Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said he was renouncing the Order of the White Eagle after the Polish authorities stripped current Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky of the decoration. According to Poroshenko, the award had been intended not for Zelensky personally, but for Ukrainian service members.
“In both Zelensky’s case and mine, it was not heads of state who were being honored, but Ukrainians, our soldiers defending Ukraine, Poland and all of Europe. That is why I decided to renounce the Order of the White Eagle,” Poroshenko wrote.
He added that two weeks earlier he had promised colleagues at a conciliation council meeting that he would take this step if they failed to persuade Polish President Karol Nawrocki not to make what he called a mistaken decision. Poroshenko also stressed that his move was not directed against the Polish people and did not negate the partnership between Ukraine and Poland.
The day before, Ukraine’s third president Viktor Yushchenko also renounced the Order of the White Eagle. He said the award had been given to Zelensky as a sign of respect for the Ukrainian people, and that attempts to revise that decision went beyond attitudes toward a single politician.
Ukraine’s second president Leonid Kuchma likewise announced that he was giving up the Polish order. He called the Polish president’s decision to strip Zelensky of the award an unfriendly step, while saying it would not erase the friendship between the two countries.
On Friday, Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. The decision followed Ukraine’s awarding of the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA” to one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces. After that, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said he was renouncing his own decoration, “For Merit to Poland,” which he received from the Polish president in 2022. In Poland, the UPA is accused of mass killings of Poles, while for many Ukrainians it remains a symbol of the struggle for independence, the journalists note.