'Bucharest Nine' presidents to meet in Warsaw to discuss Ukraine

Warsaw will host a summit of the 'Bucharest Nine' format presidents, who will meet on Friday to discuss Ukraine and the security situation in Central and Eastern Europe, according to a presidential official.

"All of the presidents have confirmed their participation," Jakub Kumoch, the head of the President's International Politics Bureau, told PAP on Tuesday.

"The Czech president will attend the meeting online," he added.

Kumoch said that the decision to hold a summit had been taken during President Andrzej Duda's talks with his Lithuanian and Romanian counterparts, Gitanas Nauseda and Klaus Iohannis, respectively.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday recognising the self-declared 'people's republics' of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine as independent states, and there are now reports that Russian troops have entered eastern Ukraine.

The Bucharest Nine (B9) format was launched in 2014 as a Polish-Romanian initiative aimed at coordinating positions and exchanging views in the field of security between the nine countries located across the Baltic and Black Sea regions.

Apart from Poland, Bucharest Nine also comprises Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia.