At an extraordinary ALDE Leaders Summit Meeting on Ukraine, the ALDE Party Bureau and the leaders of the ALDE member parties across Europe, adopted the following statement

The ALDE Party and its member parties stand united in condemnation and rejection of President Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified military aggression on Ukraine, a deplorable act on a sovereign, democratic and pro-European country, and against our liberal values that we hold so dearly.

We stand fully united in support and solidarity with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom. They are reminding us why democracy matters, and why we have to fight to protect it. Putin has flagrantly and willingly violated international law, including the United Nations charter and its international commitments, and the Kremlin must be held accountable.

We call the European Union and its leaders, as well as our partners and leaders in the global democratic world, to respond strongly by imposing further harder sanctions immediately on the Russian Federation, in particular on its leadership. Sanctions need to be massive and unprecedented, not only against entities but also against individuals, including the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko for his subservience in the invasion. Nothing should be kept off the table.

We welcome moves by NATO allies to intensify deterrence and defence in the region, but the strong signal must be sent that the Article 5 commitment is sacrosanct and that the Open Door Policy remains.EU member states must be willing to send financial and defensive military equipment to Ukraine and cybersecurity assistance, as well as ban Russian airplanes from their national airspaces, and keep all options open, including a no-fly zone in Ukraine.

We call on the European community to prepare a humanitarian aid package, and provide all the support it can to the democratically-elected leadership and government of Ukraine, civil society and its citizens, and to support its territorial integrity and sovereign right to pursue Euro-Atlantic integration.

We call on the European community to begin wide consultations on the possibility to accelerate the membership track of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other Eastern Partnership countries to the EU.EU path must be conditioned upon heads of state recognising the attack on state sovereignty, International Law, European values with clear condemnation of Russian invasion of Ukraine. We support increased Euro-Atlantic political and military presence in Western Balkans.

We welcome the support already offered through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and call on our respective national governments to supplement this, and for neighbouring countries to show solidarity to provide emergency assistance and asylum for Ukrainian citizens fleeing the violence.

We must establish a financial support fund for a Marshall-Style package to rebuild Ukraine quickly. We must also accelerate our strategical rethinking of our national energy mixes to reduce our dependency on Russia for energy and natural gas.

We call all international sport and cultural institutions, federations, associations and organisations to expel the Russian Federation from their respective organisations and ban them immediately and completely from participation at all sport and cultural events as long as Putin's aggression on Ukraine is in place.

At the same time, we stand in solidarity and praise the bravery of Russian citizens all across Russia who risk arrest to protest their President’s war launched in the name of the Russian Federation, and we affirm our continued moral support to our member parties in Russia.

To this respect, we totally condemn the acts committed by the Russian authorities in arresting the peaceful protesters all around the Russian Federation, thus violating human rights and freedoms.