Our best wishes for a Happy New Year 2026!
As 2025 draws to a close, our Ad Pacem committee wishes you a wonderful festive season with your family and friends.
This is only possible for us Europeans because we live in peace with our neighbours.
From this past year, our committee would like to highlight an event that had a profound impact on us and that we would like to commemorate here. It is the story of two former prisoners of the Russian concentration camp ‘Izolyatsia’ in Donetsk, Valery Sokolov and Valery Matjushenko, who were released during a prisoner exchange. Thanks to a fundraising appeal, we were able to finance their dental operations and implants so that they could get new teeth to replace those they lost during Russian torture. In two short videos, you can listen to their stories and their words of thanks, with a written transcript below.
=> Videos Matjushenko and Sokolov
This is an abject consequence of this horrific war waged by Russian state officials. One day, an international tribunal will try them for crimes against humanity, if not for genocide against the Ukrainian people.
We close this Newsletter 45 with a photo sent to us from the Art Therapy Centre in Kropyvnytskyj, Ukraine, where children from refugee families thank Ad Pacem donors.
These young people give hope for a better future!
Best wishes for the New Year!
Claude Pantaleoni
Chairman Ad Pacem servandam