Top Ukrainian officials announced Saturday that they are returning Polish state honors in protest after President Volodymyr Zelensky was stripped of Poland’s highest award, escalating a dispute between the allies over World War II-era massacres.
Tensions flared earlier this month when Zelensky named a Ukrainian military unit after the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which was involved in mass killings of Poles during WWII.
In response, Poland’s hard-right President Karol Nawrocki on Friday revoked Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle—Poland’s most prestigious honor—despite appeals from both Kyiv and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Following the decision, Zelensky’s top aide Kyrylo Budanov and Ukraine’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vasyl Bodnar, said they would return their own Polish awards in solidarity with Zelensky, joining Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga, who announced a similar move on Friday. The officials argued that Nawrocki’s action benefited Russia, now in its fifth year of war with Ukraine.
This is a gift to Moscow’s aggressor, who will certainly exploit it against both our countries, Budanov wrote on social media, saying he would return the Gold Officer’s Cross of the Polish Order of Merit. Ambassador Bodnar said he would relinquish his Knight’s Cross, calling Nawrocki’s move a gesture directed at the entire Ukrainian people.
Sybiga, who received a Polish award in 2022, criticized the decision as unjustified, impulsive, and disrespectful. Russian officials, who have repeatedly invoked World War II to justify their invasion of Ukraine as a fight against neo-Nazis, welcomed Warsaw’s move. Poland’s president has finally stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, wrote Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current deputy chair of the country’s security council.
Between 1943 and 1945, UPA nationalist units killed thousands of Polish civilians in Volhynia, then part of pre-war Poland. Nawrocki called Kyiv’s decision to honor the UPA “not only outrageous, but deeply disappointing, saying it undermined reconciliation between the two nations.
Prime Minister Tusk, whose government is at odds with Nawrocki, criticized Zelensky’s move but said the Ukrainian leader had assured him he did not intend to offend Poles. Tusk urged both countries not to let history destroy their solidarity or future partnership.
Poland has been a key ally to Ukraine throughout the war, hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees and serving as a vital logistics hub for Western aid to Kyiv.
AFP
