The Virtual Yaremche

The traditional XIII Ukrainian-Polish meetings take place on September 24-25. This is the only regular scientific forum, which for 13 years in a row brings together well-known Ukrainian and Polish experts, diplomats and scientists.All these years it took place in Yaremche, but in 2020 it made its adjustments.So this year the meetings are held online and the theme is "For our and your freedom: lessons from the past and modern realities (to the 100th anniversary of the union of Simon Petliura and Józef Pilsudski and the Battle of Warsaw").The online format is not the best for such communication, but it has allowed to expand the circle of experts even more. Lilya Lyubonevich, Chairman of the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, Minister Jan Dziedzicak, Government Commissioner for Polonia and Poles in the East, Vasyl Bodnar, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Andriy Deshchytsia, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to Ukraine , Slawomir Kowalski, Director of the Department for Cooperation with Polonia and Poles Abroad, Eliza Dzwonekiewicz, Consul General of the Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Lviv, Wojciech Jankowski, Editor-in-Chief of the Courier of Galicia, Robert Czyzewski, Director of the Institute of Polish Culture in Kyiv, Oleg Rafalsky, Director of the I. Kuras Institute for Political and Ethno-National Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, Machei Dantsevich, Deputy Chairman of the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, Rafal Dzencholovsky, Chairman of the International Aid Foundation, Stanislav Stempen, Director of the South-Eastern Research Institute congratulated the participants on the beginning of their work.The online conference was traditionally opened by the Rector of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University Ihor Tsependa and Jan Malicki, Director of the Studium of Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw.

"Now more than ever, we need to be together, to unite all efforts - political, economic, intellectual, intercultural - in order to resist the new wave of aggression, which today is changing forms but remains the same in content," said Ihor Tsependa.- Therefore, our meetings are a confirmation that we have managed to unite a large number of researchers of Ukrainian-Polish relations over the years, who really make a lot of efforts to bring these ideas, opinions, expertise to the governments of our countries so that they can be successfully implemented.Jan Malicki, Director of Studium of Eastern European Studies of the University of Warsaw, who attended the conference from Lithuania, also congratulated all the participants and thanked them for not canceling or postponing the conference even during the difficult times of the pandemic.Both initiators of the Ukrainian-Polish meetings also mentioned another initiator and partner of the conference, the editor-in-chief of the weekly "Courier of Galicia" Myroslav Rovinsky, who passed away this year. The participants of the conference honored his memory with a minute of silence.After the grand opening, the section "The place of mass media in the formation of dialogue between Ukrainians and Poles in Ukraine (in memory of Bohdan Osadchuk and Miroslav Rovitsky)" began.On the first day of the meetings there were presentations of "Modern historiography of Ukraine and Ukrainian-Polish relations in the twentieth century and the influence of the Polish heritage on the formation of the current situation in Ukraine ”and the Galician Club, as well as the meeting of the section“ Union of Pilsudski - Petliura as an attempt to create a new security system in Central and Eastern Europe ”.