{"id":213874,"date":"2026-09-03T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/213874\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:01:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:01:05","slug":"volodymyr-zelensky-stripped-of-polands-highest-honor-over-ww2-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/213874\/","title":{"rendered":"Volodymyr Zelensky stripped of Poland’s highest honor over WW2 dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poland’s president has decided to strip Volodymyr Zelensky <\/a>of the country’s top honor after the Ukrainian president caused outrage by renaming an army unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), nationalists who massacred Poles in World War Two.<\/p>\n

President Karol Nawrocki’s decision was likely to unleash a severe diplomatic crisis between the neighbors just days ahead of a conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction in the Polish city of Gdansk.<\/p>\n

“In light of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s consent to name one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine<\/a> \u201cHeroes of the UPA,\u201d… I have decided to revoke the Order of the White Eagle from the President of Ukraine,” Nawrocki said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Friday that Poland’s decision to strip the award was a mistake.<\/p>\n

“The decision to strip the president of Ukraine of the Order of the White Eagle is a strategic error by the president of Poland that only benefits Moscow,” he wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Some Ukrainians regard the UPA as heroes for the resistance they mounted against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and as symbols of Kyiv’s struggle for independence from Moscow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the UPA was also involved in the Volhynia massacres, a series of killings from 1943 to 1945 in which Poland says around 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists. Thousands of Ukrainians also died in reprisal killings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Zelensky announced that he had returned the state decoration.<\/p>\n

“We believed that the Order of the White Eagle, awarded in 2023, was meant for the Ukrainian People and our army. That is what was said at the time,” Zelensky wrote on X\/Twitter. “Today, I sent the Order back to the President of Poland.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poland’s president has decided to strip Volodymyr Zelensky of the country’s top honor after the Ukrainian president caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[136],"tags":[402,248,330,5073,935,12351],"class_list":["post-213874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-karol-nawrocki","tag-karol-nawrocki","tag-poland","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-russia-war","tag-volodymyr-zelensky","tag-world-war-ii"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117209365465720758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}