The Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih and the Polish city of Lublin are to sign a twinning agreement.

This was announced by the President of the City of Lublin, Krzysztof Žuk.

On February 2, the Lublin City Council session adopted a resolution on signing a partnership agreement with Kryvyi Rih. The next step is to enter into a twinning agreement between the cities.

“Since the beginning of the war, the city of Kryvyi Rih has been the target of numerous missile attacks. We have provided humanitarian aid there, including the essentials such as food, clothing, medical supplies, purchased with donations. In the near future, Protection Civile, the French organisation that supports the civilian population in crisis situations, in cooperation with the city of Lublin, will send a powerful generator to Kryvyi Rih. In the conditions of the ongoing war, through a symbolic gesture of support, we would like to raise the status of our cooperation to the level of city twinning. Thanks to the resolution adopted today by the City Council, Kryvyi Rih has become another Ukrainian sister city of Lublin,” said Krzysztof Žuk.

According to the website of the Lublin City Council, official cooperation between Lublin and Kryvyi Rih began in 2017, when representatives of the authorities of both cities signed a memorandum of intent. Delegations from Kryvyi Rih have made many working visits to Lublin and joined the Cross-Border Cooperation Congress. Kryvyi Rih was among the Ukrainian cities that participated in the project “Professional Personnel in Local Self-Government: Formation of Competent Public Administration Teams to Support Local Self-Government Reform in Ukraine.”

Decentralization reminds that municipalities of Ukraine can use the International Municipal Partnership Guidelines to build communication with foreign municipalities and enter into twinning agreements. These Guidelines offer algorithms and practical advice on establishing a partnership, cases of successful partnerships, practical advice on customs clearance and accounting of various types of assistance that partners can exchange, information on how to choose partners, how to organise the work of competent professionals or division, as well as information on financing, bookkeeping and reporting and a lot of other useful information.

Based on these Guidelines, the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine developed the Partnership for Recovery and Development section of the Decentralization national portal, with the support of DECIDE (Decentralisation for Improved Democratic Education), a Swiss-Ukrainian project, and the U-LEAD with Europe Programme.

These Guidelines are based on the methodology of the Council of Europe, City to City Cooperation, and developed by the Council of Europe as part of the Programme “Decentralisation and Public Administration Reform in Ukraine” at the request of the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine.