‘The brave People of Ukraine, represented by their President, elected leaders, and civil society’ win the Sakharov Prize 2022

The Renew Europe Group in the European Parliament welcomes today’s decision by the Conference of Presidents to award the Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought 2022 to ‘The brave People of Ukraine, represented by their President, elected leaders, and civil society’.

Earlier this month, our Group, together with EPP and S&D Groups, agreed to merge their 2022 Sakharov Prize candidatures and send a strong political message of support to the Ukrainian people. They are not only defending their freedom and independence, but they are defending European values and our continent against a brutal regime that seeks to undermine our democracy, weaken and divide our Union.

Renew Europe Group President, Stéphane Séjourné (Renaissance, France), said:

“Who else but the Ukrainian people has given so much to democratic values in our time? This award is an obvious recognition of the exceptional sacrifices of civil society and the courage of the Ukrainian political class. The Renew Europe Group is proud to have supported this nomination.”

Note to editors:

Since 24 February 2022, the Ukrainian people have bravely stood up to Russia's unprovoked and unlawful war of aggression. The ongoing aggression is a new scale of the war Russia launched against Ukraine in February 2014 after the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, during which the Ukrainian people demanded that their country follow a pro-European path. Every day, the people of Ukraine are suffering from Russian atrocities, devastation, destruction, loss of life, social and economic decline and other hardships. More than 10 million Ukrainians are living the life of internally displaced persons, and more than 6 million, mainly women with children and the elderly, have been forced to flee their homeland.

This year’s winner of the Sakharov Prize are “The brave People of Ukraine, represented by their President, elected leaders, and civil society”, among others, by President Zelensky, The State Emergency Services (SES) of Ukraine, Yulia Pajevska, Oleksandra Matviychuk, The Yellow Ribbon Civil Resistance Movement and Ivan Fedorov.