NL Consulate General Istanbul 🇳🇱🇹🇷

“On behalf of all the ordinary men, women and children who were thrust overnight into a new reality they did not choose. On behalf of the children who now go to school in an air-raid shelter. On behalf of the women who keep their families afloat and their country running by working in factories. On behalf of the men who’ve had to swap a suit-and-tie for combat fatigues, and are fighting to defend their territory. Metre by metre. Who are doing so because they know and feel that every square centimetre is a piece not just of Ukraine’s soil, but of its dignity too. That is what they are defending. President Zelenskyy, Volodymyr: this award is for your country. For you as president. And for all the Ukrainian people.” Click here government.nl/documents/spee… to read my speech at the Four Freedoms Awards ceremony. Today in Middelburg it was my privilege to join Elizabeth Roosevelt Johnston (the great-granddaughter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt) in presenting the International Four Freedoms Award to President @ZelenskyyUa of Ukraine. He accepted the award on behalf of the Ukrainian people as a ‘recognition of the courageous fight for our freedom and democracy under exceptionally difficult circumstances’.