Poles, who have been helping Ukrainians since the very beginning of the war, organized solidarity rallies with Ukraine in many Polish cities on Saturday, February 24. Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, told the meting he was "amazed" at the "tone and the content" of comments by Russia's United Nation ambassador.
Solidarity rally with Ukraine in Gdańsk on the second anniversary of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine. Photo by Adam Warżawa/PAP
On Saturday, an artistic installation with symbolic crosses with the names of war victims appeared in front of the building of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Warsaw. After 4 p.m. the demonstration began. Similar demonstrations also took place today in other Polish cities, including: in Gdańsk, Lublin and Wrocław.
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The most important Polish politicians also spoke out on social media. "We, Poles, have been involved from the very beginning in helping Ukraine, which is heroically fighting the Russian invader. We are drawing conclusions from the war on our eastern border," noted President Andrzej Duda. "Two years of Ukrainian heroism. Two years of Russian barbarism. Two years of shame for those who remain indifferent," wrote Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
"Two years ago in the morning, Russian bombs and missiles fell on the sleeping cities of Ukraine. A war began that seemed unimaginable in Europe," said Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski, emphasizing that "European countries stand behind Ukraine, NATO stands, Poland".
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski delivered a scathing rebuttal to the falsehoods presented by Russian Ambassador to the UN, Mr. Vasily Nebenzya, systematically dismantling each deceit with precision and clarity in his speech. Sikorski emphasized that Ambassador Nebenzya's characterization of Ukrainians as "clients of the West" is erroneous. In reality, Kyiv is striving for independence from any external influence, and Ukraine boasts a democratically elected government, contrary to the unfounded label of a "criminal Kyiv regime" touted by Nebenzya. “He called them “Nazis”. Well, the President is Jewish, the Defense Minister if Muslim, and they have no political prisoners. He said Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Aleksey Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is,” Sikorski said.
“He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. False. We have only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading its neighbors. He even said that Poland attacked Russia during the World War II. What is he talking about? It is the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with the Nazi Germany on September 17, 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on September 22,” the Chief of Polish diplomacy said.
The Head of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified that the events in Ukraine in 2014 were not an "illegal coup" but rather the lawful removal of President Viktor Yanukovych by the democratically elected Parliament. "Lastly," he remarked, "the notion that Russia is invincible is a fallacy. Russia did not emerge victorious in the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, the Battle of Warsaw, nor in Afghanistan, or the Cold War. However, amidst each setback, there were endeavors toward reform," concluded the Minister.
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