Polish president says he is convinced Ukraine will repel Russian invasion

The Polish president Andrzej Duda said he is convinced that Ukraine will defeat its enemy and repel the Russian invasion, thanks to the support provided by Poland and other allies.

Today we have been hosting our brothers from Ukraine who have again been fighting against Russia, Duda said during a Monday ceremony commemorating the 160th anniversary of the January Uprising, the largest and longest-lasting armed insurrection against Tsarist Russia rule on Polish soil.

Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Ukrainians were fighting together to throw off Russian shackles and Tsarist oppression as well as for their freedom and the rebirth of an independent state, Duda said.

The president said that history had been repeating itself in dramatic cycles, but the will of both the Polish and Ukrainian nation to defend their freedom remained strong, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Duda said that the situation looked the same with our Lithuanian neighbours and brothers, and Belarusians whose will to regain full sovereignty and independence was unyielding.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, who attended the ceremony, said that the January Uprising had proved the vitality of the people of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Nauseda compared the struggle of the two nations to today's fight of the Ukrainian defenders against Russian imperialism.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a message read out by the Ukrainian ambassador that, 160 years ago, our nations united their forces to fight Russian imperialism. The January Uprising had accelerated the national rebirth and independence movements on the territories of modern Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, according to Zelensky.

The uprising started on January 22, 1863 and was aimed at restoring the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The following year it was brutally suppressed by imperial Russian forces.

After the suppression of the 1830 November Uprising, the president spoke at Warsaw's Citadel, a 19th century fortress built by Tsar Nicholas I, in order to bolster imperial Russian control of the city.