Secretary of Lutsk City Council Hryhorii Pustovit has met with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the French Republic to Ukraine Etienne de Poncins
On September 12, 2020 a meeting with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the French Republic to Ukraine Etienne de Poncins took place in the Lutsk City Council. The meeting was attended by Secretary of Lutsk City Council, Acting Mayor Hryhorii Pustovit, Heads of Tourism and Promotion Department Kateryna Telipska, Head of International Cooperation and Project Activities Department Vitkoriia Homonets, as well as Political Adviser to the Ambassador Leo Lagrange, Spokesman of the French Embassy Eugene Polyansky-Haas, Director of the Alliance Française NGO in Rivne, an interpreter Nadiia Chumak.
The participants discussed the implementation of the project "Queen's Way", as well as prospects for further cooperation between Lutsk City Council and the Embassy of the French Republic to Ukraine.
The Ambassador came to our city to take part in the celebrations of Lutsk City Day and unveil a monument to Anna Kyivska within the Queen’s Way project. This project involves the erection of monuments to Anna Kyivska in key European cities which she visited on her way to France. Anna Kyivska’s journey to Paris has been studied in detail by a group of Ukrainian and French historians. After studying the maps of ancient trade routes, as well as the connections of Kyiv Rus, the researchers concluded that the route of Anna Kyivska passed through the following cities: Kyiv-Kraków-Prague-Raffel Stetten-Regensburg-Mainz-Luxembourg-Arlon-Paris.
The main idea of the project is to show that Ukraine has been a part of Europe since ancient times. Anna Yaroslavna’s father, Yaroslav the Wise, was one of the first Ukrainian monarchs who had close ties with European monarchies. It was a great honor for European royal families to be related to the representatives of Kyiv Rus, which was one of the most powerful states of that time.
The sculpture depicts a Ukrainian princess of a young girl holding the Reims Gospel in her hands. (She spent her childhood in Kyiv, and at the age of 18 the princess married Henry I and moved to France).
First monument to Anna Kyivska in Ukraine was erected in 2016 in Kyiv in Lvivska Square. Last year, as part of the "Queen's Way" project, bronze sculptures were erected in one of the oldest cities in Belgium - Arlon, and in the royal capital of Poland - Kraków. A monument to the princess were also erected in Versailles and the sister cities of Kyiv, Toulouse in France, and Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.
