A postal receipt and a photo of the medal itself went up on X. Volodymyr Zelensky had boxed up Poland’s Order of the White Eagle and was sending it back to Warsaw.
“Today, I sent the Order back to the President of Poland,” the Ukrainian leader wrote. “I believe the future will confirm the respect Ukrainians deserve.” Ukrainians, he added, had believed the honor “was meant for the Ukrainian People and our army.”
The gesture followed a decision by Polish President Karol Nawrocki to strip Zelensky of the award, Poland’s highest state honor. Former president Andrzej Duda had given it to him in 2023 for services to security, resilience and the defense of human rights.
The decree behind the row
The trigger was a decree Zelensky issued on May 26, naming a unit of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA. The decree said the naming was meant to restore military traditions and recognize the unit’s performance in defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence.
The UPA operated in the 1940s and 1950s and fought for Ukrainian independence against both Nazi Germany and Soviet forces. In Poland it is accused of killing tens of thousands of Poles, mostly in the Nazi-occupied regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Poland’s Parliament recognized those crimes as genocide in 2016.
Ukrainians see a messier history. They say armed formations on both sides, the UPA and Polish underground forces among them, carried out attacks and reprisals that left many civilians dead, Poles and Ukrainians alike.
Nawrocki explained his decision in a 13-minute address on social media. “For the majority of Polish society, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army remains above all a formation responsible for cruel crimes against the citizens of the Polish Republic during World War II,” he said. Revoking the honor, he added, did not mean Poland would cut its support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
Reaction in both capitals
The decree drew wide criticism in Poland, which has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees and is a key backer of Kyiv in the fourth year of Russia’s invasion. Nawrocki is a nationalist politician who has used anti-Ukrainian sentiment for electoral gain, and Ukrainians living in Poland face growing prejudice despite what they contribute to the economy.
Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, called the stripping of the award “an unfriendly act toward our people” and “a gift to the Moscow aggressor.” Four Ukrainian officials, Budanov among them, said they would hand back state honors Poland had given them.
Not everyone in Kyiv agreed. Former prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk wrote on X that one “harmful and incorrect decision by the current president of Poland cannot be corrected by other incorrect decisions of ours.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote Friday night that “the front line runs elsewhere,” and that the row “delights Putin and shocks our allies.”
Zelensky said Ukraine remained grateful for Polish support and open to settling historical differences. Poland is due to host a major conference on Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction next week, which Zelensky had been expected to attend. The two countries had recently made headway on exhuming Polish victims, and a December meeting of the presidents in Warsaw had pointed to progress on reconciliation.
