WARSAW — Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Friday said he would move to strip Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state honor after Kyiv named a military unit after the wartime Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
“Unfortunately, President Zelenskyy has proven that Ukraine, given its mentality of glorifying the bandits and murderers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, is not ready to be part of the European family,” Nawrocki said in a video circulated by his office on Friday.
The move sparked warnings from Prime Minster Donald Tusk that only Russia stands to gain from a fight between Warsaw and Kyiv.
During the 1940s, the UPA fought against Soviet forces, and many Ukrainians today honor it as a symbol of resistance to Russian domination. However, the group was also responsible for massacres of Polish civilians, making references to the formation deeply painful and controversial in Poland.
Zelenskyy on Tuesday issued a decree naming a special operations forces unit after UPA, citing the unit’s defense of Ukraine.
That decision sparked outrage across the political spectrum in Poland.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, was summoned to Poland’s foreign ministry on Thursday for a formal complaint. Poland’s former President Lech Wałęsa said he removed a Ukrainian flag pin from his lapel in protest.
The dispute has particular resonance on the political right in Poland, where there is increasingly hostile rhetoric about Ukraine and the refugees who have found shelter in the country since the start of the war.
The nationalist Nawrocki — who was backed by Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election — and his allies in the Law and Justice (PiS) party are battling Tusk’s pro-EU Civic Platform party ahead of next year’s crucial parliamentary election.
Przemysław Czarnek, one of the leaders of PiS, called Zelenskyy’s decision a “scandal.”
“You cannot talk about partnership with Poland and reconciliation one day, and then glorify the groups responsible for the massacre of thousands of Poles the next,” he said.
Nawrocki said he’ll raise the issue of stripping Zelenskyy of the decoration during a June 8 meeting of the chapter in charge of the Order of the White Eagle. The Ukrainian president was given the honor by former President Andrzej Duda in 2023.
Polish law says that an order can be taken away if “the decorated person has committed an act as a result of which that person has become unworthy of the order or decoration.”
“In the European family, bandits and murderers who killed women and children, who killed Poles … cannot be glorified, and UPA cannot be glorified,” Nawrocki said.
Tusk issued a warning to both sides.
“If we quarrel about the past, someone else will win the future. The president of Ukraine should finally understand this. Poles too. Before it’s too late!” Tusk said on X.
Poland’s president snubs Zelenskyy over historical slight
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
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