📢🇪🇺 I call on my colleagues on the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) to urgently convene a joint meeting of our committees on russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s education and research infrastructure.

Yesterday, staff at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine simply came to work. Scientists were supposed to be conducting research. Everyone was supposed to be going through their daily tasks.

🚩 Instead, russia once again attacked a civilian research facility.

This strike is yet another act of the systematic terror russia has inflicted on Ukrainian education and science throughout more than 12 years of its bloody war.

🏚 In just the past few days, deliberate russian terrorist attacks have damaged preschools and general secondary schools in Kyiv and Sumy, a lyceum in the Kyiv region and universities in Kharkiv and Kyiv.

These are not isolated incidents. Every one of them puts people’s lives and health at risk. And that is without even mentioning the childhood stolen from our children, their chance to study in peace and to remember their lessons for something other than the number of air raid alerts and trips to shelters.

➡️ That is why we are making a dedicated effort to collect and systematise information on all russian strikes and their consequences for educational and research institutions, the educators who work there, and the pupils and students who study there.

📢 I appeal to our colleagues—the ministers of education and science and the chairs of parliamentary committees on education and science across Europe. These attacks cannot keep being met with nothing more than another statement of concern.
Every such incident must be properly documented, assessed under international law, and taken into account when making decisions on holding russia accountable, including through further sanctions.

📢 I also want to address our friends and partners in the European Union.
Back in 2022, the European Parliament recognised russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and a state that uses means of terrorism. Yet the European Union still has no dedicated legal mechanism for placing states on such a list with clearly defined legal consequences.
The position we have consistently advocated is that this mechanism must be established, and the russia must be placed on the corresponding list.

📢 I also appeal to Ireland, which currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. I urge Ireland to use its presidency to advance EU efforts to hold russia accountable for systematic attacks on civilian facilities, particularly educational and research institutions, and to support work on establishing a legal mechanism for designating states as sponsors of terrorism.

‼️ I call on our European partners to further intensify sanctions pressure on russia and to hold those who order, organise and carry out these strikes personally accountable.
Because what is at stake today is the most precious thing of all—human lives.
A person’s right to go to work and return home. A child’s right to attend school or preschool. A student’s right to study. A scientist’s right to work in their laboratory.

➡️ And russia must have neither the power nor any hope of deciding whether Ukrainians enjoy these rights whenever it launches another drone or missile at our civilian facilities.

That is precisely why every such strike must have concrete legal and political consequences, as well as consequences in the form of sanctions!