At the end of January, we will depart for Russia.

By Defying Sanctions

Upon arrival, Davide Tutino and Giuseppe Mastruzzo will engage in the exchange of European products for local ones, openly defying commercial sanctions.

For this act, they risk imprisonment of 2 to 6 years and fines ranging from 25,000 to 250,000 euros.

Professors Mastruzzo and Tutino will be accompanied by Marzia di Sessa, a journalist from 9Mq, and Don Diego Minoni, the chaplain of this peace mission.

It is imperative to put an end to these sanctions that adversely affect people and bolster the authoritarianism of warring regimes.

Their aim is not to foster peace but to reconstruct, within Europe, between East and West, a wall paid for with the blood of Ukrainians and Russians.

Therefore, our disobedience is a mission for peace.

We must defy sanctions that plunge Ukraine, Italy, and Europe into poverty, leading to the militarization of labor, the subjugation of workers, and the transformation of the continent into a factory of weapons and soldiers for future wars.

Hence, this act of disobedience is also a struggle for workers’ rights and a mission for peace.

It is crucial to expose that these sanctions are not diplomatic tools but instruments of war.

They merge the interests of big financial capital and the war industry.

They drive the conversion of European countries into war-driven economies, compelling them to strip rights from their own people.

As we write, another 500,000 Ukrainians are called to the front, and European industries metamorphose into factories for bullets, tanks, and warplanes.

Humanity needs to take the opposite route, emerging from this capitalist crisis through global demilitarization and the redirection of military spending towards civil needs.

Hence, our disobedience is both a political manifesto and a mission for peace.

We will defy the sanctions imposed by the Western military bloc, sealed by the destruction of the North Stream 2 pipeline, an act of war against Europe for which we still await truth and justice.

If the judges, in their duty, choose to prosecute this act of disobedience, they must also confront Article 11 of our Constitution, which declares, “Italy repudiates war.”

Faced with this, current regulations appear disproportionate, irrational, and unacceptable.

If, on the other hand, the judges look the other way, we will realize that disobedience to these rules is not only just and necessary but also legitimate.

Perhaps not today, maybe tomorrow, but when a judge closes this case, he will have to deal with the corrupted and the corruptors at the top of the institutions who have pitted Italy and Europe against themselves.


Davide Tutino, Giuseppe Mastruzzo, Marzia di Sessa, Don Diego Minoni.