effort across Europe. The high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, asked all European citizens this morning to “lower the heating in their homes”, because there is a “price to pay” for “cutting the umbilical cord” with the Russian economy for the war in Ukraine.
A measure that you want to be similar to when there is drought. “The first thing we have to do is cut the umbilical cord that unites our economy with the Russian economy and cut off the flow that allows it to accumulate reserves with which to finance the war,” Borrell said in a debate in the European Parliament with the first Estonian Minister Kaja Kallas.
Turn down the heat so Russia earns less
Borrell calls for joint measures from the consumer level, and it is that he asks European citizens to lower the heating in their homes, at least lower one degree to make it a joint response.
“Everyone make a individual effort in cutting gas consumption, just as we cut water consumption when there is a drought and just as when we put on a mask to combat the virus,” said the high representative. “It has to be a mobilization of spirits, of activities, of individual attitudes, a collective commitment to face a task that is undoubtedly historic“.
Ask Europeans to wake up to their well-being
Harsh statements by Borrell so that we all wake up and see ourselves really involved in what happens at the gates of Europe. “Europeans need the noise of the bombs at five in the morning a fortnight ago when they fell on Kiev to wake them up from their dream of well-being, to allow them to face the challenges that we have not sought, but that the world projects on us and Ukraine is the first,” he said.
“Russia today is basically a gas station and a barracks. It is a place where they sell hydrocarbons and with it they feed armed forces willing to intervene where necessary: from the Sahel to the Caucasus, with Syria and now in Ukraine,” he said.
Borrell added that “we must continue to increase the pressure” against the Kremlin and assured that “the defense of European liberal values will not be possible if there is not a political commitment from all citizens willing to pay a price for them”, he explained.