ATHENS – Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in an article in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini spoke about his visit to Kiev and described the pictures of the destroyed buildings that were hit by Iranian drones, “something nobody would expected to see in a European capital in 2022”.

The visit, he underlined included a series of messages to several recipients.

Firstly, it represented EU “by offering tangible support to the Ukrainian society that is struggling to survive and showing that we are not intimidated when other European leaders were cancelling their visits” and also by “promoting the values we represent as European societies, namely, the respect to the international law, the freedom of the peoples to decide for the present and the future of their countries as and our firm position for the protection of the national borders as these have been provided by the international treaties and agreements”.

Secondly, it reminds that in Ukraine exists a significant Greek community which is suffering and the Greek Republic’s presence is very important. The Greek element in Ukraine has suffered persecutions and wars but it is still there and it is our duty to protect it as much as we can, the Greek Foreign Minister underlined.

Finally, Dendias said that the bombed Kiev is, in a way, the ideal place to explain to the international community what we Greeks are facing. Both countries (Ukraine and Greece) have major and aggressive neighbours from their east. For the eastern neighbours of Ukraine and Greece there are no borders, they are artificial and directly questioned. Both Greece and Ukraine are, allegedly, occupying foreign territories , Crimea, Donbass, the islands of the Aegean.

“The threats of invasion, that in Ukraine’s case are not threats anymore, follow the exercise of hybrid war. With all the means as the instrumentalisation of the migration issue, the suspension of energy flows. The war of propaganda and the personal verbal attacks against our countries’ leadership are part of the hybrid war” Dendias said.