\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will not attend a major conference on rebuilding Ukraine being held in Poland this week, as a dispute between the two countries over Second World War remembrance threatens to overshadow talks.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Issued on: 25\/06\/2026 – 08:15<\/p>\n
2 min Reading time\n<\/p>\n
The Ukraine Recovery Conference opens in the Polish port city of Gdansk<\/a> on Thursday, bringing together officials and business leaders to discuss Ukraine<\/a>‘s post-war reconstruction.<\/p>\n However, attention has shifted to a diplomatic row between two close allies after Zelensky named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army<\/a> (UPA), a nationalist group that took part in the massacre of Poles during the Second World War.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko will lead the country’s delegation instead, Kyiv<\/a> said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The decision was aimed at avoiding “excessive politicisation” and “scandals”, foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said.<\/p>\n “Through diplomatic channels we are in constant contact,” he said of relations with Poland.<\/p>\n Poland and Germany renew historic ties to defend Europe’s eastern flank<\/a><\/p>\n Honours sent back <\/p>\n The dispute intensified after Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland<\/a>‘s highest civilian honour.<\/p>\n Zelensky returned the award over the weekend. Former Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko<\/a> and Petro Poroshenko<\/a> also sent theirs back, along with several senior Ukrainian officials.<\/p>\n The UPA fought both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union<\/a> in its push for a Ukrainian state, but it also killed thousands of Polish civilians between 1943 and 1945 in Volhynia, a region that was part of Poland before\u00a0the Second World War<\/a>\u00a0and is now in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Poland has been one of Ukraine’s chief allies since Russia<\/a>‘s full-scale invasion in 2022, taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and serving as a logistics hub for Western support to Kyiv.<\/p>\n The recovery conference, previously held in Rome, Berlin and Lugano in Switzerland, was meant to reinforce Poland’s position as Ukraine’s neighbour and ally.<\/p>\n