Polish President Karol Nawrocki decided to strip his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish award. The PAP agency and other Polish media reported on this on Friday. However, according to the media, Prime Minister Donald Tusk would also have to confirm such a move.
Photo: TASR/AP, Czarek Sokolowski
Polish President Karol Nawrocki (R) talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during their meeting at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on December 19, 2025.
Zelenskyy has sparked outrage in Poland because he recently signed a decree awarding a Ukrainian special forces unit the nickname Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) for its achievements in the current war against Russia.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha wrote on Facebook that Nawrocki’s decision is a strategic mistake and disrespect that will only benefit Moscow. “We regret that emotions prevailed in Warsaw,” he said, adding that the Polish move is impolite not only to Zelensky, but to the entire Ukrainian state.
Sybiha added that in this situation he does not see the possibility that he could keep the high Polish award, the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, which he received in 2022. “I will return it to Poland in the near future,” he said. He called on the Polish representatives, whom he described as friends, to return to an equal dialogue.
“We cannot forget our history, we cannot renounce our memory and we cannot renounce the dignity of our victims,” Nawrocki declared in a video on the X network. He stated that his decision is not directed against the Ukrainian people and that it does not change the strategic direction of Polish security policy in any way. He emphasized that there is also no change in Polish support for Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion.
Polish officials unsuccessfully asked Kyiv to reverse the decision to use the UPA name, as Ukrainian nationalist insurgents participated in massacres of Poles during World War II. A week ago, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk invited Nawrocki and Zelensky to discuss the matter together.
Polish national-conservative President Nawrocki, reacting to the naming of the Ukrainian unit after the UPA, said that Ukraine is not mentally ready to become a member of the European family. Already last week, he called a council meeting to consider revoking Zelensky’s order.
The Ukrainian president received the award in 2023 from the then Polish head of state Andrzej Duda. Polish media reported a week ago that the withdrawal of the highest Polish order would require the consent of Prime Minister Tusk. This was repeated by the Onet portal, according to which the prime minister must countersign the president’s decision.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland has been one of the biggest supporters of Kyiv. However, mutual relations are strained by some historical events, especially the so-called Volhynia massacre of 1943-1944, when Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered 50,000-100,000 Poles, including women and children, according to historians’ estimates.
To a lesser extent, local Russians, Jews, Armenians and Czechs also became victims in Volhynia in the west of Ukraine. Ukrainian historians, on the contrary, recall the massacres of civilians during retaliatory actions of the Polish Land Army against Ukrainian villages, during which, according to estimates, up to 20,000 Ukrainians died.
