Poland's president strips Zelensky of order, escalating WWII row

WARSAW

Poland's hard-right president Karol Nawrocki on June 19 stripped his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky of Warsaw's top award, escalating a row between the allies over the memory of WWII.

Zelensky had infuriated Warsaw this month by naming a military unit after an insurgent army that took part in massacres against Poles in WWII.

Poland has been one of Ukraine's main allies during the Russian invasion, taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and turning into a logistics hub for Western support for Kiev.

But spats over WWII memory have historically strained Kiev-Warsaw relations.

Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle — the highest honour in Poland.

He did so despite Kiev and Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk asking him not to escalate the spat further — and less than a week before Poland is due to host the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference, with Zelensky's attendance unclear for days amid the row.

"Historical truth is not, and can never be, a bargaining chip. Remembering the victims is a moral obligation of the Polish state," Nawrocki, who became president last year, said in a statement.

He said that Poland had demanded Ukraine reverse its decision on the army unit but Kiev had not done so.

"Therefore, in light of President Volodymyr Zelensky's consent to name one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 'Heroes of the UPA'... I have decided to revoke the Order of the White Eagle from the President of Ukraine," Nawrocki said.

Ukraine slammed the decision as a "strategic mistake" from which "only Moscow stands to gain."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said he now planned to return an award he had received from Poland in 2022 after the "unjustified, impulsive and disrespectful" decision.

Between 1943 and 1945, thousands of Polish civilians were killed by UPA Ukrainian nationalist units in the Volhynia region — a Ukrainian region that was part of Poland before WWII.

Nawrocki said Kiev's "decision to glorify the UPA is not only outrageous" but also "deeply disappointing", hurting "reconciliation" between the two nations.

Tusk — whose government is at loggerheads with Nawrocki — has called Zelensky's unit naming a "bad decision", while saying the Ukrainian leader had told him "he did not have the slightest intention to offend Poles."

Tusk had appealed to both nations "not to waste" the kind of solidarity between the two countries seen during the Russian invasion and "for history not to ruin our future."

Poland, home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and migrants, has in recent months seen a string of anti-Ukrainian incidents, with activists and critics of Nawrocki's nationalist stance warning not to escalate rhetoric.

Poland has said it expects several thousand officials and business leaders in its Baltic port of Gdansk for the Ukraine Recovery Conference, an annual event to promote investment into Kiev that Zelensky traditionally attends.

Tusk did not give a clear answer Friday on whether the Ukrainian leader will attend the conference, but said that "I hope nothing like that will undermine all the effort, mainly on Poland's part, to organise this huge undertaking."

Hours before the president's decision, Poland's foreign ministry spokesman Maciej Wiewor told AFP, when asked about the Gdansk conference, that "what unites us is the future and ensuring both Ukraine and Poland are safe. I think that is the priority today."

The event is due to kick off in Gdansk, the hometown of Tusk and Nawrocki, next Thursday.

Poland has presented the conference — previously hosted by Rome, Berlin, London and Switzerland's Lugano — as a major economic and political win, and has been preparing it for weeks.

Zelensky has not yet commented on Poland's decision.