The speech by the Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, Szymon Hołownia, in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
Dear Mr Speaker, dear Presidium! Dear Members of Parliament, dear friends!
I would like to express my pleasure to meet with the parliamentary family in such a distinguished composition. I am also pleased to be able to address you in Ukrainian and then in Polish.
Last year, the Chairman Stefanchuk addressed the Polish Parliament in this way, and Poland highly appreciates gestures of cordiality from its neighbours and is happy to support them.
Addresses from the rostrum of the Parliament – a symbol of democracy and freedom – have a special meaning. Today, as a representative of the Sejm Presidium, I stand before you for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale russian aggression against Ukraine. It is a great honour for me to present the issues that have been on our minds for two years. In order to avoid repeating lofty words, I will get to the point, to the issues that are fundamental for our countries today.
Please excuse my Ukrainian language, but I will try to speak better.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour for me to be in Kyiv for the first time. I started this visit by laying flowers and honouring the Heroes of your nation. It is a very great feeling to look into the faces of these young and old people whose lives were brutally ended because of one man. I don’t want to believe that something like this could happen on our continent in Europe after all the experience that our parents’ and our grandparents’ generation had, but it did.
And we talked about this today with the Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk. How much we need an offensive, not only a military offensive, because we are not the army here – we have a different task in parliaments – but an offensive that will oppose the narrative of evil, the narrative of aggression, the narrative of hatred. We have to defeat their narrative with our narrative. Because our narrative is a narrative of goodness, of respect, of love, of cooperation. This is a kind of struggle that we are facing today: a struggle between love and hate, a struggle between good and evil.
When I was looking for examples of leaders of this struggle, I was inspired by two figures I want to mention. These are Jerzy Giedroyc and Yurii Lavrynenko. Firstly, because their activities are an extraordinary example of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation that transcends the borders of states and regimes, cooperation in difficult times, which served the great ideas of cooperation, which took on a very concrete dimension.
Jerzy Giedroyc, as you well know, was a lifelong advocate of developing a formula for the coexistence of our two peoples, first in the realities of the Second Polish Republic, and then by seeking dialogue after the tragedy of the Second World War. He was friends with many Ukrainian writers, public figures, and politicians, and published their works in the publications of the emigrant Literary Institute in France. It was he who once approached Yurii Lavrynenko with a proposal to compile a collection of works by Ukrainian writers and artists whose work had been erased from history for the purposes of the soviet narrative. In 1959, a publication of almost a thousand pages was med, and it remains one of the most important sources of knowledge about the period of the Ukrainian National Revival.
I mention this historical fact not because it is an important example of our cooperation, but for another reason. And it is very symbolic when we look at current events, because this anthology had a very loud title: “The Executed Renaissance”. It was a symbol that was supposed to show the construction of the Ukrainian people, who sought independence from the russian occupier. But this revival was shot by the nkvd, “Executed Renaissance”. Isn’t this term gaining a telling symbolism today?
Since the beginning of the year, almost 10,000 bombs have fallen on Ukrainian cities. Refugees from the war, children forcibly deported to russia and forcibly taken to russia, civilian victims who are instruments of military terror. Aren't they another generation of Ukrainian nation-builders being deliberately destroyed in the name of a united russia? Isn't this another “Executed Renaissance”? This is how Poland perceives the tragedy that has befallen Ukraine. And just like in the days of Jerzy Giedroyc, it does not condone the despotic russian regime that is killing the Ukrainian spirit. It does not condone this regime's trampling on human lives, the sovereignty of the state, and its decision on which people have the right to exist and which do not.
Such tragedies have already occurred in our region, and our countries have experienced them very painfully. That is why today Poland, like Ukraine, has no illusions and is doing everything to stop this nightmare.
Recently, the Polish Sejm received an appeal from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in connection with the anniversary of the genocide of Crimean Tatars in 1944. I think that speeches like this one are a very good opportunity to make our position known.
The deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 is a crime under international law and should be recognised as a crime against humanity. It is an expression of our symbolic support for the community there, which has suffered enormous injustices at the hands of russia throughout its history. Unfortunately, these injustices are still relevant, they are still going on in the temporarily occupied Crimea and Sevastopol.
The Polish Sejm fully supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine and all efforts aimed at the de-occupation and reintegration of the Crimean peninsula. We remain fully committed to raising these issues at the international level, in particular in the format of the International Crimean Platform at the parliamentary level, which I will soon participate in Latvia.
We do not endorse, ladies and gentlemen, any actions against human rights, any attempts to question the existence of peoples or genocidal imperial practices. We do not approve of the “Executed Renaissance”, which includes the Crimean peninsula.
Dear ladies and gentlemen! The difficult experience of russian imperialism sorely tested our statehood, but at the same time provided a solid foundation for building a common view of international affairs. The cooperation in the defensive war against the bolsheviks in 1919-1920, in which my family members also died, or the political cooperation during the “Autumn of Nations” aimed at independence from moscow's influence, is part of a history that very clearly puts Poland and Ukraine on the same side.
Let's look at what has happened in recent history. After the collapse of the soviet union, Poland was the first country to recognise Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity within the 1991 borders, i.e. without any territorial claims. And all subsequent Polish governments have consistently supported Ukraine's independence.
Poland stood shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine during the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity. I remember with what emotion I, still a journalist, still a young man, looked at the reports from Kyiv. Even then, I had no other thought than to pray for you, to cheer for you, to switch on the TV in the hope that you would succeed, that you would be able to. Today, we are in the same place in Europe, in history, we are in the same process, and we could not be closer to ourselves than we are today.
Dear ladies and gentlemen! I remember perfectly what I felt, what we felt in Poland when russia's full-scale war against Ukraine broke out. We were at the railway stations, we were in the streets, we were at the border crossing points where we received refugees fleeing from russian enemies. I will remember the faces of mothers and children for the rest of my life. I remember this spirit of solidarity that this tragedy has evoked in us, once again, on such a large scale. It is hard for me to find words. I myself had the opportunity to host a Ukrainian family with a sick child. I could not even imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.
I take your applause as gratitude for all Polish women and men who have done much more than me and my family. There were many of them and we will not forget it, and this will always be between us – moment of cordiality, rapprochement, mutual support in all possible situations.
20 million war refugees who have crossed the border. Every day we feel their fears for their fathers, husbands, sons and grandsons who stayed in the country to fight the aggressor. Moreover, because of our firm stance against the ongoing conflict, we are being targeted by russian state sabotage and hybrid actions. We have never before experienced such a scale of hybrid attacks involving saboteurs, information technology, and armed people, I mean the situation on the Polish-belarusian border.
We talked about this with Mr Chairman, with Ruslan, with the heads of the Baltic states at the Summit that was organised in Bialystok last week. And we came to one conclusion: we will not allow the kremlin to win! Neither in the war nor in our hearts will we allow ourselves to be divided or intimidated. We will not allow a situation where someone will impose on us what we should feel, think, behave and whether we should smile or cry. We will decide for ourselves how we want to feel.
That is why, despite all the negative narratives that are supported, and also propagated in the world in order not to support Ukraine, that try to push this topic aside, that want to teach us that there is a war in Ukraine. We will never allow us to get used to it. Poland will always stand side by side with Ukraine in this fight. You can be sure of that. Nothing has changed and will not change in this matter. Of course, we have certain problems, all sorts of technical misunderstandings, which must be resolved by the maturity of our political class. But let's agree that the most important thing is the path to peace in this part of Europe, and it leads, and we have no doubt about it, through Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, through Ukraine's membership in NATO. We, as Poland, will do everything to make this happen as soon as possible and become a fact.
We will not allow another “Ukrainian renaissance” to be shot. 1 July 2022 was a historic day for Ukraine and a turning point in the debate about its European future. And most importantly, it became a clear benchmark for the entire international community, the moment when the flag of the European Union was brought into the hall of the Parliament (ed. – the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine) and placed in the presidium. It was impossible to manifest more clearly the path that Ukraine should follow, which Poland has already travelled, and we know that it is not always an easy path.
On this road, you need friends, you need those who help you prepare for accession to the European Union. We talked about this today with Ruslan, about how we can help you to make this process faster and more efficient at the level of self-government, at the level of central government, because this is a very difficult process that the state is going through. But we will overcome this path.
The NATO summit will soon take place in Washington. We have agreed with the heads of the Baltic parliaments and Ruslan that we will try to find an opportunity for joint action so that our voice is heard, so that Ukraine has its own spokespersons in the form of this platform that we have created with the Baltic countries. And I hope that when there are four, five, six of us, we will be heard even better, our voice will be felt. And Ruslan, as a reliable friend, is absolutely the first in this group.
Dear ladies and gentlemen! In conclusion, let me talk about two paradoxes. First, look at how much evil has happened before our eyes in recent years. Man is the only creature under the sun who can turn evil into good; he is the only machine that can put evil in and get good out. It only depends on our decision whether we respond to the evil we receive with evil, or whether we change our internal attitudes and respond with good.
This tragedy, this terrible crisis, this criminal, man-hating war started by putin, can, if we choose to, also bear good fruit in the generations to come. While we would like to see this happen without the casualties, without the tragedy we are witnessing, we can go forward. We can integrate even more deeply. We can be even closer to ourselves, get to know ourselves, meet each other, and build beautiful things together.
We must remember that the victory on the frontline is the key and most important. And this victory is equally important in our narrative, in that our narrative will be stronger than his, their narrative, that the narrative of love, cooperation, goodness, laying down one's life for the Motherland, in love for the Motherland and loved ones – this will remain in history. I guarantee you that in 50, 100 years, thanks to your heroic struggle, children will read about this in their textbooks, we will remember and tell about this to future generations, not about criminals, not about those who tried to set fire to our home. Good will prevail. Good will win, because you have shown what an incredible force it can be.
And every sacrifice made here, on Ukrainian soil, speaks and shows this. It shows not only the power of death, it shows the power of love, it shows the power of life. And this is one paradox. And the other is that when we look at politicians, at their actions, there is a tension between the fact that certain things, and we know this, must be done quickly to be effective. But political processes take time, a lot of time. We cannot lack patience, and you know this very well, and we know this very well. If we do what we have to do patiently, steadily, step by step, we will win. Let’s not let ourselves be discouraged, let's not let ourselves say that if we have failed now, if some meeting has not yielded certain results, if something has not worked, if there has been some dispute, let's not let ourselves say that this is the end. This journey will continue a little longer, but we will win if we stand side by side, if we have enough patience and faith that hope and life are much stronger than death.
“Our thought, our song will not die, will not perish... That's where our glory, the glory of Ukraine is, people!” Thank you very much!