A stunning city: the port with its grain silos ready to depart for the world, the Potemkin Stairs, the city’s symbol overlooking the sea; the tree-lined avenues; people in the streets trying to live; small venues playing music - most often Italian - Battiato, Mina, Celentano… buildings that carry memory, the National Theatre Academy, the great central boulevards steeped in history, the majestic train station. It all feels so far from the war… but it isn’t. Last night the alarms, the usual alarms, and explosions toward the sea, nearby.

I write these lines while I am standing near a room that houses about 30 people who have been forced to abandon their homes where they were constantly in danger of being attacked by the Russian army.
I write shortly after two men, on a military base thousands of kilometres far from this country, discussed the lives of thousands of people as if they were clauses in a real estate contract.

For over thirty years, we have lived through conflicts.
We started in the 1990s in the Balkans, in what was then the first war in Europe after the Second World War.
We were moved by our own weakness: we had no direct experience with war and didn't know what to do, but we could at least avoid leaving those people alone.

At this time when war is increasingly relevant and increasingly "loved", I believe rhetoric is useless, I believe every word we say must be a commitment.
If I say I am against war, then I must live it.
Otherwise, it's better to keep quiet.
We are against war because we have spent many years among people who are on the front lines, who live or have lived there, in refugee camps, and I have seen that war, being a clash of forces, makes the strong win, and not who’s right.