Thank you, Chair.

Delegates may not be aware that actually one of my first jobs after university was with this organisation’s Parliamentary Assembly in Denmark, alongside colleagues from all the nations around this table.

As young interns, we worked together to attempt to uphold the principles that this organisation is built on: sovereignty, peace, territorial integrity, the integrity of elections, the upholding of basic freedoms.

And so, it is a particular tragedy to be here 22 years later around this table when Russia has torn those principles apart through its illegal and unprovoked war on Ukraine.

It has trampled the Helsinki Final Act and violated every commitment that this organisation was founded on.

And I saw the consequences first-hand during my visit to Kyiv earlier this yea

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