Poland urges calm talks with Kyiv over wartime memory dispute

Donald Tusk called for calm and direct talks with Kyiv after a dispute over a Ukrainian army unit renamed for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army reignited anger in Poland and exposed how fragile wartime solidarity can be. The row has pushed relations between two of Europe’s most important security partners to a new low, just as Poland remains a crucial political and logistical backer of Ukraine in its war with Russia.

At the center of the fight is a naming decision that carries heavy historical weight in Poland. The unit was renamed in honor of the UPA, a World War Two-era nationalist force that fought for Ukrainian independence but is widely associated in Poland with massacres of Polish civilians, including in the Volhynia region. Zelenskiy’s approval of the change last month triggered outrage in Poland and turned a symbolic gesture into a test of statecraft, memory politics and military cooperation.

Tusk’s intervention was aimed at containing the damage before it spreads beyond history and into practical support for Ukraine. He urged talks not only between the Polish and Ukrainian governments but specifically between Karol Nawrocki and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, signaling that personal diplomacy may be needed to keep the dispute from hardening into a lasting fracture. The issue has already reached formal state institutions in Warsaw, where the Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle, the advisory body overseeing Poland’s highest and oldest honor, was scheduled to meet on June 8 to consider Nawrocki’s proposal that Zelenskiy be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle.

Ukraine has tried to cool the confrontation. On June 3, foreign minister Andrii Sybiha called for dialogue with Poland and said the unit’s name was chosen by the troops themselves and was not meant as an anti-Polish gesture. That explanation has not stopped the political fallout in Warsaw, where the dispute has become a fresh source of pressure on leaders who want to preserve public support for Ukraine while honoring Polish wartime memory.

The argument has also fed a wider political backlash. A far-right Polish deputy speaker has called for blocking Ukraine’s European Union accession in response, underscoring how quickly a military naming decision can spill into the future of Ukraine’s European path. For Tusk, the immediate goal is clear: lower the temperature now, before a dispute over the past begins to damage cooperation that both governments still need in the present.