LISBON, – On April 4, Lisbon City Council leadership, representatives of almost all parties, ambassadors from several countries, and Portugal’s Ukrainian community members hosted the Mayor of the Ukrainian capital Vitali Klitschko in the main hall of the Lisbon City Council.
Since last week, the center of Lisbon, decorated with flags of Portugal, Ukraine, and the municipality of Lisbon, has been preparing to receive Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, the well-known Portuguese newspaper dn.pt wrote about the preparations for the visit.
According to the publication, Lisbon mayor began the meeting by saying that “Lisbon is Ukraine.” The mayor continued, “On February 24, 2022, we went to the balcony of the City Council, where the Portuguese Republic was once proclaimed, to shout, ‘We are Ukraine!’”.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Portugal has received 60 thousand of Ukrainian refugees, out of which 13 thousand found refuge in Lisbon.
“Klitschko’s visit is prestigious for the Ukrainian community. Clearly, [Portugal’s] interest for Ukraine is not diminishing. Commenting on Klitschko’s visit to Lisbon in the local media, I was able to reiterate the importance and urgency of providing Ukraine with weapons,” emphasized UWC Regional Vice-President and the head of the Union of Ukrainians in Portugal, Pavlo Sadokha.
In his turn, Vitali Klitschko called upon Lisbon’s city authorities to partake in the future recovery of Kyiv and Ukraine and to break any relations with Russia.
“I called on the authorities of Lisbon, which suspended the twinning relations with Moscow, to break them altogether. While Russia is trying to destroy Ukraine, committing genocide against civilians and wiping out Ukrainian cities and villages,” the Kyiv mayor wrote on his Facebook page.
