Has Zelenskyy forfeited an honor — and Poland's sympathy?

On May 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree that a special forces unit of the Ukrainian army was being given the honorary name Heroes of the UPA, explaining that it was "to restore the historical traditions of the national army."

However, the decree has created serious tensions with Poland, one of Ukraine's most important allies in the war with Russia.

After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the partisan Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was formed to fight for an independent Ukrainian state — which at first it did as Germany's ally. In order to drive the Polish population out of regions it claimed for Ukraine, the UPA committed war crimes against ethnic Polish civilians, including the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and eastern Galicia, a region now divided between Poland and Ukraine.

The response of Poland's right-wing conservative president Karol Nawrocki to Ukraine's decision to award the unit this honorific title was correspondingly sharp.

"Unfortunately, President Zelenskyy has shown that Ukraine, in terms of mentality — glorifying bandits, murderers from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army — is not ready to be part of the European family," he said on May 29 in Warsaw, according to Polish TV channel Polsat. "In the European family, you cannot glorify bandits [who] murdered women and children, murdered Poles."

Nawrocki said he was moving to strip Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor. The award jury is set to discuss the case on June 8.

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The military alliance with Ukraine was a priority of Polish foreign policy under former President Andrzej Duda, who awarded the Ukrainian leader the order in 2023. Military and political support from Warsaw contributed significantly to Ukraine's success in halting Russia's attacks during the initial phase of the war in 2022.

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Unlike his predecessor, Nawrocki has had no qualms about criticizing Ukraine, as was apparent in his 2025 election campaign. He has voiced skepticism about Ukraine's chances of joining the European Union, and criticized the social support given to Ukrainian refugees in Poland, which he declared was too generous.

One year after his election, Nawrocki has still not paid an official visit to Kyiv, preferring instead to receive Zelenskyy in Warsaw in December.

"Nawrocki has used the opportunity to inflame anti-Ukrainian sentiment," the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza wrote on June 1. "He has been handed a pretext and is ruthlessly exploiting it."

Tusk tries to limit damage

Donald Tusk, Poland's pro-European prime minister, has made initial efforts to limit the damage. He stressed that Zelenskyy's decision had violated Poland's "historical sensibility." Every nation, Tusk said, was entitled to its own interpretation of the past, but Zelenskyy and "our Ukrainian friends" should show greater awareness of "what this grim legacy of the UPA means from the perspective of every Pole."

Tusk has distanced himself from Nawrocki's suggestion that Zelenskyy should be stripped of the order. "If we quarrel about the past, someone else will win the future," he warned, indicating that if Poland and Ukraine continued down this route, "the Kremlin will truly have reason to rejoice."

Other representatives of Poland's ruling center-left coalition have also expressed their outrage at Kyiv's decision to name the unit after the Heroes of the UPA. However, they also called for efforts to avoid any escalation.

"Our reaction should not be hostile, but it should be tough," Piotr Zgorzelski. the deputy marshal of the Polish parliament, told broadcaster TVN on June 2. Zelenskyy, he said, was trying to rally nationalist forces in Ukraine to his side, and in doing so was ignoring Polish sensibilities.

Historic tensions resurface

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued assurances on May 29 that the new name was not aimed at Poland. In a statement reported by the Polish news agency PAP, it said that for Ukrainian soldiers "the struggle of the UPA symbolizes exclusively opposition to Moscow's imperial policies."

Disagreements about the past have long overshadowed relations between Poland and Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire at the end of World War I, Poland and Ukraine both laid claim to regions that belonged to Poland until the late 18th century, but where the majority of the population were Ukrainian.

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In 1918, the two countries fought several bitter battles, particularly for the city of Lviv (Lwow in Polish). Western Ukraine became part of the Second Polish Republic, while the east of the country came under Soviet rule.

The number of victims of the massacres perpetrated by the UPA in World War II, which Poland has referred to as a genocide, is estimated at more than 100,000. As many as 20,000 Ukrainians were killed in reprisals by Polish partisans. After 1945, the UPA continued to fight against the sovietization of Ukraine until well into the 1950s. This is why it is still revered there as a model of resistance to Russia.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Polish–Ukrainian arguments about the past faded into the background. Initially, there was enthusiasm in Poland for its neighbor's fight against the aggressor, and the country took in more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees.

Now, though, the sentiment has changed for the worse. Right-wing Poles in particular are critical of social security benefits for Ukrainians in Poland — and question Warsaw's ongoing military support for Ukraine.

Tusk's dilemma

Nawrocki is also trying to score points on the domestic front with his criticism of Zelenskyy. His motion is aimed at Tusk — because if Nawrocki, as Poland's president, decrees that the Ukrainian leader should be stripped of the order, the prime minister has to countersign the decree.

If Tusk does goes ahead with the decree, he will damage the relationship with Ukraine — and Poland's security is dependent on the success of its eastern neighbor in the war against Russia. If, on the other hand, Tusk refuses to sign, the Polish right will brand him a traitor who ignores Poles' feelings.

The dispute comes at a delicate time: On June 25 and 26, the fifth Ukraine Recovery Conference is set to take place in the Polish city of Gdansk — an international conference that is crucial for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

This article was originally written in German.