“Ukraine wants peace?“
“Yes!” replied the square.
“Ukraine wants peace at any cost?“
“No!” shouts the square.
“Ukraine wants a just peace?“
“Yes!”
“Does Ukraine want surrender?“
“No!”

And there is a lot of Ukraine, around the obelisk in Piazzale dell’Esquilino, behind the majestic apse of Santa Maria Maggiore, on Sunday 23 February 2025. Lots of people also gathered in Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna and in cities large and small, but the one in Rome was the most crowded of the demonstrations convened on the third anniversary of the great invasion of 2022, which itself had begun on the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Crimea in 2014. The capital has a vibrant community from the land of the Cossacks: there are around 30,000 people, mostly women, at least a thousand of whom were at the demonstrations yesterday. With them also militant groups from the few political forces that have remained faithful to the Ukrainian resistance without any wavering, namely those from the liberal and radical area.

Horodetskyi: ‘Russian murderers out of Ukraine’

The line of the Ukrainians and their supporters on what ‘peace’ is acceptable is elementary to understand even for a child. ‘Russian murderers out of Ukraine: that is the message of peace‘ reiterates, not without a hint of a smile, Oles Horodetskyi of theChristian Association of Ukrainians in Italy.

Clarifying, however, what abandoning millions of Ukrainians in the hands of their historical enemy would mean in practice, as Trump would like, is the association of mothers, wives and daughters of the missing. They estimate more than 63,000 military and civilians.
If they have not been slaughtered in cold blood, they are suffering imprisonment without contact with the outside world, in places where neither the Red Cross nor the press can enter, against all international conventions.
The few who returned, in the barely 61 prisoner exchanges that took place in three years, had visible signs of torture on them.

Anna Mosychuk recounts other crimes committed by the invaders in the occupied territories, including the recent story of two fiancés who were faced with the choice of having him run through a minefield or having her raped by Chechen militiamen. ‘The Russian occupation is not peace: it is a killing field,’ Mosychuk concluded.

The reaction of the audience says more than a thousand words from the speakers. Every time a popular song about the war or a prayer for the fallen soldiers is sung on stage, dozens of girls burst into sobs or weep in silence. In Putin’s carnage, almost all of them have lost someone.
And this is enough to explain why, even if they were convinced to accept the cession of some territories with their backs to the wall, they will never accept a ‘peace’ agreement that leaves their country defenceless in the future.
President Zelensky has been crystal clear: without serious security guarantees (entry into NATO or, it is rumoured, possession of atomic weapons) nothing will be signed. What happened must never be allowed to happen again.

Coming to the role that European countries should play in such negotiations, therefore, it is not surprising that Hrodetskyi calls on the square to chant equally crystal-clear words: ‘Ukraine does not sell out, Ukraine defends itself’.
And the same three watchwords with which demonstrations have been called throughout Italy – ‘Firmness, Justice, Security’ – echo this demand.

Parties and associations in the square

A request that, one after the other, the political formations and associations present in the square try to make their own.
Carlo Calenda, secretary of Action intervenes by video link from Odessa. Peppe Provenzano, PD foreign affairs officer, denounces the rapprochement between Trump and Putin and reaffirms his commitment to a free Ukraine and peace without humiliating concessions. He thus draws some barbs from influencer Ivan Grieco: ‘On paper the PD supports Ukraine, but in the European Parliament many of its exponents voted against sending long-range missiles to hit Russian military sites‘.

Luigi Marattin of Orizzonti Liberali also pointed this out: ‘We can disagree on fiscal policy or schooling,’ he said, ‘but when you have to defend a people attacked by those who deny them freedom and democracy there must be no ambiguity‘.

On behalf of Italia Viva, Maria Elena Boschi expresses her solidarity with President of the Republic Mattarella for the Russian intimidation he has suffered, and says she is confident that the alliance relationship between Europeans and Americans will hold. If this last statement raises some perplexity, the figure of Mattarella instead arouses only enthusiasm: ‘Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” is one of the choruses that the square intones in homage to him.

Riccardo Magi of +Europa also refers to the head of state’s words, and then warns: ‘The rearmament that Putin is carrying out does not only concern Ukraine, but a series of other imperialist aims.

Giving an insight into the real needs of soldiers on the front line is Andrea Alesiani of Liberi Oltre le Illusioni, the Italian association most active in reporting on the conflict by involving local sources and international experts. Alesiani periodically goes on the ground in Ukraine, particularly to Kharkiv, where he works in a bakery serving a hospital for the wounded or in volunteer groups for the reconstruction of collapsed buildings. And he reminds us of a fact that the mainstream media is unaware of: in many units, Ukrainian soldiers have to procure for themselves the non-lethal equipment that makes the difference in their missions, such as night vision, protective armour, medical kits and reconnaissance drones. Each of the initials present in the square was then invited by Alesiani to ‘adopt a unit’, raising funds for these vital purchases.

But it is not just the equipment that keeps the defenders of Ukraine alive. A lady in the crowd approaches us and shows us photos of her daughter, who is in Pokrovsk, at the bloodiest point of the front, working as a travelling dentist.

Pinelli: ‘Russian assets to be seized like mafia assets’

The last to intervene from the stage is our Emanuele Pinelli, contributor to L’Europeista and promoter of the Europafutura association, who urges Giorgia Meloni to choose direct intervention alongside Great Britain to sabotage any agreement between Putin and Trump, recalling how the Expedition of the Thousand blew up the agreements to divide Italy between the great empires.
“It can be the first to say that frozen Russian assets should be reused for Ukraine,” Pinelli added. “What we have done with the assets of all the mafiosi we have seized since the 1980s, we will also do with the assets of Kremlin mafiosi.”

The songs of the procession, from the Ukrainian anthem to ‘Jey, plyve kacha’

It is the moment of the procession, which fills Via Cavour as it marches towards a Palatine Hill set ablaze by the sunset. Hundreds sing the Ukrainian anthem, but also Bella Ciao and Tango by Tananai. Not to be missed is Chervona Kalyna, a popular melody from the 19th century urging freedom from Tsarist Russia. And there is also a Ukrainian version of Katyusha, the song of the Soviet soldiers (many of them Ukrainian) who stopped Hitler in the World War.

The procession only stops when the notes of Hey, plyve kacha resound, to which everyone kneels. It is a melancholic song, about a duckling saying goodbye to his mother before migrating to a distant country where he will die. In 2014 it was sung at the funeral of a Belarusian boy who was murdered during the Maidan protests, and since then it has been dedicated to all the young people who die for the freedom of Ukraine.

Any Ukrainian would prefer not to have to kneel down to sing Hey plyve kacha, not to have to wait for news from a daughter who is a dentist at the front, not to have to pray for a missing family member, and not to have to raise money to buy pieces of military equipment. In this they are not dissimilar to us Italians.
But the moment the storm came (or rather, returned) upon them, they almost all adapted to this life of toil, fear, rituals and symbols. Because submission to Putin would have been worse, all the more so when submission would have been accompanied by extermination.

Stopping the Russian dictator on the Ukrainian plains means not exposing other peoples to the same fate in the coming years. Including us, who are dangerously close to his Serbian vassal Vucic and the Russian bases in Libya.