Remarks by Erik Fosnes Hansen at Ukrainian marking of 24 February 2025, in Oslo, Norway.
(Translation from Norwegian by H.P. Lillebo)

"I want to talk about books. "Oh no," you're perhaps thinking; "typical author – he's going to talk about books, when he should be talking about the war."

But what is the aim of this war? What is Putin's aim? Territory, many would say – more land, more fields, more resources; amass more territory at whatever cost, as Russia historically always has; no matter how huge Russia already is.

Since 2014, Russia has occupied, annexed, and simply stolen enormous Ukrainian areas, and three years ago today, begun a full-scale war where even greater areas have been conquered with raw power and ruthless violence. Such is the war. But what is the first thing the Russian troops do when they have established control over yet a new area, a new town?

Well, they go for the books. They go into the schools and remove all Ukrainian school books. The soldiers enter people's homes and do the same: they ransack homes in a hunt for forbidden books, meaning books about Ukrainian history and society, culture and geography. As well as fiction in the Ukrainian language. Truck load after truck load of forbidden books are dumped in huge piles, doused with paraffin and set alight. Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, bonfires of books are blazing again in Europe.

No, the aim of the war is not just territory. The aim of the war is those who live in the territories. The aim is the Ukrainian population and its roots. Their language. Their cultural heritage. Their history. Their identity. It is estimated that more than 2000 Ukrainian cultural institutions have been wholly or partly destroyed since 2014. Museums are stripped – emptied of artistic and cultural treasures: Paintings. National costumes. Embroidery. Peasant antiques. Archeological artifacts. And the schools then get new books – Russian books with the Russian course of study, which the children must learn and the teachers are forced to teach. This is what is called cultural genocide.

Why? What is in these school books? What do you suppose we find in the Russian lesson plan? A lesson plan that Russian children now have been taught for a generation? They read there about the strong, pure and heroic Russia and its wise and broadminded leader. They read there about how beautiful and successful the Russian – and then the Soviet – empire once was, when all its many peoples worked happily together, all as one, under the wise and just leadership of Mother Russia. They read about all the threats and dangers Mother Russia is now surrounded by on all sides by the decadent and Nazistic West, and the eternal battle that Russia has had to wage on all sides. And the children learn about the importance of being prepared to offer their blood and life for Holy Russia and its honor.

After school comes more or less forced enrolment in semi-military child- and youth-clubs, with uniforms and all the rest.

It is known that Russia has forcibly moved about 20,000 Ukrainian children from the occupied areas to Russia. But in a sense, Russia has also kidnapped all the tens of thousands of children that remain in the occupied territories, just as the Russian authorities also have committed their own children and youth to an ideological prison, and as Russian media has been controlled so they tell the same story, each and every one.

Whoever has control, not simply over a territory, but over the people's thoughts and hearts, has become all-powerful.

This is the goal of the war. The goal of all tyrants: to take control of history and of the people's thoughts. To force obedience. This is why tyrants and fundamentalists and others who play around with totalitarian thoughts are so afraid of books.

And what is the goal of all this obedience? Well, the goal is as old as it is banal: to make more soldiers who are willing to sacrifice their lives so that their territory will become greater. And then greater yet. So that the dictator's and the country's glory shall grow until it struts with self-intoxication.

If Putin – perhaps with help of similar wholly- or half-totalitarian colleagues, including his charming friend in Washington – succeeds in gaining a peace agreement that gives him breathing room and lets him keep the occupied areas, no one should believe that he will rest on his laurels any longer than just what is necessary. It won't be business as usual. It won't be peace. Because the war will continue. At the first and best opportunity Putin will start up the war in Ukraine anew, and help himself to even more land, resources and people. And then it will be other countries. Don't believe anything else.

This is what happened after the Munich agreement in 1938, the most shameful blot on the history of the western democracies, when they sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler – without anyone asking the Czechs and the Slovaks. Who could believe that, 87 years later, we would get another Munich? After Czechoslovakia the same fate overtook other countries. After Ukraine, the same fate will overtake other countries. No one should any longer have any illusions otherwise.

That is why Norway must stand together with the rest of Europe in supporting Ukraine. This is more important than ever. It concerns us directly, as Russia's neighboring country.

Norway's national economy is based on gas and oil. It is now high time to share more of the profits. Much more - to set aside more money to help Ukraine in its fight for life, for it's in Ukraine that the battle is fought today. But that battle may easily be fought other places tomorrow. We now need to sacrifice, though it will hurt in the wallet. But really, we have enough. In 2022 and in 2023 Norway had a dizzying 1,200 billion N.kr in profit as a result of this war! In light of that, the 25 billion that the government is planning to give in 2025 is a pittance. We must now think outside the box, because the fire is ablaze. People ask: What if there will be war? That's the wrong question. There is already war. Europe is burning!

If need be, we must make exceptions from procedures and other economic principles made in times of peace, and channel profits directly in to the battle against tyranny and subjugation. That battle must be won at any price, whatever the cost. For tyranny and subjugation recognize no borders. Nor in humanity's heads and hearts.

Slava Ukrajini!"

-- Erik Fosnes Hansen