With most of EU members and other western countries having relocated their Ukraine embassies to Lviv, close to the Ukrainian-Polish border, the Ambassador of Poland Bartosz Cichocki has stayed in Kyiv to lift the morale of Ukrainian resistance, British news portal The Guardian reports.
Cichocki is the only remaining EU ambassador in the capital and one of just a handful of western diplomats of any rank remaining in Kyiv.
In response to a question about whether he was sleeping underground, the Polish Ambassador said: «Why? People sleep in beds. Why should I sleep in a basement?» Hundreds of thousands of residents who remained in the capital are spending the night sleeping in metro stations or basements.
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Meanwhile, a large part of the city’s population has fled Kyiv on trains and in cars, towards the safer western part of the country or across the border to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania or Moldova.
Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, criticised western countries for moving their diplomatic missions to Lviv, in the west of Ukraine. Cichocki said that while there were many tasks that could only be done by being physically in place, the most important reason to stay in Kyiv was symbolic.
«I believe that today what we can influence is the morale, the spirit,» he said. «They have arms, they have food, they have everything, but I think leaving them now would be something that could decrease their spirits,» evaluated the Polish Ambassador adding «I cannot imagine Russians taking this city by land, [but] they may destroy it, they may shell and bomb it.»
Polish Ambassador to Ukraine continues to work in Kyiv as last one
