Former Social Democratic minister José Pedro Aguiar-Branco advocated these positions at a summit of parliament presidents in Kyiv, after attending a ceremony commemorating the third anniversary of the Butcha massacre by Russian troops.
In April 2022, after Russian troops withdrew from Butcha, a city near Kyiv, reports and images of various atrocities began to emerge. More than 300 bodies were found, and Ukraine called on the International Criminal Court to investigate these war crimes.
In his speech, the President of the Assembly of the Republic referred to the political and diplomatic context surrounding the war in Ukraine, stating that “unfortunately,” merely repeating the word peace does not achieve or maintain peace.
“While it is true that peace must be negotiated, it is also true that it must be conquered. There is always an element of force—political force and actual force—associated with any process aimed at achieving peace,” he maintained.
Therefore, Aguiar-Branco emphasized the need to “strengthen Ukraine in its quest for peace—political and negotiating strength.”
“This is necessary, in addition to the essential strength on the ground,” he noted.
José Pedro Aguiar-Branco also pointed out that “any peace solution necessarily requires justice.”
“Justice cannot be sidelined or forgotten. There can be no peace—people will not find peace—if they are constantly plagued by a sense of injustice from the enormous atrocities caused by the invading forces,” he stressed.
Laying out his argument further, he proposed that “empires are not democratic,” citing the case of Portugal, “a country that for a long time had an empire.”
“We know that the conquest of our democracy was closely linked to the end of the Portuguese empire. This leads me to the following point: the erosion of democracy is of interest only to imperialist powers,” he declared.
The former minister also highlighted the Ukrainian people’s fight for “sovereignty, freedom, and democracy.”
“The struggle of Ukraine is necessarily the struggle of free Europe and the rule-based world,” he added.
Before returning to Lisbon, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco is scheduled to meet with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and will attend a dinner hosted by the Ukrainian Parliament President, Ruslan Stefanchuk.
