On April 30, 2025, Razumkov Centre research fellow on legal issues, retired judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine P. Stetsiuk took part in the international conference “Imperial Handbook of Aggression against Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. Lessons from the Policy of Catherine II and Putin the Warmonger”, dedicated to the anniversary of the Constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of May 3, 1791.
The conference was organized by the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine jointly with the embassies of the Republic of Lithuania and the Republic of Poland in Ukraine. Famous historians, political scientists, and law experts from Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland took part in its work. The conference participants discussed “justification” of the annexation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Russian Empire in its propaganda and the lessons to be learned from the history of the “Constitution of May 3” (1791), why then reforms did not save the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from a decline, how the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth affected the fate of Ukraine, similarities/differences between the events of 1791 and 2025, what the EU can learn from the attempted reforms of 1791, and how the format of the “Lublin Triangle” could be used to help both Ukraine and the EU in their reforms.
The conference discussions involved, in particular, Prof. Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski (Senor Research Fellow of the Museum of Polish History in Warsaw), Dr. Łukasz Adamski (Deputy Director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue), Prof. Dainius Žalimas (a European Parliament Member from Lithuania and former Chairman of its Constitutional Court). Dainius Žalimas, assessing the historical experience of the “Constitution of May 3”, in particular, noted the need to create a “broad coalition” uniting not only the authorities, but also the public of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine now, to effectively resist Russian aggression in general and the so-called “Russian world” in particular in different public spheres. According to the Razumkov Centre research fellow P. Stetsiuk (the author of the first translation of the Constitution of May 3, 1791, into Ukrainian), the historical experience of the fight of Central and East European nations with Russian aggression undoubtedly deserves great attention. In this regard, generally supporting the proposals of Dr. D. Žalimas, it is important to systematically engage the whole range of public resistance to Russian aggression in Ukraine and aggressive manifestations of the so-called “Russian world” in Central and East European countries now. The expert cited as an example the long experience of the Ukrainian-Polish Club of Constitutionalists, inviting Lithuanian constitutionalists to join its work.
