Dec. 7—My most heartfelt thanks and greetings to you, the Journalists’ Club of Mexico, the international jury, Mrs. Celeste Sáenz de Miera and Mr. Mouris Salloum. I feel deeply honored that you decided to select me for the Freedom of Expression Award and would have been very happy to travel to the beautiful country of Mexico, about which I have many cherished, precious memories, to receive it in person.

I have to ask you to understand that, for the time being, I can’t do this, since I am on a Ukrainian list, which many experts have described as a hitlist, and several people on that list have been killed. I am actually the number one on that list of the CCD.

We find ourselves at an incredibly decisive moment in world history, threatened with a possible global nuclear war, while on the other hand we see the rapid emergence of a new just world economic order. Recently it was Mexican congressmen and women who helped to catalyze a movement of people from all over the world who, faced with the danger of annihilation of the entire human species, decided to activate themselves as world citizens.

In the same spirit, I think that Mexico can play a unique role, not only to help to bring all of Latin America to work with the Belt and Road Initiative, but, given its historical and geographical location, Mexico can do something on which the existence of humanity may depend, getting the U.S. and China, the two largest economies of the planet, to work together in the joint development of the Ibero-American continent and all of the Global South.

Thank you so very, very much. [back to text]