MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th July, 2023) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that he had discussed the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius and ways to "get the best possible result" for Kiev with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Ukraine's western city of Lutsk.
"During the events in Lutsk, @AndrzejDuda and I had a brief but very substantive discussion about the upcoming @NATO Summit in Vilnius. We agreed to work together to get the best possible result for Ukraine," Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter.
Duda, on his part, said that "effective support for Ukraine in its pursuit of membership in the Alliance is very important for Poland."
The Polish president's visit to Ukraine was not previously announced.
While in Lutsk, both leaders also visited the service in the Cathedral of the St. Peter and Paul on the eve of the 80th anniversary of massacres of Poles that were carried out by the Ukrainian insurgent army in historical regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in German-occupied Poland in 1943-1945, Ukrainian media reported.
The church service was also attended by Epiphanius Dumenko, the leader of the non-canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), and Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), media reported.
Moreover, Zelenskyy held a coordination meeting on the security and social situation in the Volyn Region, where Lutsk is located. The meeting discussed the situation in the border area with Belarus, strengthening Ukraine's defense and security forces and northern section of the country's border, the state of shelters, budgetary support and jobs, the Ukrainian president said.
On June 30, Zelenskyy said that he had instructed Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi to reinforce the country's border area with Belarus.
The Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius will host the NATO summit from July 11-12. Discussions on Ukraine's NATO prospects, strengthening the alliance's eastern flank and defense spending are expected to be on top of the summit's agenda. On June 19, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the summit would not discuss a formal invitation, but rather ways to "move Ukraine closer to NATO."
