The president of the republic said this Sunday that he would “very much like” to travel to Ukraine to meet Zelensky, taking advantage of the geographical proximity, but appealed for patience because it is still impossible to know if there are any conditions to to go.
“I would like to [de ir] in the sense that an invitation was made long ago by President Zelensky. It is clear that I would really like to have this opportunity, because the relationship with the Ukrainian president has been very good from the moment he was elected,” Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said on arrival in Warsaw for a two-day official visit.
The head of state recalled that when the prime minister, António Costa, traveled to Kiev in May 2022 to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of the republic used a “very vague and generic expression”.
“He [António Costa] I had an appointment in neighboring countries and I said, ‘I don’t know if there will be conditions to travel to Ukraine,'” he added, replying that “it is easier to go to Ukraine in nearby countries”, just as the case with this visit to Poland, a country bordering Ukraine.
However, the head of state declined to go into speculation about a possible visit “for security reasons”.
“If the question came up here, it would also be a matter of patience (…), it takes a little more patience to know if there are any conditions,” he added, recalling that it had been established that under the high figures of the Portuguese state, the president of the republic “would stay to the end”.
The President of the Republic’s Assembly, Augusto Santos Silva, visited Kiev in May this year.
The invitation to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa by the Ukrainian counterpart was made in 2022, at the time of António Costa’s visit.
Source: DN
