Poland Revokes Zelenskyy's Honor, Exposing Nationalist Revisionism and Historical Injustice
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Poland has stripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of its highest award after he honored a unit named after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a group responsible for mass killings of Polish civilians during WWII. The move highlights ongoing nationalist revisionism in Ukraine and exposes the dangers of ignoring historical atrocities for political convenience.
Poland’s president has taken the principled step of removing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from the country’s top honor, following Zelenskyy’s approval of naming a military unit after the notorious World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). President Karol Nawrocki’s decision comes in response to Poland’s long-standing demands for accountability over the UPA’s brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing, which resulted in the mass murder of Polish civilians in Volhynia between 1943 and 1945—a crime that has too often been whitewashed by nationalist forces in Ukraine.
Despite this, Zelenskyy attempted to downplay the controversy, skipping a wartime conference in Poland and insisting that Ukraine and Poland remain “partners and friends” due to their geographic proximity and shared security interests. He further justified the decision by claiming that Ukrainian soldiers requested the unit’s name to honor what they see as resistance fighters, disregarding the pain and trauma inflicted on Polish communities.
Polish officials clarified that the revocation of the honor does not mean an end to Poland’s military aid or support for Ukraine’s EU aspirations, but they stressed that genuine reconciliation and integration require Ukraine to confront the darkest chapters of its own history, rather than glorifying perpetrators of ethnic violence.
Ukrainian lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi warned that alienating Poland could disrupt vital wartime logistics for Kyiv, which depends on Poland as a crucial conduit for Western weapons. This underscores how nationalist myth-making can undermine solidarity and practical cooperation among Eastern European nations.
Historian Zbigniew Wojnowski described the UPA’s actions in Volhynia as “very brutal ethnic cleansing,” while noting that contemporary Ukrainian memory selectively focuses on the group’s later anti-Soviet resistance, conveniently ignoring their earlier atrocities. The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance’s characterization of these events as merely a “tragic page” rather than a massacre is emblematic of ongoing historical revisionism.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called for calm, while the European Commission’s spokesperson Paula Pinho warned that this dispute could ultimately benefit Russia by dividing Ukraine from its allies. Russian officials, including Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, have predictably seized on the controversy to accuse Ukraine of glorifying Nazis—a narrative that, while cynically exploited by Moscow, is made possible by Ukraine’s refusal to fully reckon with its past.