On 25 February after his morning phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Polish President Andrzej Duda wrote on Twitter “The situation in Kyiv is very difficult. In the morning, the Russians began bombing the city. Drones dropped bombs on residential buildings and killed people. This is an obvious act of terror to break morale, but there is a great determination to defend the capital.
“Our neighbors – the Ukrainians are facing the most difficult test today, risking their own lives. The test to hold the independence of their country. They defend not only their freedom but the freedom of all Europeans. In this, they can count on the full support of Poland” – said President Andrzej Duda in his address to the nation, which he delivered on Thursday evening, February 24.
The President recalled that Poland had repeatedly warned the world about Russia’s intentions.
Andrzej Duda recollected that until today many world leaders have been under the illusion that normal negotiations can be conducted with Vladimir Putin and Russia, and such agreements will be respected. Poland has warned against this attitude many times. In 2008 the late president Lech Kaczyński spoke about it in his speech during the Russian aggression against Georgia warning “today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after tomorrow the Baltic states, and then perhaps it would be time to attack my country, Poland!”.
Due to the dramatic development of the situation in Ukraine, on the initiative of the President of Poland, on Friday, February 25, an extraordinary summit of NATO Bucharest Nine (B9) will be held in Warsaw with the participation of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Group B9 is an agreement of nine Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, with the purpose to deepen military cooperation between the countries of NATO’s eastern flank, as well as to discuss key security policy issues.
Adrian Andrzejewski