August 15 [2023], a judge in Kiev found Yurii Sheliazhenko “guilty” of having fought against the war and sentenced him. Yurii Sheliazhenko is a Gandhian pacifist and university researcher. For a year he had been spied on by the Ukrainian secret services and was considered a danger to national security due to the pacifist opinions that he publicly shared all over the world via social networks and video conferences. PeaceLink shared his position by translating his articles into Italian. Yurii Sheliazhenko was and is appreciated all over the world for his courage, his culture and his consistency.
Today is a black page for Ukraine. Civil society in Ukraine is being criminalized for fighting for peace. Police power spies on differing voices and limits freedom in order to give a strong and authoritarian signal to everyone. The countries that supply Ukraine with arms are in fact supporting a president responsible for the security services and therefore for this liberticidal action. Zelensky leads a society where there is no room for pacifist dissent. Nonviolent people like Yurii Sheliazhenko are spied on, searched and placed under house arrest. From now on there are reasons enough to say that Ukraine cannot enter Europe as it criminalizes pacifism, arrests the secretary of the Ukrainian Peace Movement and charges him for his opinions.
Maximum solidarity with Yurii Sheliazhenko.
Alexander Marescotti
President of PeaceLink
