Four years. Four years that Russia has been waging a systematic war of annihilation against Ukraine. Four years that cities have been razed, hospitals and schools bombed, power plants destroyed, every winter, plunging an entire people into cold and darkness. Four years that Ukrainians have resisted, with a courage that commands the world's admiration.

Today, we hear talk of negotiations. We hear talk of ceasefires. We hear talk of "peace." But what kind of peace are we talking about if it abandons human beings to their executioners?

Because behind the front lines, there are faces. There are names.

There is Anastasia Hlukhovska, a journalist from Melitopol, abducted by the FSB in August 2023, from whom there has been no news for over two years, held incommunicado in the notorious Kizel prison, 2,700 kilometers from her home—the same place where journalist Viktoria Roshchyna was tortured and died in detention. There are 26 Ukrainian and 23 Russian journalists languishing in Kremlin prisons, some for nearly ten years. And there is Yevhen Matveyev, the mayor of Dnipro-Rudny, also imprisoned in this camp and tortured to death.

But beyond these names, there is the unspeakable. Nearly twenty thousand children torn from their country, deported to Russia, subjected to forced Russification aimed at erasing their language, their memory, their identity. Fewer than one in ten were able to return.

There are at least sixteen thousand civilians held incommunicado—tortured, humiliated, sometimes murdered. There are prisoners of war in appalling health. And there are three million Ukrainians living under occupation, forced to take Russian passports under threat of losing everything—their homes, their rights, their children, who are Russified, indoctrinated, and militarized to become cannon fodder for future Russian aggression.

It is for all these people that the People First campaign was launched at the initiative of two 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winners: Ukrainian Oleksandra Matviichuk and Russian Oleg Orlov — united by a simple message: Saving human beings is the top priority.

Indeed, as Oleksandra Matviichuk points out, "This war has a genocidal character" because it aims in particular to erase the national identity of Ukrainian children.

Our demands are clear.

• We demand immediate access for the International Committee of the Red Cross to all captives and all deported children.

• We demand the return of these children to their families.

• We demand the release of all illegally detained civilians.

• We demand the repatriation of prisoners of war.

• We demand that any Ukrainian who wishes to do so be allowed to leave the occupied territories.

• We demand an end to forced Russification, everywhere.

• And we also demand the release of Russian political prisoners, imprisoned for having said no to this war.

These demands are addressed to the President of the Republic. For it is not enough to create a Coalition of the Willing. It must be given its full meaning. The Coalition must impose this humanitarian framework as a prerequisite to any negotiation with Russia. No ceasefire can be discussed if the fate of captives, deported children, and populations under occupation is not on the table, even before territorial issues and security guarantees.

We ask France, we ask every government in the Coalition, we ask Europe: do not negotiate on front lines while forgetting the human beings behind them.

To cede territory without demanding the release of captives and the return of children is to condemn millions of human beings to oblivion. This would not be peace. It would be the surrender of our conscience.

The People First France coordination, which brings together Ukrainian, Russian, and French associations, champions this shared demand. This cause touches upon the founding promise of Europe, forged after 1945: never again to abandon civilians to barbarity.

This promise is either kept or broken today in Ukraine.

People First! Humans first! Slava Ukraini!