Andrzej Duda made the appeal at a meeting in Warsaw of the leaders of the Bucharest Nine (B9) group of European Union countries on the eastern edge of NATO, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, the Polish president said: “We all support Ukraine unequivocally. I’ve no doubt that our attitude and NATO’s attitude will be implemented and will work. You can’t accept aggression in Europe, which experienced the First and Second World War.”
Duda also said that Europe "must stop the aggression." He added: “I am confident that thanks to our action and thanks to supporting Ukraine in every way, we are capable of achieving it.”
The Polish president stated: “I am confident that we’ll contribute to the restoration of normalcy and freedom in Ukraine and for Ukraine, for our neighbours.”
The B9 brings together nine NATO countries from Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The group was set up in 2015 as an initiative by Poland and Romania.
The Warsaw summit, hosted by the Polish president, was attended by his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nausėda, Estonia's Alar Karis, Slovakia's Zuzana Čaputová, Bulgaria's Rumen Radev, Latvia's Egils Levits, and Hungary's János Áder.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also took part in the Warsaw meeting on Friday.
Czech President Miloš Zeman and Romania’s Klaus Iohannis participated via video link.
Before the B9 summit, Poland's Duda said of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “Meeting today in the group of countries of NATO eastern flank, we cannot stop at passive condemnation of this brutal attack. We must move on to concrete actions.”
NATO leaders call on Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine
Earlier on Friday, the B9 leaders and the EU's von der Leyen took part in a virtual summit of NATO heads of state and government on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
After the summit, the Western military alliance issued a statement calling the events in Ukraine “the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades.”
The NATO leaders said: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, enabled by Belarus. We call on Russia to immediately cease its military assault, to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine and to turn back from the path of aggression it has chosen.”
They vowed that "the world will hold Russia, as well as Belarus, accountable for their actions."
“We stand in full solidarity with the democratically elected president, parliament and government of Ukraine and with the brave people of Ukraine who are now defending their homeland,” the NATO leaders said in their statement.
They declared: “In light of Russia’s actions, we will draw all the necessary consequences for NATO’s deterrence and defence posture ... We are now making significant additional defensive deployments of forces to the eastern part of the Alliance. We will make all deployments necessary to ensure strong and credible deterrence and defence across the Alliance, now and in the future.”
'Freedom will always win over oppression'
“Our measures are and remain preventive, proportionate and non-escalatory,” the alliance’s leaders also said, adding that their "commitment to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is iron-clad."
Article 5 of the Washington Treaty guarantees collective defence by stating that an armed attack against one NATO member state “shall be considered an attack against them all.”
"We stand united to protect and defend all Allies," the NATO leaders further said in their statement.
"Freedom will always win over oppression,” they concluded.
EU sanctions Putin, Lavrov
Also on Friday, European Union foreign ministers, including Poland’s Zbigniew Rau, gathered for an emergency meeting in Brussels to discuss Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and EU sanctions against Moscow, the Polish foreign ministry said.
In the evening, news emerged that EU states agreed to freeze any European assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for swifter and more powerful action to punish Russia's invasion of his country, the Reuters news agency reported.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to take a similar step “imminently,” according to news outlets.
Ukraine-Russia talks?
All these developments came as Russia pressed on with its multi-pronged and full-blown assault on Ukraine, with Russian missiles pounding the capital Kyiv, news agencies reported.
At the same time, there was some indication that both countries could be willing to sit down for talks, according to news reports.
The proposal came from Zelensky, who urged Russia to come to the negotiating table in order “to stop people’s deaths,” the PAP news agency reported.
“Ukraine wants peace and is ready for talks with Russia, including on neutral status regarding NATO,” the Ukrainian president’s advisor, Mykhailo Podolyak, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced later in the day that Russia had accepted the offer, suggesting Minsk, Belarus as the venue for negotiations.
Ukraine had proposed to meet in the Polish capital Warsaw, officials told reporters.
Earlier, Zelensky warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marked the start of “a war against Europe."
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the Ukrainian army to overthrow its government and take power into its own hands, nbcnews.com reported.
Council of Europe suspends Russia
The Council of Europe human rights group said on Friday it was suspending Russia’s membership of the organisation, the PAP news agency reported.
According to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the move came at the request of Warsaw and Kyiv.
A day earlier, the Council of Europe’s Secretary-General Marija Pejčinović Burić condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The organisation is based in Strasbourg, France and brings together 47 countries, including most European states.
'Europe must abandon all illusions about Russia': Polish PM
Meanwhile, the Polish prime minister said in an interview with the Financial Times that the Russian invasion of Ukraine "ends once and for all an era of illusions about the West’s relations with Moscow."
He added that “Europe must abandon all illusions about Russia.”
Poland on Friday said it was banning Russian airlines from its airspace in response to Putin's aggression in Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, IAR, Reuters, nato.int, coe.int, ft.com, bbc.com, nbcnews.com, president.pl