Lech Walesa, a Polish Nobel Peace Prize-winner who was instrumental in the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, said he had decided to stop wearing a Ukrainian flag lapel pin.
“By honouring the bandits of the UPA, the president of Ukraine has insulted me and all our massacred compatriots,” Walesa said on Facebook.
Mr Zelensky received the Order of the White Eagle in 2023 from Andrzej Duda, Mr Nawrocki’s predecessor. The honour was seen as a sign of reconciliation in the face of a shared threat from Vladimir Putin after the invasion in 2022.
But Mr Nawrocki, a nationalist historian who headed Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance before winning the presidency last year, said the move showed that the Ukrainian mentality towards history meant the country “is not ready to be part of the European family”.
“You cannot glorify bandits who murdered women and children,” he added.
“Glorifying the UPA has provided Russian propaganda with ample oxygen for disinformation,” he told reporters in Warsaw on Friday, as Russian propaganda frequently refers to the UPA to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state.
Ukrainian nationalists, though, revere the UPA for fighting for an independent Ukrainian state against Soviet forces.
In Lviv, a heartland of Ukrainian nationalism, the red and black flag frequently flies, with the face of Stepan Bandera, an ultranationalist militia leader during the 20th century, for sale on scarves in flea markets and referred to as “Daddy Bandera” in design shops.