Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be in Portugal on Tuesday, being received by the President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, accepting an invitation made in August 2023.

Key points on the Portuguese-Ukrainian political-diplomatic relations since the Russian invasion:

Visits by Costa, Santos Silva and Marcelo

In May 2022, three months after the start of the large-scale invasion by the Russian Federation, the former Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, paid a surprise visit to Kiev. After a meeting with the Ukrainian President, he promised Volodymyr Zelensky "technical support" in the process of joining the European Union (EU) and said that Ukraine "knows the house it wants to enter".

A year later, in early May 2023, the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, travelled to Kiev accompanied by deputies from all parties except Chega, who were not invited, and the PCP, who rejected the invitation.

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was the third and last figure of the Portuguese State to travel to the Ukrainian capital, at the end of August, something that, he explained, was arranged with António Costa and Santos Silva.

Luís Montenegro has not yet announced a visit to Kiev, as his predecessor did, but promised Volodymyr Zelensky "maximum support" for the Peace Summit, in June, in Switzerland.

And the President went "to the trench"

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa's visit was somewhat different from that of the Prime Minister and the President of the Parliament. The President arrived in Kiev in the early hours of 23 August 2023 with a full programme for the visit.

On the first day, he visited the localities closest to the capital that had been under Russian occupation. And, to try to understand, as much as possible, what it means to defend the homeland, he was in a trench that was preserved as a symbol of resistance to Russian troops.

At the commemorations of the 32nd anniversary of the country's independence, the Portuguese President surprised with a speech in Ukrainian for Zelensky, military and civilians, in which he insisted that Portugal will always stand by Ukraine's sovereignty.

And about the accession to the EU, Marcelo said that there are no two positions and that the country is on the side of Kiev's aspirations towards integration into the community bloc.

In the end, there was the invitation, now official, for a visit to Portugal, as soon as possible.

Portugal, Ukraine and EU accession

The President of the Republic may have said in Kiev that "there is no double game" in Portugal's position on Ukraine's European integration and that the European Union must prepare itself, but the Prime Minister, who is the country's representative in these discussions, has been more cautious.

Still in 2022, he aligned with French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders to warn enthusiasts, namely the President of the European Parliament and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, of the risks of creating false expectations that could be dashed.

António Costa, then Prime Minister, said on several occasions that the accession process is lengthy - and that the same had happened for Portugal - and that before Ukraine, which has been a candidate since June 2022, had to make the necessary institutional reforms: "We have to think beyond emotions."

More recently, he warned that the European economic governance model is not prepared to accommodate more countries, let alone one the size of Ukraine, with the economic and financial complexity that it entails. For this, it is also necessary to reform the EU to think beyond the 27, "it is not enough to verify if the others meet the accession criteria, it is essential" to have conditions "to welcome, successfully".

The new Portuguese Government was more assertive and on 4 April of this year, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel, criticized "some hesitations" that the previous executive had about Kiev's accession to the European bloc.

"The Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, gave a clear sign of being in favour of the enlargement of the Union. This is something that I think needed to be clarified, because Portugal had some hesitations [...], now there are no hesitations", said Paulo Rangel.

Zelensky in Portugal by videoconference and without applause from the PCP

The invitation was made in Kiev and on 5 October the Presidency of the Republic announced that Volodymyr Zelensky had accepted it, although there is still no date set, and the date is being worked on "to make such a visit possible."

But the Ukrainian President spoke on 21 April 2022 to the Portuguese parliament, from a distance, by videoconference, as he did, at that time, with several parliaments in Europe. In his speech, he recalled that "Portugal knows well what dictatorship brings", referring to the Estado Novo, and argued that the images that filled news and social networks did not do justice to the desolation in the cities.

Widely applauded from one end of the plenary to the other, only the PCP benches lacked applause. Nothing was heard: the six communist deputies were not present at the session.

Through the voice of the parliamentary leader, Paula Santos, the communist bench explained that any stage given to Zelensky would only contribute to exacerbating the climate of confrontation, contrary to the "path to peace", and that the Ukrainian head of state was "someone who personifies a xenophobic and warmongering power".

However, Olena Zelenska, the wife of the President of Ukraine, visited Lisbon on the occasion of the Web Summit, in November last year, and met with the President of the Republic at the Belém Palace.

Zelensky was to visit Portugal in early May, during a trip to Spain, but ended up cancelling both trips, due to the worsening situation in the Kharkiv region, where Russian troops were reoccupying part of the territory.

The confusion with the decoration

In February of this year, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced that he would award the Grand Collar of the Order of Liberty to the President of Ukraine, after the only PAN deputy presented a proposal to that effect in parliament.

At the time, the decoration was put on hold awaiting an opportune moment since until then Zelensky's trips to other countries did not happen regularly (now they are usual).

There was an intention to deliver it personally and at the end of the Portuguese Head of State's visit to Kiev, in August, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced that he had decorated Zelensky during a private ceremony.

However, later the Presidency of the Republic published a note clarifying that "the insignia were delivered" in Kiev "through protocol, with President Zelensky stressing that he pays homage to the struggle of the Ukrainian people, and not in a public ceremony of imposition of insignia: this is also a usual formula in state visits".

Read Also: Zelensky's visit shows that the path of integration is to "continue" (Portuguese version)