Instead of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine will send Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko to a key reconstruction forum in Poland in an attempt to shield the event from the current diplomatic row between the two countries. Reuters reported. Sviridenko said today that he will lead the Ukrainian delegation to the two-day Ukraine Reconstruction Conference (URC), which begins Thursday in Gdansk, a Polish port on the Baltic Sea.
“Our delegation has a clear mission: to secure concrete agreements that will strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities and resilience, while expanding economic cooperation with our partners,” Sviridenko said on the Telegram communication platform.
She added that Ukraine expects to sign several agreements with foreign partners, including those to strengthen Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, badly damaged by Russian airstrikes over the past year.
The dispute between Ukraine and Poland
Zelensky’s decision not to attend the conference came after a dispute between Ukraine and Poland over a Ukrainian army unit that named itself after the nationalist unit responsible for the massacre of Poles in World War II.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Friday stripped Zelenskiy of the highest state decoration, after which three former Ukrainian presidents and other senior officials returned their Polish state decorations.
Zelenskiy returned the Order of the White Eagle awarded to him by Poland by mail
URK is a major international event dedicated to the reconstruction of Ukraine, and its goal is to help Polish companies win contracts for the reconstruction of the country after the end of the war with Russia. Now it is about an attempt to save the relations between the two countries.
“The Ukrainian government and parliamentary delegation should attend the conference and roll up their sleeves and do everything in their power to normalize bilateral relations,” said Iryna Gerashchenko, a representative of the Ukrainian opposition party European Solidarity.
“We depend on Polish logistics, and the security of Poles today is guaranteed by the sacrifice and courage of the Ukrainian armed forces,” she added.
Tusk tries to defuse tensions
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political rival of President Nawrocki, tried to ease tensions by saying the government was working on preparing 200 agreements for the conference and would make sure the work was done.
“We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, and this is not Polish money,” Tusk said. “It will also be money that Polish companies will spend in Ukraine after the end of the war. It is in the interest of Poland and Ukraine that this cooperation continues.”
