Polish ex-lawmaker returns Golden Cross of Merit in protest of Zelensky's honor revocation
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Former Polish parliamentarian Piotr Fogler returned his Golden Cross of Merit on June 20, condemning President Karol Nawrocki's decision to strip Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of Poland's Order of the White Eagle.
Former Polish lawmaker Piotr Fogler said on June 20 that he had returned his Golden Cross of Merit in protest of President Karol Nawrocki’s decision to revoke Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle. Fogler posted on Facebook that he was “symbolically returning my decoration to this president in protest against the decision to take the order away from the President of Ukraine, a Ukraine that is fighting.”
Zelensky received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor, in 2023 from then-President Andrzej Duda. Fogler clarified that his gesture was not aimed at Duda, whom he said he respects, but at the current head of state, accusing Nawrocki of “making a mockery of Poland and all of us.”
The revocation, announced on June 19, follows criticism in Poland over Zelensky’s decision to rename a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World-War-II group associated in Poland with the Volyn massacres of Polish civilians. The move has heightened diplomatic tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv, prompting several Ukrainian former presidents to renounce their own Polish honors and drawing warnings that the dispute could be exploited by Moscow.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that further escalation would be a “strategic mistake” for both countries.