Roberta METSOLA, EP President holds a press conference on a new initiative to assist Ukraine in the context of the Russian war against the country. She speaks with Dario NARDELLA, President of Eurocities and Mayor of Florence, and Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

EU - Ukraine (T)

Strasbourg

troubles in Ukraine (T)

press conference

METSOLA, Roberta (EPP, MT, EP President)

president's agenda

solidarity with Ukraine (T)

consequences of the war in Ukraine (T)

NARDELLA, Dario (S&D, IT)

Press conference by Roberta METSOLA, EP President with Dario NARDELLA, President of Eurocities and Mayor of Florence, and Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky on Generators of Hope campaign

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, Good afternoon, Dear friends, dear colleagues. Let me start by welcoming and thanking Dario Nardella from Euro Cities and Andrei Yermak from President Zelensky's team office for joining me in this initiative together today, we are jointly launching the Generators of Hope campaign.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, The context is a difficult one. 10 million Ukrainians are currently without electricity as a result of Russia's attacks on the critical civilian targeted infrastructure, such as electricity transmission networks. Last night, a maternity hospital was brutally attacked, resulting in the death of a two day old boy and serious damage to the ward. And this is just one terrible example of the devastation caused by the indiscriminate Russian bombing of civilian targets.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, This Parliament and the European Union have shown a remarkable solidarity with Ukraine on the humanitarian, military and financial front. But now we need to make sure that what they need in terms of practical support as well we find the necessary resources to get to that and to make that happen.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, So to do this, we are teaming up with Euro Cities, the network of Europe's more than 200 largest cities in order to donate power generators to Ukraine. We do this in a very practical and concrete way. First of all, to bring energy and clean water to hospitals and people to guarantee the everyday services that we take for granted.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, I after this and after hearing from Dario and Andrey will call on, in addition to the preparatory work that we have already done over the past days, cities and towns across Europe to join this campaign. We will also reach out further to other networks through all our 705 members of the European Parliament and beyond in order to mobilise for this initiative.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, We already have a lot of informal commitments, but we will launch it now in order to make it a formal my last word. Together we can make a real difference and the needs are almost endless. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Dario NARDELLA, President of Euro Cities Network, Thank you very much. On behalf of the Euro Cities Association, which I represent, I'd like to thank President Roberto Metsola for organising this. This initiative is extremely important and it's been it's been organised very rapidly and it means that Euro Cities can play a supportive role in supporting Ukrainian cities on the 19th of August already, we were in Kiev with a delegation of mayors from our cities we already signed a paper with the president's office, and I salute Andriy Yermack.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Dario NARDELLA, President of Euro Cities Network, We signed this agreement to try and do something for the buildings which have been affected by Russian bombings. And apart from these initiatives which we organised in many European cities, this solidarity actions, we can do something really specific and. With the arrival of winter. This obviously is causing extremely serious problems.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, The situation is dramatic and following the attacks on the main transmission networks, Ukrainians are now living in a situation where they are facing an emergency as regards getting electricity. And so what we're trying to do is to ensure that within a few days it will be possible to deliver a large number of generators, which will mean that at least there will be basic energy supply to Ukrainian cities, both small and large.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, And we represent more than 200 of the largest European cities. And we already have a very active network. We're ready to launch an appeal not just to our members, but also to other European mayors to get people involved in the solidarity campaign so that these electricity generators can be sent to Ukrainian cities with the support of the European institutions and in the first place, the European Parliament of course.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, We will have a meeting in Vienna next week. More than 80 technical leaders of European cities will be there. And this will be another opportunity for us to strengthen our initiative. We are standing side by side with the European Parliament to implement this new plan. We're expressing solidarity not just in words, but we really want to turn our words into facts.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, And we hope that this plan will be of immediate help because we're running out of time. Temperatures are dropping and people are facing a real emergency regarding energy. And this is we've got to act very seriously. We've got to act fast.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, Dear President Metsola. Dear President Nardella. First of all, I would like to thank Madam President Roberto Metsola for her leadership and the strong support that Ukraine has been receiving from the European Parliament all these months since the Russian large scale invasion started.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, I'd like to take this opportunity to applaud the European Parliament's today's decisions of recognising Russia as a terrorist regime: so much deserved. This resolution and our press conference today are very closely related. You all witnessed that in the recent months Russia intensified its attacks aimed at destructions of Ukrainians critical infrastructure.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, Russia has already used over four thousands various missiles against Ukraine and destroyed half of this critical energy infrastructure as of today. Their tax impact has put our energy system resilience of age on edge. This speed of destruction has already exceeded the speed of reparation works. The risk of the full breakout is really very, very high.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, These days the consequences have been fatal. Just to name a few epidemic diseases because of water supply and the water treatment system failed. If all disruptions of heating system do air temperature swings. Seller of transportation and logistics systems, disproportion of food supplies, extremely growing numbers of new IDPs and refugees. This has severely affected our civilian population on the eve of the upcoming winter.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, I must highlight the word civilian population here. In the discussion of the imposing sanctions, which might not would be affected the civilians, we have been hearing so much caring about the Russian civilian population from our partners. Given the energy infrastructure disaster in the Ukraine, this accusation looks just unfair to me.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, The project, which we are we are launching today, thanks to the personal efforts of Madam Metsolaa and Mr. Nardella is decided to help us to go through the most challenging winter in our modern history. This way until an initiative of the European Parliament and the Euro Cities network should consolidate efforts and all available support of European states, cities and regions to bring back electricity, heating and water to the millions of Ukrainian households as well as in hospitals and schools.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, Generators are the preliminary equipments that will ensure both people's basic needs. We need them as a strategic reserve of the terms of full and continuous breaks out. That can take weeks in the Ukrainian scenario. But our top priority is the energy grid immediate recovery. We need high voltage equipments, our transformers, security breakers, relays. We need to ensure generators and sustainable distribution of the energy to sustain our academy and manufacturing facilities.

SOUNDBITE (English), Andriy YERMAK, Head of the Office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, Dear colleagues, the biggest war in Europe in half of this century continues. However Ukrainians will need support of united Europe are the wins that we will be victorious and Russia will be defeated. We are grateful to Europeans and their institutions such as the European Parliament and the Euro Cities for standing by Ukraine to respond to Russian terror attacks on our civilian people. Your support is vital for us. Thank you very much.