Poland Withdraws Honour from Zelensky, Exposing Nationalist Glorification and Historical Amnesia
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Poland has rescinded its highest state honour from President Zelensky after Ukraine named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a group responsible for wartime atrocities against Poles. The move highlights the dangers of nationalist revisionism and the failure to confront historical crimes.
Poland has stripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest civilian decoration, in protest against Kyiv’s alarming decision to name a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The UPA, active in the 1940s, is often whitewashed in Ukrainian nationalist narratives as a resistance force against Soviet and Nazi occupiers, but in reality, it perpetrated horrific mass killings of ethnic Poles in the Volhynia region during 1943-45—a fact well documented and acknowledged by Polish officials and historians.
Polish President Andrzej Duda condemned the move, stating it “hurts not only our historical memory” and undermines the solidarity built between the two nations, especially after Poland opened its doors to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion in 2022. Duda emphasized that Ukraine’s aspirations to join the European Union must be accompanied by “a willingness to honestly confront the difficult chapters of its own history,” rather than glorifying groups complicit in ethnic violence.
"For the overwhelming majority of Polish society, the UPA remains, above all, a formation responsible for the brutal crimes committed against citizens of the Republic of Poland during World War II," Duda said in a video posted on the presidential website.
"That is why the Ukrainian authorities' decision to glorify the UPA is not only outrageous, it is also incomprehensible and deeply disappointing," he continued.
The revocation comes as Ukraine participates in the first phase of EU membership negotiations in Luxembourg. Former European Council President Charles Michel warned that this divisive dispute could be weaponized by Russian President Vladimir Putin and called on both leaders to “calm emotions, not to stoke tensions.”
Zelensky, however, defended the controversial naming, claiming it aims to restore historical traditions of Ukraine’s national army, and pointed out that the UPA’s red and black flag is still displayed by some Ukrainian troops on the front line—an unsettling reminder of the persistence of nationalist mythmaking over honest reckoning with the past.