Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the Council of Europe Mykola Tochytskyi addressed the students of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University on the occasion of Europe Day.

In his speech, he emphasized that discussing Europe specifically with Kharkiv today carries a profoundly symbolic weight. Europe is not just Brussels, Strasbourg, Paris, or Berlin. Today, Europe is also Kharkiv: a city that Russia sought to intimidate and break, but which continues to live, study, work, think, and resist.

Special attention was paid to the role of the Council of Europe in supporting Ukraine and building an architecture of accountability for the Russian Federation's aggression—in particular through the Register of Damage for Ukraine, the future international compensation system, and the Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.

Mykola Tochytskyi stressed that Ukraine's European future is forged not only at the negotiating table, but also within universities—through the knowledge, courage, professionalism, and character of young Ukrainians.

"Europe is not a destination. It is a way of action: freedom, dignity, law, and responsibility," the Permanent Representative noted.

He wished the students immense inner freedom, the courage to ask tough questions, a refusal to grow accustomed to injustice, and the constant remembrance that their knowledge, talent, and responsibility are precisely what Ukraine needs for victory, reconstruction, and a European future.