A bitter new rupture has opened between two wartime allies after Poland’s president moved to strip Volodymyr Zelensky of the country’s highest honour, accusing the Ukrainian leader of inflaming old wounds by approving the renaming of a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the nationalist force tied to the wartime slaughter of Poles.
The decision by President Karol Nawrocki appeared set to trigger a major diplomatic clash between the neighbouring countries, coming only days before a conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction in the Polish city of Gdansk.
“In light of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s consent to nameone of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “Heroes of theUPA,”… I have decided to revoke the Order of the White Eagle from the President of Ukraine,” Mr Nawrocki said in a statement.
“At this point, I would like to emphasise: this decision is not directed against the Ukrainian people. It does not signify a change in the strategic direction of Polish security policy.”
Although Warsaw remains a firm backer of Kyiv’s war effort, attitudes in Poland towards Ukraine have soured in recent years, shaped by fatigue over refugees, friction over grain imports and the unresolved memory of the World War Two massacres.
Ukrainian officials to return awards received from Poland
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha condemned the move as a “strategic error”.
“We regret that instead of looking for solutions, the Polish side decided to escalate this conflict to an unacceptable and inappropriate level,” he wrote on Facebook.
“No president of another country is going to dictate our history to us.”
Mr Sybiga said yesterday that he planned to return an award he received from Poland in 2022 after the “unjustified, impulsive and disrespectful” decision.
Today, Mr Zelensky’s top aide and Ukraine’s ambassador to Warsaw followed Foreign Mr Sybiha in saying they were relinquishing awards bestowed by Poland as a way of showing solidarity with the president.
They said Mr Nawrocki’s action played into Russia’s hands.
“This is a gift to the Moscow aggressor, who will certainly use it against both of our countries,” Zelensky aide Kyrylo Budanov said on social media.
He said he was returning the Gold Officer’s Cross of the Polish Order of Merit.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Warsaw Vasyl Bodnar said on Saturday he was relinquishing his Knight’s Cross of the Polish Order of Merit, describing Mr Nawrocki’s move as a “gesture directed at the entire Ukrainian people”.
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Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Mr Nawrocki’s political rival who had tried to contain the fallout, urged both presidents late yesterday to lower the temperature.
“The conflict between Poland and Ukraine delights Putin and shocks our allies. The task of Presidents Zelensky and Nawrocki is to calm emotions, not to stoke tensions. The front line runs elsewhere,” he wrote in a post on X.
Former president Andrzej Duda awarded Mr Zelensky the Order of the White Eagle in 2023 in recognition of his contributions to bilateral relations, democracy, peace and security in Europe and for “steadfastness in defending inalienable human rights”.
But Mr Nawrocki said in May that an advisory council should consider stripping Mr Zelensky of the honour after he signed a decree recognising a Ukrainian special forces unit’s contribution to the fight against Russian forces by naming it after the UPA.
That step sparked fury across Poland’s political spectrum. Former Polish President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa said he would no longer wear a badge with the Ukrainian flag and that while he still backed Ukraine in its struggle against Russia, he would no longer support Mr Zelensky.
For many Ukrainians, the UPA occupies a very different place in history: a symbol of resistance against both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and of the country’s long fight for independence from Moscow.
But the UPA was also involved in the Volhynia massacres, a series of killings from 1943 to 1945 in which Poland says around 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists.
Thousands of Ukrainians also died in reprisal killings.
Kyiv had previously said that the name had been chosen by soldiers who wanted to commemorate the UPA’s fight against Moscow and who had no intention of offending Poland.
