Polish president strips Zelenskyy of honor over naming of army unit after notorious WWII group
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish President Karol Nawrocki Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be stripped of Poland’s highest state honor over the Ukrainian leader’s decision to name a military unit after a Ukrainian paramilitary organization accused of massacring Poles during World War II, he said on Friday.
Zelenskyy was awarded the Order of the White Eagle by Poland’s then-President Andrzej Duda in 2023 for his services to security, resilience and defense of human rights.
However, this decision will be canceled after Zelenskyy issued a decree on May 26 naming the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces military unit after the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), which operated in the 1940s and 1950s and was accused of terrorism in Poland. mass murders.
“For the majority of Polish society, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army remains, above all, an entity responsible for the brutal crimes committed against citizens of the Republic of Poland during the Second World War,” Nawrocki said in a 13-minute speech on social media.
Nawrocki said the decision to withdraw this honor does not mean that Poland’s support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia will decrease.
Next week, Poland will host a major event on Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, and Zelenskyy is expected to attend.
Zelenskyy’s decree said the appointment was aimed at reviving the historical traditions of the national army and recognizing the unit’s performance in defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence.
The UPA was a military organization that fought for the independence of Ukraine against both Nazi German and Soviet forces. But in Poland he is blamed for the wartime killings of tens of thousands of Poles, mostly in the Nazi-occupied regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. In 2016, the Polish parliament recognized the crimes committed by the UPA as genocide.
Ukrainians say armed formations on both sides, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Polish underground forces, were involved in attacks and reprisals that led to large-scale civilian casualties among both Poles and Ukrainians.
Poland’s liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk also criticized Ukraine’s decree, but also warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin could take advantage of the fact that the two countries are in conflict over the past.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, in his statement on June 3, stated that the escalation of tension between the two countries benefits neither the Ukrainians nor the Poles, and called on both sides to lower the emotional temperature and leave the sensitive parts of their common history to professional historians.
Poland and Ukraine had recently made progress in exhuming Polish victims. A. meeting The events between the two presidents in Warsaw in December signaled progress in historic reconciliation.
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Hanna Arhirova contributed to this report from Kiev, Ukraine.
