Mayors,

Reem, my good friend and fellow Minister,

Ms Giffey,

Ambassador Makeiev,

Fellow Members of the German Bundestag,

Esteemed guests,

Friends,

I would like to tell you today about an encounter that greatly moved me.

Like you, Reem, and the Federal Chancellor, I travelled to Ukraine during the summer, where I was able to keep a promise that I had made during my first visit to Kyiv.

Back then, Russian missiles had just hit a residential area, and my delegation and I viewed the ruins and spoke with people whose houses and apartments had been destroyed.

These people included the family of a locally employed colleague from the German Embassy in Kyiv, who does important work for us there. Her husband is at the front.

We stood together in the ruins of her living room and I told her that I would come back to Kyiv. And when I came, it would be with a cake for us to enjoy together in her living room, as it would be rebuilt by then with the help of many colleagues from our Embassy, among others.

This summer, we were finally able to meet again.

We sat on her sofa. We hugged each other. We felt happy. We enjoyed coffee and cake. And she said something to me that I would like to share with you here today:

“Friends stand together”.

And that’s true. These words could basically be the unofficial motto of this conference – because municipal partnerships are an expression of friendship, indeed of an entire network of friendship that already goes far beyond bilateral partnerships. And this network is an integral part of German foreign policy, precisely because it complements classical diplomacy.

It is in Ukrainian cities and municipalities that decisions are taken every day after Russian attacks that determine whether power and water continue to be available, whether schools and hospitals remain open, whether air-raid shelters can be reached, and whether people receive reliable information.

I saw this repeatedly during my visits to Ukraine, most recently this summer. That time, after visiting Kyiv, I travelled on to Kharkiv, where people are very grateful for the partnership with Nuremberg. Kharkiv is around 30 kilometres from the front.

On the way there, in the Poltava region, I spoke with three local mayors, who told me about the challenges they face every day. We always read about how Russia deliberately targets Ukrainian infrastructure.

But what this means in concrete terms is something one only sees and experiences by travelling to Ukraine, by looking at the situation on the ground or by speaking with people.

The mayors told me about the difficulties of keeping petrol stations connected to the power grid. In one municipality, all of the petrol stations had been damaged. Those that were still working urgently needed a decentralised power supply.

Fortunately, Germany was able to help with this several times. And such help often came from the municipal level – because friends do indeed stand together.

Building on this tenet, we want to organise a round table meeting of German and Ukrainian mayors next year. In order to make this dialogue truly pragmatic, we want to ask what works locally and how towns and municipalities can mutually support each other.

This dialogue can help Ukraine on its challenging path to EU membership, for example. After all, many EU rules have to be implemented in town halls and municipal administrations.

But naturally, these partnerships are not a one-way street. I think this is a very important point. German municipalities can also learn a great deal from the experience of their Ukrainian friends.

For instance, how can we ensure that our supply infrastructure is even better protected? How can we prepare for power or communications blackouts? How can we enhance disaster prevention? And how do we protect our society from hybrid threats and disinformation campaigns?

All of these are questions that we are also asking ourselves here in Germany, albeit to a very different extent than in Ukraine. And these questions need to be asked because Russian aggression does not end at the Ukrainian border.

We, too, are experiencing hybrid threats from Russia, as we recently saw in Leipzig. The German Government responded very resolutely to this.

I also raised this issue again at the United Nations in New York when I met Mr Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister. I stated in no uncertain terms that we will not tolerate these attacks by Russia, that we will defend ourselves against any threat to our country’s security and that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated, as the Chancellor and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs underlined once again during their visit to Ukraine last weekend.

I also spoke with the Russian Foreign Minister about grain exports, which are stuck in Ukrainian ports because of Russia’s targeted attacks.

A third of the harvest in Ukraine is at risk of spoilage. And at the same time, the world needs these exports. If they do not leave port soon, there is a risk of famine in regions that are already unstable. This can lead to new waves of displacement.

This, too, is a form of destabilisation, which Russia is fuelling with its ruthlessly expansionist aggression.

In Russia, too, there were brave individuals who were quick to recognise this aggression for what it was and criticised it from an early stage.

Today in particular, we must also speak up about this, as it is the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who stood up against the Russian system of repression, corruption and expansionist power politics and publicly denounced it.

Anna Politkovskaya’s murder was an early warning to us about what is now a day-to-day occurrence in Russia, namely the suppression of people’s freedom.

Those in power in Russia know that their greatest opponent may well be people’s freedom.

That is why Anna Politkovskaya had to die.

Germany stands for freedom.

Europe stands for freedom.

And this means that we will stand steadfastly by Ukraine because friends stand together.

Slava Ukraini!