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DECLARATION ON JOINT EUROPEAN HERITAGE AND COMMON VALUES on the occasion of 230th anniversary of the Constitution of 3 May 1791 and Mutual Pledge of 20 October 1791
07 July 2021 11:16

We, the undersigned foreign ministers of Ukraine, the Republic of Lithuania, and the Republic of Poland, founders of the Lublin Triangle, a unique form of institutional cooperation between our nations, open to future membership for a democratic Belarus:

•    Motivated by historical convictions that the heritage of the Commonwealth of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Commonwealth) played a valuable role in shaping the political, legal, and cultural history of Europe, equal only to the pioneering European monuments of political and legal thought that were the Great Charter of Freedom, or Magna Carta (1215), and the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen (1789).

•    In a year that marks the 230th jubilee of the first codified constitution by a European state – the Governance Act adopted on May 3, 1791  together with the Mutual Pledge of the Two Nations endorsed on 20 October 1791 as its inseparable part by the Sejm of the Commonwealth of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that not only empowered the ancient Commonwealth to reform its political system, but also proclaimed the principle that “all power in civil society is derived from the will of the people,” regarded today as a value common to the free world and a foundation for European integration;

•    Mindful of the fact that the democratic tradition developed in the Commonwealth and the civil freedoms expressed in the Constitution of 3 May 1791 and the Mutual Pledge of the Two Nations  and prior to that in Hetman Pylyp Orlyk’s Pacts and Constitutions of Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporizhian Army – to a large extent shaped the European identity of Belarusians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Ukrainians while also inspiring their independence movements, including the uprisings of 1830 and 1863 fought in common against despotic Russia, as well as the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Reform Movement in Lithuania, the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, and the struggle of Belarusians for democracy;

•    Wishing to also recall other important events in our common history, whose anniversaries fall in 2021, including the victory at Khotyn in 1621 that to this day symbolizes the brotherhood in arms of the combined Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian troops in defense of their shared European homeland and paying honor to the Grand Hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, who died on the front lines at the end of the battle, Deputy Hetman Stanisław Lubomirski  and Petro Konashevych - Sahaidachny, Hetman of Ukrainian Zaporozhian Cossacks, who was mortally wounded; and the demonstrations at Horodło and Kaunas in 1861 where, in the face of new state boundaries and internal administrative borders delineated following the crime of partition, nobility and commons from Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, as well as Ukraine demonstrated the power of solidarity and cooperation between our peoples as well as the common will for independence against foreign, despotic authority;

•    Aware of the fact that each of our nations inherited from the Commonwealth not only more democratic principles and civil rights – expressed concisely in the mottos: “the free with the free, the equal with the equal” and “nothing about us, without us” – and tradition to defend the political subjectivity of the state and national honour, but also to oppose tyrants who violate civil liberties, dignity of human persons, and use aggressive wars as a means of solving inter-state problems;

•    Convinced nonetheless that soon the Belarusian nation will have the opportunity to freely decide and confirm its ties with its aforementioned tradition and, in so doing, will fulfill the will of Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski - Plenipotentiary Commissioner of the National Government for Lithuania and national hero of all free Belarusians;

We declare that our common European historical legacy still binds our nations together in the united Europe and causes us to feel a sense of mutual bond and solidarity. 

At the same time, we believe that strengthening our cooperation requires even more intensive contacts between our societies, including youth, entrepreneurs, journalists, scientists and other opinion-making elites of our countries. We will strive for our countries to adopt appropriate solutions to facilitate such cooperation.

We strongly believe that Ukraine, as a European state, has the right to full membership in the structures of the European Union and in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as Lithuania and Poland, we declare our intention to provide all possible support for the implementation of this goal, including supporting Ukraine's reform agenda and  cooperation with the Three Seas Initiative, which functions within the EU;

At the same time, we affirm that the Belarusian people, as a European nation, have the right to full participation in the process of European integration, and we will make every effort to ensure that 

a democratic Belarus is granted such an opportunity;

We stress that in order to preserve peace in Europe it is necessary for the international community to enforce and strengthen international law and denounce those states and regimes who commit illegal annexations and occupation of sovereign territories of others.

Therefore we condemn the Russian aggression against Ukraine, ongoing since 2014, which led to temporary occupation by Russia of Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and certain Ukrainian territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, as well as restrictions on the freedom of navigation in the Black Sea area adjacent to temporarily occupied Crimea.

We will undertake joint efforts in the framework of the Crimea Platform with the aim of ending the Russian Federation’s temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic 

of Crimea and mitigate the consequences of the occupation until the return of Crimea under Ukraine’s control.

We declare that we do not recognize and will not recognize the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol by the Russian Federation, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and the usages established among civilized peoples. We also condemn the Russian Federation's tactic of diplomatic blackmail and threats of using force as an instrument of foreign policy and for shaping relations with its neighbours.


Signed on 7 July 2021, in Vilnius in the English language


Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine 

H.E. Dmytro Kuleba              


Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania

H.E. Gabrielius Landsbergis        


Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland 

H.E. Zbigniew Rau                

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