¡Buenos días!
Thank you for your kind words about Ukraine and thank you for your attention to our struggle for freedom.
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!
Dear participants!
Dear Mr. Rector, Presidium!
Dear students!
Please remember that everything you have has power and meaning only when you have freedom, and when you act in defense of your freedom.
Without freedom, life loses its meaning. A person may exist physically being enslaved, but this definitely cannot be called life.
And wherever we are - in any country, on any continent - freedom is valued equally everywhere. Everywhere, freedom either already is or will someday become the highest value. Because it is in the nature of people.
You get an education, and it will make you freer than you were before university. You will build a career, and it will make you freer than you will be after university. Anything in a person's life can be measured in this way - on a scale of freedom.
And it is the same in the life of every country. There is no real life for a country if it is deprived of freedom - if it has been subjugated by military force, political pressure or economic manipulation. And it is always a blessing - even when it is not perceived so much - if a country has true freedom.
This Sunday, Argentina will celebrate its Independence Day. Although it is a bit early, I would like to congratulate you on your day from the bottom of my heart and wish you and your country to feel more and more freedom every year.
In Ukraine, we will also celebrate our Independence Day in the summer, on August 24, but in completely different circumstances.
Unfortunately, we do not yet see any possibility that Russia will stop its brutal colonialist aggression against our country. We need time to drive the occupiers out of all our land and free all our people from enslavement.
We never wanted this war. We did not go to the land of any other nation - it was Russia that came to our land, burning our cities, killing and deporting our people. For us, this is a war for freedom, and that is why we are fighting against all odds and will not give up our freedom. But I want you to know that it is not only the fate of Ukrainians that is being decided in this war. Much more is being decided in it.
I'll give you one example.
This night, 5-6 July, it will be exactly one month after one of the most brutal Russian crimes of this war. Exactly one month after the dam and facilities of our Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant were blown up and the Kakhovka reservoir was destroyed. It was one of the largest reservoirs in Europe, and now it is just dry silt.
Russia occupied the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant at the beginning of the full-scale war. It had full control over it - every building, dam, absolutely everything. Last year, we warned the world that the occupiers had mined the dam - our intelligence had this information. And unfortunately, it turned out to be true. Russia needed to blow up the dam in order to use this catastrophe... just imagine it!.. to simplify control over part of our occupied territory. Dozens of flooded towns and villages, people killed, nature destroyed... the largest ecocide in Europe in decades, the destruction of the ecological balance in an area of hundreds of thousands of hectares... And what for? Because the occupiers were afraid of our offensive in these areas and wanted to protect their positions in the occupied territory with the mass of water.
Imagine the level of cynicism and hatred towards freedom that drives such evil! Imagine if something like this happened, God forbid, to a dam on Paraná or Limay.
Now, unfortunately, we face an even greater threat. Around the same time that the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was occupied, the Russian military occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. A nuclear power plant. The largest in Europe. Six power units.
All this time - month after month - Russia has been using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as a cover for shelling neighboring cities. They place artillery right on the territory of the plant or near it and open fire. Just imagine this... And now they have also mined this nuclear power plant. And this is a fact.
Why? Moscow is considering various scenarios, including those similar to the man-made disaster at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, i.e. for cynical military purposes. But we should not even think about which scenario is the most likely. We should only think about how to prevent any disastrous scenario!
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Dear students!
No one in the world should be left alone with such an enemy of freedom, who uses even large-scale ecocide as his weapon and threatens with a radiation catastrophe! This is a challenge to the values of any nation, any culture, any country.
And if such an enemy of freedom succeeds with his terror anywhere in the world, it will only be a matter of time before the life of the world is destroyed.
Different dictatorships can be inspired by the current Russian dictatorship - its cynicism, its malice. Different terrorists can be inspired by today's Russian terror - its boundlessness.
And any freedom on the planet will be inspired by Ukrainian freedom when we finally drive the Russian invaders out of our land.
That is why we need your help so much. The nations and states of Latin America can do so much to protect freedom and the right of every people to freedom! And it does not even require direct intervention in the ongoing war. It is enough to defend freedom. To defend it not only in your own countries for your own people, but also globally, in particular at the level of international institutions, at international summits. And to condemn the enemies of freedom - whoever they are and whatever people they are trying to enslave.
And most importantly, we must work together, all nations that respect international law, as your rector said, to ensure that the freedom of nations is not threatened. And this is very important.
Just as people in the streets and squares can overthrow any dictatorship in unity, a united world can neutralize any aggressor, any threat to global freedom.
But to do this, we must act in defense of freedom! All of us together. Argentina, the whole of Latin America, the whole world.
¡Viva la libertad!
I thank you for your attention.
Glory to Ukraine!