Today the international community is facing a great test, Elżbieta Witek, speaker of the Polish Sejm, said on Thursday during a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Warsaw.
Some 200 delegates from 52 countries attended the two-day event. Representatives of Russia are not present as Poland refused to issue their visas. Delegates of Belarus are also absent.
As Ms Witek stressed, the Polish Sejm has now become a place of strategic debate at a “strategic point in modern history.”
“Poland is acting as a neighbour of Ukraine, which was bestially attacked by Russia on February 24 this year, and Poland sees every day the atrocities of this war that is taking place across our eastern border,” she said.📸OSCE PA Autumn Meeting has kicked off in the capital of 🇵🇱Poland. The focus is war in Ukraine brutally attacked by Russia on Feb 24. During the inaugural session Sejm Speaker called for continued wide-ranging support for 🇺🇦 as it fights not only for its freedom. #OSCEPAWarsaw22 pic.twitter.com/a1JgkABVmM
— PLParliament (@PLParliament) November 24, 2022
Ms Witek stressed that Poland, like the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, had been warning for very many years about what Vladimir Putin might do.The #OSCEPAWarsaw22 Autumn Meeting is underway. For speeches by @KancelariaSejmu & @PolskiSenat Speakers, @PLinOSCE CiO @RauZbigniew & #OSCEPA Pres. @MCederfelt, and many more, tune in here: https://t.co/6uW39Uuahp & https://t.co/Nmk4mtluNs. pic.twitter.com/HMoHStgjRJ
— OSCE PA (@oscepa) November 24, 2022
He praised Poland for not issuing visas to the Russian delegation, saying that “ if it had not been for Poland’s decision… representatives of the terrorist state could have been among” the participants of the session.Zelensky speaks to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly that is meeting today in Warsaw.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 24, 2022
He called on OSCE to throw out Russia from the organization and thanked the Polish government for banning Sergei Lavrov and all Russian and Belarusian representatives from the summit.
🇵🇱🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/tq7QECoV5K