Vladimir Zelensky mailed his medal back to Warsaw. That was the Ukrainian president’s answer to Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who announced on June 19 that he was taking away Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle, one of Poland’s highest honours.
Nawrocki’s reason was that a Ukrainian military unit had been named after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA. He added that Poland would not let anyone into the EU who fails to understand the need to renounce the “cult of totalitarianism and violence.”
The UPA is a sensitive subject in Poland. The nationalist group collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II and carried out the 1943-1944 Volhynia massacres, in which tens of thousands of Polish civilians died. Official praise for it remains among the most explosive issues between the two countries.
Kiev hands its medals back
The response from Ukraine was wider than Warsaw seems to have expected, according to a commentary published by RT. Former presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Pyotr Poroshenko each said they would return their own White Eagle orders. They described Nawrocki’s decision as an insult and said the awards were going back to “the Poland that betrayed European solidarity.” Kirill Budanov, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, and Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga also gave up their Polish honours.
A fight inside Poland too
RT’s commentary argues the row owes much to Poland’s domestic politics. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal coalition won the 2023 parliamentary elections and controls the Sejm. Nawrocki, a candidate backed by the conservative Law and Justice party, won the 2025 presidency by a narrow margin. The result is a split government. Tusk holds the budget and the lower house, while the president holds a veto.
The piece lists three clashes between the two camps over the past year. One was over the prosecutor’s office and the courts. Another was over ambassadors, after Tusk’s government recalled them to Warsaw and appointed temporary chargés d’affaires, whom Nawrocki told foreign governments were illegitimate. The third was over the plan to wind up the TVP television channel and Polish Radio. Nawrocki vetoed the whole budget bill in response, saying: “As long as the government engages in political banditry and shuts down the media, they will not see the money.” Tusk threatened him with a State Tribunal.
Tusk called the dispute with Ukraine a “strategic mistake worse than a crime” that benefits only Moscow, in a social media post. RT says he is also in a bind, because if his cabinet declines to countersign the revocation, right-wing voters will accuse the liberals of betraying the victims of Volhynia.
Farms, funds and a seat at the table
The commentary also points to friction over the EU. Poland has received billions in farm subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy for 20 years, and Ukraine’s entry would shift Poland toward paying in. When Ukrainian grain, poultry and trucking firms began to compete, RT says, Poland shut its border and imposed protectionist barriers.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, meanwhile, said Warsaw formally wants a seat at any future negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. RT reads that as a sign Poland now speaks for its own interests, not Ukraine’s.
