The art group “Stand with Ukraine” renamed the Paris metro station “Europe” to “Europe-Ukraine” without waiting for the formal documents from the city hall, Ukrainska Pravda reports.
Instead of intervening, the Paris police silently watched.
"Rallies are taking place across the country, often without official permission, which takes 48 hours to make. In France, in fact, there is still a bureaucracy, but lately, something is starting to change, "- the statement said.
The idea of creating a “Europe-Ukraine” station on the Paris metro’s third line belongs to the art group joined by French and Ukrainian artists.
“Ukrainian people are suffering terribly. Today their heroical resistance for freedom, justice, and democracy against the brutal and unjustified Putin’s aggression is respected and admired. The terrible urgency of Ukraine’s situation is obvious. Simultaneously with collecting aid, we wanted to do something truly symbolic,” - the initiator of the act, French actress Carlotta Verny.
The activists were inspired by a recent story on Polish “Solidarity.”
French activist Pascal Rossi told us that in 1982 as a sign of support to the Polish resistance, the “Stalingrad” metro station in Paris had another name of “Gdańsk” for the whole day.
“We explained our idea to the management of Paris metro, and they supported us. We added the word “Ukraine” to the name “Europe” because Ukrainian fight for democracy and freedom is our fight,” Verny said.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is initiating assigning Kyiv a special partner status of honorary Paris citizenship for the capital of Ukraine.
