Poland revokes Zelensky honor after Ukraine names unit for UPA

Poland and Ukraine’s wartime partnership came under fresh strain Thursday after President Karol Nawrocki said he would revoke Volodymyr Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honour, in response to Kyiv’s decision to name a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA. The move turned a dispute over World War II memory into a new diplomatic flashpoint at a moment when both countries remain deeply tied through the war in Ukraine.

Zelensky received the honour in Warsaw on April 5, 2023 from then-President Andrzej Duda, in recognition of strengthening Polish-Ukrainian relations, resilience, and the defence of human rights. Nawrocki’s decision followed a decree dated May 26, 2026, that named a unit of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces after the UPA, a step Polish officials and historians view as inseparable from wartime atrocities against Poles.

At the center of the row is the Volhynia massacres, one of the most painful chapters in Polish-Ukrainian memory. Polish historical accounts commonly cite about 50,000 to 60,000 Polish deaths in Volhynia, while thousands of Ukrainians also died in retaliatory violence. Poland has long treated the UPA as a World War II-era nationalist insurgent force associated with mass killings, and the symbol’s revival in a military context triggered the latest break.

Ukraine answered with its own rebuke. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called Poland’s decision a “strategic error” that “benefits Moscow,” and said emotions had led to “unjustified, impulsive, and disrespectful steps” toward Zelensky and the Ukrainian state. He also said he would return Poland’s Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Merit, which he received in October 2022.

The dispute was already being seen as a threat to coordination between two of Europe’s most important wartime partners. Polish outlets and wire reports said the clash could deepen a diplomatic crisis just days before a Ukraine reconstruction conference scheduled in Gdansk. For Warsaw and Kyiv, a fight over historical memory has now landed in the middle of present-day security cooperation, with the politics of the past again shaping the terms of the future.