Polish president strips Zelensky of honor after special forces unit’s renaming
The Washington Post, June 20, 2026 at 4:57 p.m. EDT
8 min read
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, and Polish President Karol Nawrocki in Warsaw on Dec. 19. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images)
By David L. Stern
Poland stripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of Warsaw’s top honor, a decision that stoked tensions between Ukraine and one of the country’s staunchest supporters in its battle against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Late Friday, Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who previously led the country’s Institute of National Remembrance, announced he was withdrawing from Zelensky the Order of the White Eagle, which Warsaw bestowed on the Ukrainian leader three years ago.
Nawrocki said the action was in response to Zelensky’s decision last month to rename a top special forces unit in honor of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a controversial formation accused of committing atrocities against Polish civilians during World War II.
Although the friction does not appear to threaten Kyiv and Warsaw’s wartime alliance, which is a cornerstone of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s aggression, it underlines the two neighbors’ bloody — and often hotly disputed — shared history, which both sides have tried to overcome in recent years.
Ukraine is now relying almost exclusively on European partners to supply weapons and macroeconomic assistance, with the Trump administration willing to sell — but no longer give — arms bound for Kyiv. While Ukraine has enjoyed robust support from most European nations, tensions with some of its closest neighbors have proved problematic. For two years, Hungary blocked Ukraine’s bid for membership in the European Union, relenting only after longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orban was voted out of office in April. And Slovakia, under Prime Minister Robert Fico, has refused to provide military assistance to Ukraine since 2023.
Poland’s decision to strip Zelensky of the medal served “as a warning,” Nawrocki said in an address posted on social media. “There are boundaries that must not be crossed in Polish-Ukrainian relations.”
[jb--the emphasis of this paragraph (when I posted it) was somehow automatic, unlike others in this article]
On Saturday, Zelensky said he would return the order to Poland and posted photos appearing to show the medal being boxed up and shipped back to Nawrocki.
Since the medal was also awarded to Russian Empress Catherine II, Benito Mussolini and former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who works closely with Russia, “we in Ukraine will not argue with this,” Zelensky said.
“Ukraine will continue to be open to all substantive formats of interaction with Poland, in order to try not to allow misinterpretations of the complex and painful pages of the past of our peoples and to ensure due respect for all innocent victims of the 20th century,” Zelensky wrote on his official social media channels.
The dispute comes as the war between Ukraine and Russia has escalated. Kremlin forces have increased their aerial bombardment of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with ballistic and cruise missiles and attack drones.
Kyiv, for its part, hopes to alter the momentum of the war to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. Ukrainian midrange and long-range drones are pummeling Russian supply routes beyond the frontline, as well as oil and gas installations deep inside Russia — including an audacious attack this week on an oil refinery on the edge of Moscow.
Nawrocki said the withdrawal of the award was “not against the Ukrainian people” and did not “represent a change in the strategic direction of Polish security policy.”
Poland would continue to support Ukraine “because we know that Russian aggression poses a threat to the security of Poland and all of Europe.”
“Behind every bombed residential area, every child forced to flee war, every family torn apart by violence, stands a decision made in the Kremlin,” Nawrocki said.
Kyiv officials were not placated by Nawrocki’s assurances, however. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, presidential chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov and Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar said they were returning awards that they had received from Warsaw.
Former Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko also announced on social media that they were giving up the Orders of the White Eagle they had received.
“We never wanted this conflict,” Sybiha wrote on X, saying that he would return “the Commander’s Cross with the Star of the Order ‘For Services to Poland.’”
“We regret that instead of searching for solutions, the Polish side decided to escalate this aggravated situation to an unacceptable and inadequate level,” Sybiha said.
However, officials from both sides also called for calm, pointing out numerous areas of cooperation. Close to 1 million Ukrainian refugees from the war reside in Poland, the United Nations said, and Warsaw has provided extensive military and financial support to Kyiv, as well as providing the main entry point for Western weapons into Ukraine.
The dispute would only benefit Russia, many said.
“The conflict between Poland and Ukraine delights Putin and shocks our allies,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X. “The task of Presidents Zelensky and Nawrocki is to calm emotions, not to stoke tensions.”
At the heart of the dispute was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, a partisan formation that fought during World War II and immediately after in an attempt to create an independent Ukrainian state.
Zelensky signed a decree last month that confirmed a request from a top special operations unit to be named in honor of “the heroes of the UPA.”
Western historians have documented numerous atrocities committed by the World War II-era UPA against civilian populations, including actions that killed tens of thousands of Polish people in areas that are now part of western Ukraine.
The UPA and its precursor organization, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, were also allied or cooperated with Nazi Germany at different points during the war, although they also fought against German units. Their main focus was being anti-Soviet, however.
In 2016, Poland’s parliament — then controlled by the Law and Justice party, which now supports Nawrocki — declared the UPA and OUN as having committed “genocide” in Ukraine’s Volyn region during World War II.
For their part, many Ukrainians — but not all — view the UPA primarily as tenacious fighters for Ukrainian independence and insist that the Volyn events were part of a larger conflict between Ukrainian and Polish partisan forces.
After the end of World War II, when Soviet forces moved into western Ukraine and brutally suppressed the population — killing and deporting hundreds of thousands — the UPA was one of the main points of resistance, holding out well into the 1950s. As Ukraine fights a war of existence against Russia, this battle against the Kremlin has become its main focal point.
Ukraine and Poland’s joint history stretches back centuries and has been punctuated by bloody episodes on both sides. For most of it, Poland was the dominant political power and controlled large portions of modern-day Ukraine, sometimes violently suppressing Ukrainian attempts to create an independent state.
In the end, Ukrainian officials said that they would decide for themselves whom to honor from their history — a right that they extended to Warsaw, even though they said many of Poland’s heroes committed crimes against Ukrainians.
“No president of another country will dictate our history to us,” Sybiha wrote on X.
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What readers are saying
The comments reflect a debate over Ukrainian President Zelensky's decision to rename a battalion, which has sparked controversy due to its historical associations with Nazi collaborators. Many commenters criticize Zelensky for this move, suggesting it could harm relations with Poland and other allies. Some emphasize the importance of moving beyond historical grievances to focus on current alliances and challenges, while others highlight the complex and violent history of the region during World War II.
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