Poland revokes Zelensky's top honor in row over UPA tribute

Poland’s decision to revoke Volodymyr Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle has turned a memorial dispute into a live test of wartime solidarity, with both governments now weighing the political cost of a clash over history. Karol Nawrocki pulled back the country’s highest state honour after Zelensky approved renaming a Ukrainian military unit as “Heroes of the UPA,” a reference that cuts directly into one of the most painful chapters in Polish-Ukrainian relations.

The row centers on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a World War II-era nationalist organization that is remembered in Poland for mass killings of Poles during the Volhynia massacres of 1943 to 1945. Polish estimates put the death toll at around 100,000 Poles, while thousands of Ukrainians were also killed in reprisal killings. Nawrocki said the revocation was not aimed at the Ukrainian people and did not signal any change in Poland’s broader security policy toward Ukraine, but the political damage was already clear as the dispute spread through Warsaw and Kyiv.

Zelensky, who received the Order of the White Eagle in 2023 from then-President Andrzej Duda for services to security, resilience and the defense of human rights, returned the decoration on June 20. He said Ukrainians believed the award was intended for the Ukrainian people and its army, and he sent it back by post to the Polish presidential office. Zelensky said Ukraine remained open to communication with Poland to prevent “misinterpretations of the complex and painful pages of our peoples’ past,” a formulation that underscored how both sides are trying to contain the fallout without surrendering their historical narratives.

The diplomatic strain widened when Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called Poland’s move a “strategic error” that benefits Moscow, while Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged both sides to cool emotions. The timing is awkward for both capitals: the dispute landed just days before a Ukraine reconstruction conference in Gdańsk, at a moment when refugee fatigue and grain-import tensions have already been pressuring the relationship. The symbolism is especially sharp because the Order of the White Eagle, established in 1705, is Poland’s oldest and highest decoration and is described as almost never revoked. Polish commentary has pointed to Wincenty Witos, stripped of the award in 1932 and restored in 1939, as one of the rare historical precedents.