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What Lutsk ceremony meant for Poland–Ukraine ties
Summary
A joint commemoration of the 1943 Volhynia victims brought two presidents together in Lutsk, as Kyiv pressed other diplomatic and defence concerns.
What did it mean when the presidents of Poland and Ukraine stood together in Lutsk on 9 July 2023? Andrzej Duda, President of Poland, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, commemorated the victims of the 1943 massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia at a ceremony held at the Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral in Lutsk.
The setting mattered. The ceremony took place on Ukrainian soil, and the two leaders took part in it jointly. As reported at the time, it was presented as a moment of shared remembrance within Poland–Ukraine relations.
A busy diplomatic week for Kyiv
The commemoration came days after other developments that showed the range of pressures on Zelenskyy's agenda. On 3 July 2023, Russian drones struck Sumy, killing two people and injuring 19. In response, Zelenskyy called for a major upgrade of Ukraine's anti-aircraft defences.
On the same day, Zelenskyy asked the Georgian ambassador, Gela Dumbadze, to return home within 48 hours for talks on the transfer of Mikheil Saakashvili, the imprisoned former Georgian president and a Ukrainian citizen, to a Ukrainian clinic. The request cited Saakashvili's declining health.
Reading the picture
Taken together, the three episodes show Kyiv handling several fronts at once: wartime air defence, a dispute with a neighbouring government over a prisoner's care, and a shared act of remembrance with a close neighbour. The Lutsk ceremony, on 9 July 2023, stood out as the one in which the two presidents appeared together in person.
