The speaker of the Portuguese parliament met the Ukrainian head of state in Kyiv this Tuesday, with whom he discussed the country’s accession to the European Union and Portugal’s role in connecting Latin American and African countries.
In a telephone conversation with Lusa from Kiev, where he is on an official visit until Wednesday, Augusto Santos Silva classified the meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky as “quite useful” and stressed the point “where it became clearer what value Portugal brings to the political and diplomatic management of this conflict”.
“Perhaps the most important point of the meeting had to do with the role that Portugal plays – and can play even more – in the dialogue with the countries of the southern hemisphere, in particular with the Latin American and African countries, with which we have very close ties and to which we conveyed our position on this war between Russia and Ukraine”he claimed.
The President of the General Assembly of the Republic stressed that “the clarity of the Portuguese position is known from the first moment” of the condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“And the doubts expressed by several Latin American and African countries are well known and often say that this is a war that belongs to Europe and not to them. It is the rules-based international order that we all stand for”he said.
The meeting, which took place around 3 p.m. local time (1 p.m. in Lisbon), lasted almost an hour, according to Santos Silva, and took even longer than expected, with representatives from the PS, PSD, IL and BE and the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who already knew Santos Silva, as he held these positions between 2015 and 2022.
The meeting discussed Ukraine’s candidacy for the European Union – which already has candidate status – with Santos Silva congratulating Zelensky on how the country has done “its part with great determination”, and another of the points raised in the conversation were the prospects for cooperation between Ukraine and NATO.
“Most of the countries of the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union, including Portugal, have bilaterally supported Ukraine, and the country thinks its place is in the West, in Europe and that means, in addition to belonging to the European Union, to a “to have a certain perspective towards NATO. Apparently, the focus at the moment is on the war that we must end with the necessary condition: the cessation of hostilities by Russia and the withdrawal from the occupied Ukrainian territory”considered.
Finally, the Ukrainian president thanked “very emphatically” the support that Portugal has provided to the country and reported on the most urgent needs in terms of military equipment, which Santos Silva took “good note to pass on to the government” .
On Wednesday, the president of the assembly of the republic will address the plenary session of the Ukrainian parliament.
“It will be my pleasure and honor to intervene,” he insisted, adding that he will later meet and have a working lunch with the country’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal.
In the early afternoon of Wednesday, Santos Silva will meet with Portuguese students at the Philology Department of Kiev University.
“It is a way to celebrate the World Day of the Portuguese Language which is celebrated this Friday. It is especially symbolic that one of the initiatives is a meeting with students of Portuguese in Ukraine”he stressed, stressing that Portuguese is “a language of peace and communication”.
Santos Silva is accompanied on this visit by a parliamentary delegation consisting of the deputy and parliamentary leader of the PS, Eurico Brilhante Dias, Jorge Paulo de Oliveira (PSD), João Cotrim de Figueiredo (IL) and Isabel Pires (BE), without representatives from the banks of the Enough or of the PCP.
Last week, the president of the Assembly of the Republic announced that he had banned Chega, the third largest party, from delegations visiting foreign parliaments following the incident at the welcome session for Lula da Silva on April 25.
Questioned by Lusa, Santos Silva’s office justified the presence of the four parliamentary benches because a rotation rule had been agreed during these trips, with a maximum of four deputies, and also as a sign of support from the Assembly of the Republic to Ukraine.
On April 21 last year, the President of Ukraine addressed the Portuguese Parliament via video conference, during a solemn welcome session attended by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the Prime Minister, António Costa, in which the PCP was the only party with parliamentary representation that did not participate because it did not agree.
Source: DN
