President Andrzej Duda and First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda attended the second Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen organised in Kyiv on Saturday. The Polish presidential couple joined it online from Krakow.
“I do everything to help Ukraine. Everywhere I go, I always support Ukraine and its candidacy for membership of the European Union,” said the Polish president.
Opening the meeting, the wife of the President of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska recalled that the event was organised on the 150th day of Russian aggression against Ukraine – a time of mass graves and crimes.
“It is also the 150th day of the assistance provided to Ukraine by friends, some of whom have honoured today’s meeting with their presence”, said Zelenska.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that the war has not and will not break Ukraine.
“Why are we talking about reconstruction now, when the war is not over yet? The first day of peace we should feel it fully and the systematic reconstruction of everything destroyed by the Russian army would begin right away”, he said.
The wife of the Polish president spoke of her pride in the Poles who had united and given such tremendous support to the Ukrainians, especially those who had reached Poland. She also talked about the opportunities created by Poland for thousands of Ukrainian children and young people to continue their education.
“In order to make it easier for them to learn, we are issuing Polish language textbooks which are delivered to Polish schools. Together with Olena Zelenska, we have taken patronage of a project to prepare 80,000 children’s books in Ukrainian, which will be available in public libraries across Poland,” said Kornhauser-Duda.
The online meeting was attended by US First Lady Jill Biden, and the summit was also addressed by the First Ladies of Latvia, Serbia, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Israel, Canada, Spain, France, Turkey, as well as the President of the European Council Charles Michel and Hollywood stars Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher and Richard Gere.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński