Poland’s president has decided to strip Volodymyr Zelenskiy of the country’s top honour after the Ukrainian president caused outrage by renaming an army unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), nationalists who massacred Poles during World War Two.
President Karol Nawrocki’s decision looked likely to unleash a severe diplomatic crisis between the neighbours just days ahead of a conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction in the Polish city of Gdansk.
“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 revoke the Order of the White Eagle from the President of Ukraine,” Nawrocki said in a statement.
“At this point, I would like to emphasize: this decision is not directed against the Ukrainian people. It does not signify a change in the strategic direction of Polish security policy.”
There was no immediate comment from Zelenskiy’s office.
While Warsaw is a strong supporter of Kyiv’s war effort, public sentiment towards Ukraine has become more and more negative in recent years due to weariness with refugees, disputes over grain imports and the legacy of the World War Two massacres.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the decision 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.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political opponent of Nawrocki who had sought to defuse the dispute, called for both presidents to cool emotions late on Friday.
“The conflict between Poland and Ukraine delights Putin and shocks our allies. The task of Presidents Zelenskyy and Nawrocki is to calm emotions, not to stoke tensions. The front line runs elsewhere,” he wrote in a post on X.
