On Monday, 19 September, at Westminster Abbey, Polish President Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda attended the funeral services of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. The funeral service was witnessed by 2,000 people, including around 500 foreign guests.

On Sunday, 18 September, at Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster, the Polish President and the First Lady paid tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II. Recalling the late Queen, Andrzej Duda stressed that she was, above all, a very warm person, joining outward calmness, with extraordinary personal culture and unusual tact.

On the same day, President Andrzej Duda met with the new UK Prime Minister Liz Truss. The main topics of conversation were security, support for Ukraine and economic cooperation, including raw materials.

The Polish President was invited to meet the new Prime Minister as one of five foreign leaders, the only one from outside the British Commonwealth.

‘It was a very good conversation, about the issue of security, about building a security zone, about Poland’s security, about our joint support that we, together with the UK, are giving to the struggling Ukraine, about our cooperation with the United States, about our cooperation in supporting the Baltic States as well,’ Andrzej Duda said, during a later media briefing.

He also revealed that he had spoken to the head of the British government about a whole range of security aspects – “the direct and military ones, as well as the trilateral Poland-Ukraine-UK cooperation’, said Duda.

„We also talked about economic issues, about issues related to the energy market”, added Andrzej Duda, and stressed “the very good atmosphere of this meeting, if one can talk like that at all in this sad era in which the UK is today and the Prime Minister herself personally”. The Polish president admitted that part of the conversation was about remembering the British Queen.

Adrian Andrzejewski