, and I know that you also possess the best of character.

You fit in well with the eternal, everlasting front constituted by Germany’s soldiers. In the past months, I repeatedly had the opportunity to convince myself of this. I saw it at the maneuver sites, shooting stands, and training camps, and it was with great contentment that I realized that the German nation can once more look to its soldiers with great pride. And it is that for which I thank you! Yet, we do not serve for the sake of gratitude, praise, or recompense unless this gratitude, praise and recompense is at the service of what we value the most in this world: our Volk and our German Reich!

Deutschland-Sieg Heil!

Volodymyr Zelensky: 'Do Russians want the war?', Address to Russian people - 2022

25 February 2022, Kiev, Ukraine

Today I initiated a phone call with the president of the Russian federation. The result was silence. Though the silence should be in Donbass. That’s why I come with an appeal today to all citizens of Russia. Not as a president, I am appealing to the citizens of Russia as a citizen of Ukraine. We share more than 2000km of border. Around it today is your army, almost 200,000 soldiers, thousands of military units. Your leadership has approved them to make a move towards us. Towards the territory of another country. This step? This step can be the beginning of a huge war on the European continent.

The whole world is talking about what can happen any day now. A reason can appear at any moment. Any provocation. Any spark. A spark that has the potential of burning everything down.

You are told that this flame will bring freedom to the people of Ukraine. But the people of Ukraine are free. They remember their past, and are building their own future. They are building it, not destroying it, as you are told everyday on TV. Ukraine in your news and Ukraine in reality are two completely different countries. The most important difference is that ours is real.

You are being told that we are nazis. But how can a nation be called nazist after sacrificing more than 8 million lives to eradicate nazism. How can I be a nazi, when my grandfather has survived the whole war as part of the Soviet infantry, and has died a colonel in an independent Ukraine. You are told that we hate Russian culture. But how can a culture be hated? Any culture. Neighbours are always enriching each other culturally. Yet, that does not make them one entity, and does not separate people into “us” and “them”. We are different, but that is not a reason to be enemies. We want to build our own history. Peacefully, calmly, and truthfully.

You are told that I am ordering to attack the Donbass. To shoot. To bomb without questions. Although there are questions: To shoot at whom? To bomb what?

Donetsk? To which I have been dozens of times. I have seen their faces and eyes.

Artema street? On which I have been on many walks with my friends in the past.

Donbass arena? Where I have been rooting with the locals for our boys during the Euros.

Shcherbakova Park? In which we were drinking together after our team has lost

Lugansk? The home of my best friend’s mom. The place where my best friend’s father is buried.

Note that I am now speaking in Russian, yet no one in Russia understands what these names, streets, and events mean. This is all foreign to you. Unknown. This is our land. This is our history. What are you going to fight for? And against whom?

Many of you have visited Ukraine in the past. Many of you have relatives here. Some of you studied in our universities. Befriended Ukrainian people. You’re familiar with our character, with our people, our principles. You know what we cherish the most. Look inside you, listen to the voice of reason, of common sense. Hear our voices. The people of Ukraine want peace. Ukrainian authorities want peace. We want it, and we make it. We do everything in our powers. We are not alone. It’s true, Ukraine is supported by many countries. Why? Because we are not talking about peace at any cost. We are talking about peace, and about principles, justice. About everyone’s right to define their own future, of safety, and everyone’s right to live without threat. All this is important to us. All this is important for peace. I know for sure that this is also important for you. We know for sure that we don’t want war. Neither cold, hot, or hybrid.

But, if we are threatened; If someone is trying to take away our country, our freedom, our lives. The lives of our children. We are going to defend ourselves. Not attack. Defend. By attacking us, you are going to see our faces. Not backs. Our faces.

War is a big distress, and it has a big price - in all meanings of this word. People lose their money, reputation, quality of life, freedom, and most importantly, people lose their loved ones. Lose themselves. A lot of things are always lacking in war. But what is in abundance is pain, dirt, blood, and death. Thousands. Tens of thousands of deaths. You are told that Ukraine is a threat to Russia. This was not true before, not now, and won’t be in the future. You are demanding security assurances from NATO. We are also demanding assurances of our security. The security of Ukraine from you. From Russia. And from other signatories of the Budapest memorandum. Today, we are not part of random security alliances. The security of Ukraine is tied to the security of our neighbours. That is why we are now talking about the security of all Europe. But our main goal is peace in Ukraine, and the safety of our citizens. Of Ukrainians. We are determined to let everyone know about this, including you. War is going to deprive everyone of any assurances. No one will have assurances of security.

Who is going to suffer from this the most? The people.

Who does not want this more than anyone? The people.

Who can prevent all this from happening? The people.

If these people are among you. I am sure they are. Public figures, journalists, musicians, actors, athletes, scientists, doctors, bloggers, stand-up comics, tiktokers, and others. Ordinary people. Ordinary, simple people. Men, women, old, young, fathers, and most importantly - mothers. Just as much as the people in Ukraine, no matter how much they try to convince you of the opposite.

I know that my announcement will not be aired on Russian television. But the citizens of Russia have to see it. They need to know the truth. And the truth is, that this needs to stop, before it’s too late. And if the authorities of Russia don’t want to talk to us, for the sake of peace, maybe they will talk to you.

Do the people of Russia want war? I would’ve very much liked to be able to answer this, but the answer depends only on you - citizens of the Russian Federation."