Marcin Krupa and Andriy Sadovyi, Lviv, March 2022

A draft resolution on signing a partnership agreement with the city of Lviv will be presented at the next session of the City Council of Katowice, Poland.

This is reported by the official website of the municipality of Katowice.

“In Katowice, we see city twinning as a springboard for building and developing important international contacts. This includes, for example, the exchange of students between schools in our cities or joint cultural and sports projects. Katowice has partnerships with ten cities, and we have also established relations with Lviv and Bucha. These are Ukrainian cities that, for obvious reasons, received strong support from Katowice,” said Marcin Krupa, Mayor of Katowice.

According to him, Katowice started cooperating much earlier.

“Back in 2019, we signed a Letter of Intent for Cooperation. The pandemic, and later the war in Ukraine, affected the date of the official start of our partnership, so I hope that the City Council will adopt a Resolution drafted by the municipality regarding the partnership with Lviv, which will translate into real action in the future, especially in culture, science and new technologies,” said Marcin Krupa.

The adoption of the Resolution by the members of the City Council is another step in establishing a partnership between Katowice and Lviv. This will facilitate the Partnership Agreement, which will be signed during the formal ceremony at the session of the City Council in September 2023.

From the first days of the war, Katowice provided assistance to Ukrainians fleeing the war. From the very beginning, the urgent needs for receiving people coming to Katowice were met. One of the main tasks was to establish a reception centre for refugees, which initially functioned in the Information Point for Foreigners of the In Corpore Foundation at 5 Młyńska Str., which was later moved to the International Bus Station at 5 Sądowa Str. in Katowice. The support that Katowice provided was enormous thanks to the involvement of thousands of volunteers from Katowice.

At the beginning of March 2022, the Katowice authorities organised a humanitarian convoy. The mayor of Katowice, Marcin Krupa, together with volunteer entrepreneurs, went to Lviv, where he met, among other people, with the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi. It was a chance to hand over gifts collected by the people of Katowice for the citizens of Ukraine.