Elżbieta Witek made the declaration during the First Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea Platform initiative in Zagreb, Croatia, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
‘We stand united with Ukraine’
Witek told a news briefing: “We are all speaking with one voice, we stand united with Ukraine. We are highlighting the fact that Crimea belongs to Ukraine. None of our countries has recognised Russia’s capture of Crimea."
She added: “We know how much work, how much action, not just diplomatic efforts, but financial assistance, will be required for Crimea to return to Ukraine.”
Witek told reporters that she and her counterparts from other countries stressed the need to show unity on the issue.
“Only by being united and standing together can we force Russia to end this war, which was started by Vladimir Putin,” she said.
Witek added: “We talked about the suffering of the Ukrainian nation, about the fact that a terrible thing is being done in Crimea, namely that local children are being taken away for illegal adoption by Russian families, about the fact that Crimean Tatars are being forcibly drafted into the Russian army.”
During Tuesday's talks, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky made a video address to the Zagreb summit from Kyiv, news outlets reported.
'We will stand with Ukraine'
Poland’s Witek emphasised that “it’s Putin who started this war and it’s him who is responsible for what is going on right now,” including “the collapse of the whole economic system as a result of this war, and really not only in Europe, but in the whole world.”
Witek said she and other parliamentary Speakers “declared that we will stand with Ukraine, that we’ll come through this together with them, that they are not alone, and that we owe a big thanks to them and the Ukrainian army, but also to the entire Ukrainian nation for their heroism, for their extraordinary gallantry and for the fact that they have taken responsibility, not just for themselves, but also for us.”
Crimea Platform parliamentary summit
Later on Tuesday, the Polish Sejm Speaker was due to hold bilateral talks with the leader of Estonia’s Riigikogu parliament, Jüri Ratas, and the Speaker of Slovenia’s National Assembly lower house, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, among other meetings, officials told reporters.
Co-organised by the Ukrainian and Croatian parliaments, the two-day Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea Platform began on Monday, attracting delegations of lawmakers from some 50 countries, including the United States, Germany and Turkey, according to organisers.
Besides Witek, Poland was also represented by the Speaker of the Senate, the upper house of parliament, Tomasz Grodzki, the PAP news agency reported.
At a ceremonial dinner in Zagreb on Monday, the Speaker of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, presented Ukraine’s state Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise to top lawmakers from several countries, including Poland’s Witek and Grodzki, as well as US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to officials.
Launched in 2021, the Crimea Platform is a consultative forum bringing together like-minded countries and international organisations seeking to put an end to Russia's occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, which has continued since 2014, the PAP news agency reported.
Tuesday was day 244 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, sejm.gov.pl, tvpparlament.pl