President Andrzej Duda visits Ukraine

President Andrzej Duda’s visit to Ukraine has begun, the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland announced on Saturday. In Kiev, Duda laid flowers at the Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine.

The KPRP wrote on the “X” platform that “President Andrzej Duda’s visit to Ukraine has begun.” She added that the president is taking part in the celebrations of the 33rd anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence.

The entry on “X” also included a recording of the Polish president welcoming him to Ukraine.

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The first point of the Polish president’s visit – as it results from the entries published by the KPRP – was laying flowers in Kyiv at the Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine. Saturday’s visit of the Polish president to Kyiv is the fifth since the beginning of the Russian invasion – February 24, 2022.

Over the past three years, President Duda has visited Kiev several times.

In the last three years, President Duda has visited Kyiv several times. Together with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, he appeared in the Ukrainian capital on February 23, 2022. – on the eve of Russian aggression. “Today, together with the President of Lithuania, we are coming to Kiev as a sign of our solidarity with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people; we appeal to Russia for peace and calm,” the president said then, referring to Russia’s aggressive policy immediately preceding the invasion of Ukraine.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Duda, Nauseda, and the presidents of Latvia Egils Levits and Estonia Alar Karis returned to Kyiv on April 13, 2022. This was the first visit by foreign heads of state to Kyiv after the Russian attack. The presidents met with Zelensky, then visited the towns of Bucha, Borodianka, and Irpin, liberated by Ukrainian forces, near Kyiv, where mass crimes by Russian troops against Ukrainian civilians took place.

The Polish president visited Kyiv again on May 22, 2022, when he delivered a speech to the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada as the first foreign leader since the beginning of the invasion. “Poland supports and will support Ukraine; I will not rest until Ukraine becomes a member of the EU in the full sense of the word,” Duda said then.

At the upcoming NATO summit, the path to Kyiv’s membership in the Alliance should be opened.

Duda visited Kyiv again in August 2022 at Zelensky’s invitation, and took part in, among others, a meeting of the Crimean Platform – a forum of leaders working to regain control over the Crimean Peninsula occupied by Russia. “Crimea was and is as much a part of Ukraine as Gdańsk or Lublin are parts of Poland, as Nice is part of France, Cologne is part of Germany, as Rotterdam is part of the Netherlands,” the Polish president said at the time.

Andrzej Duda and Nauseda also visited Kyiv at the end of June 2023, shortly before the July NATO summit in Vilnius. “Poland and Lithuania are doing everything to ensure that the July NATO summit in Vilnius brings a clear perspective of Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance,” the president declared after meeting with Zelensky. “At the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, Kyiv’s path to membership in the Alliance should be opened; we discussed this with Presidents Zelensky and Duda and, as always, we agreed that Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” the Lithuanian president noted.