Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said he was refusing the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. His decision came after Polish President Karol Nawrocki moved to revoke the Order of the White Eagle previously awarded to Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2023.
Budanov described the Polish president’s move as an “unfriendly act” toward the Ukrainian people and said it would amount to a gift to the “Moscow aggressor”.
Soon afterward, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, also announced that he was giving up the Order of Merit. He called on Warsaw to have a frank conversation and said he believed that, if there was goodwill, the sides could find reasonable solutions.
Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had likewise renounced the same Polish decoration.
On June 19, Nawrocki, who before becoming president had headed Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, decided to strip Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, which is Poland’s highest state award.
The reason was Zelenskyy’s late-May decision to grant the separate special operations center “North” of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces the honorary title “Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army”.
As noted in the report, UPA fighters sought to create an independent Ukrainian state during World War II, but they also carried out ethnic cleansing in areas populated by Poles. According to Polish historians, up to 100,000 people were killed. In present-day Ukraine, against the backdrop of the war with Russia, the UPA is primarily viewed as a symbol of the struggle for independence.