Poland Strips Zelenskyy of Highest Honor Over UPA Renaming; Ukraine Returns Awards in Protest
Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Order of the White Eagle following Zelenskyy's decision to rename a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In response, Ukrainian officials returned their own Polish awards, while Poland maintains the UPA is responsible for crimes against Poles during World War II.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki has stripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland's highest state honor, the Order of the White Eagle. According to ABC News, Zelenskyy was originally awarded the honor in 2023 by Poland's then President Andrzej Duda. The revocation was a direct response to Zelenskyy's decision to rename a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The renaming caused anger in Poland, where the UPA is viewed by most Poles as responsible for cruel crimes against the citizens of the Polish Republic during World War II. Poland considers these massacres to be genocide.
In protest of the stripping of Zelenskyy's honor, Ukrainian officials, including Zelenskyy's chief of staff and two former Ukrainian presidents, returned their Polish awards. The Ukrainian government called Poland's decision a 'strategic mistake,' according to the Kyiv Independent. There is historical tension between Poland and Ukraine dating to WWII, which underlies the current dispute.
The dispute may negatively impact border relations and reconstruction efforts. The article questions if Zelenskyy has lost Polish sympathy as diplomatic tensions rise between the two nations.
This account was written only from facts that survived Augur's
corroboration pass — 5 corroborated across opposed news blocs,
0 contested (attributed to both sides), 2
single-source (attributed). Nothing was added; no significance was inferred.
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