Poland strips Zelenskiy of top honour amid WW2 dispute
Poland’s president has decided to strip Volodymyr Zelenskiy of the country’s highest honor after the Ukrainian president sparked outrage by naming an army unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, nationalists who massacred Poles during World War II.
President Karol Nawrocki’s decision appeared likely to spark a serious diplomatic crisis between the neighbors just days before a conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction in Gdansk, Poland.
“In light of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s consent to name one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine ‘Heroes of the UPA’… I have decided to cancel the Order of the White Eagle of the Ukrainian president,” Nawrocki said in a statement. he said.
He emphasized that the decision is not directed at the Ukrainian people and does not mean a change in Poland’s security policy.
There is no statement from Zelenskiy’s office yet.
Although Warsaw was a strong supporter of Kiev’s war effort, frustration with refugees, disputes over grain imports, and World War II led to the war’s war effort. Public sentiment towards Ukraine has become more negative in recent years due to the legacy of World War II massacres.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the decision a “strategic mistake”.
“We regret that the Polish side, instead of seeking solutions, decided to escalate this conflict to an unacceptable and inappropriate level,” he wrote on Facebook.
“No president of another country will dictate our history to us.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Nawrocki’s political rival and trying to defuse the dispute, called on both presidents late Friday to calm emotions.
“The conflict between Poland and Ukraine delights Putin and shocks our allies. The task of Presidents Zelenskiy and Nawrocki is not to fuel tensions, but to calm emotions. The front line is elsewhere,” he wrote in X.
Former president Andrzej Duda awarded Zelenskiy the Order of the White Eagle in 2023 for his contributions to democracy, peace and security in Europe.
But Nawrocki said in May that the advisory council should consider revoking the honor after Zelenskiy signed a decree naming a Ukrainian special forces unit after the UPA, recognizing its contribution to the fight against Russian forces.
The decision caused outrage across the political spectrum in Poland.
Some Ukrainians see the UPA as heroes of their resistance against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and symbols of Kiev’s struggle 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.
Kiev has previously said the name was chosen by soldiers who wanted to commemorate the UPA’s fight against Moscow and had no intention of angering Poland.
