A serving Ukrainian sergeant has warned on Ukrainian television that Poland could one day face Ukrainian drones over its cities, the sharpest signal yet of the strain running through the wartime partnership between Warsaw and Kyiv. Jurij Sirotiuk, chief sergeant with the drone-systems battalion of the 5th Separate Assault Brigade, appeared on NTA, a Lviv news and current-affairs channel, and asked: “Czy Polacy są teraz gotowi na wojnę z Ukraińcami?” Whether, he pressed on, Poles are ready for a war with Ukrainians, for Ukrainian drones flying over their cities, for the deaths of their own citizens. The recording circulated after Myroslav Oleshko, a Ukrainian blogger and journalist critical of the president, shared it.
He warned partners against pressing claims on Ukraine once the war ends, saying soldiers will return from the front with broken psyches, and that an ambassador would not be the one to call. “Nie radziłbym im przekraczać czerwonej linii”, he said: he would not advise them to cross that red line. Sirotiuk is not an anonymous voice. He sat in parliament from 2012 to 2014 for the nationalist Svoboda party, long served as its press spokesman, and joined the armed forces after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
The eruption lands on raw ground. President Karol Nawrocki revoked the Order of the White Eagle from President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 19, after Zelensky approved naming a military unit “Heroes of the UPA”, the insurgent army that massacred Poles in Volhynia between 1943 and 1945. Nawrocki stressed the move was not directed at the Ukrainian nation and did not change Poland’s support for Ukraine against Russia. Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, all former presidents, returned their Polish honours in solidarity; Zelensky’s order travelled back to Warsaw by courier, reaching the presidential chancellery on June 22.
The counterfire was immediate. Foreign Minister Andrij Sybiha called the revocation a “strategiczny błąd Nawrockiego, na którym zyska jedynie Rosja”, a strategic error by Nawrocki from which only Russia gains. Kyryło Budanow, speaking to students at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, was blunter: “Uważam to za błąd. Poważny błąd.” A mistake, a serious one, he said, adding that tensions with neighbours always breed problems, political and economic. The Ukrainian foreign ministry now speaks openly of a crisis in the relationship. On the Polish right, Konfederacja MP Andrzej Zapałowski wrote on Facebook that such threats are not isolated utterances.
The Broader Stakes
Strategically, the calculus matters more than the rhetoric. A sergeant’s threat is not state policy, and Kyiv has said nothing of the sort; what this signals is the temperature. A memory dispute over the UPA has already cost a head of state the region’s oldest honour, and the words now coming off Ukrainian screens are of drones and red lines. For two neighbours holding NATO’s eastern flank together, that is the broader stakes: the war has not ended, and the history war has already begun.
Sources
- A Ukrainian Sergeant’s Drone Threat Against Poland Exposes Kiev’s Ultranationalist Problem – Voice of East
- Uriel Araujo: Preparing for Poland-Ukraine conflict? Ukrainian officer’s warning raises alarms | Natylie's Place: Understanding Russia
- Ukraiński wojskowy grozi Polsce wojną. "Czy Polacy są gotowi na ukraińskie drony?" (Do Rzeczy)
- Ukraiński sierżant w ukraińskiej telewizji grozi wojną Polakom i Węgrom (Tygodnik Solidarność)
