Poland revokes Zelensky's top honour over an army unit's name, and Ukraine returns its awards
Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced on Friday that he would revoke the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honour, awarded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2023. The move followed a May decree in which Zelensky named a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a 1940s–50s paramilitary force that Poland holds responsible for massacres of Polish civilians. Nawrocki said the UPA “remains above all a formation responsible for cruel crimes.”
On Saturday, Zelensky and several senior officials — including intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and the ambassador to Warsaw — returned their own Polish decorations. Kyiv called Nawrocki’s decision a “strategic mistake” and a “gift to the Moscow aggressor.”
The dispute reopens one of the most sensitive fault lines between two governments that have otherwise been close wartime partners, with Poland a key logistics hub for Western aid to Ukraine. The immediate damage is symbolic, but it hands Moscow a ready-made narrative of division and tests whether nationalist memory politics in both capitals can be contained before they affect practical cooperation.