President Karol Nawrocki reported that he intended to request the removal of Volodymyr Zelensk Order of the White Eagle granted in 2023 by then president Andrzej Duda. This is simply a consequence of the decision by the president of Ukraine to give 1 of the Ukrainian military units the name “UPA Heroes” – it is about the Independent Centre of peculiar Operations “North” in the structures of peculiar forces of Ukraine.
President Nawrocki stressed that he was outraged by the glorification of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army. It serves 2 purposes: it strengthens Russian propaganda and makes it hard to build relations between Poles and Ukrainians. At the same time, president Nawrocki pointed out that Poland should proceed to support Ukraine in the fight against Russian aggression.
I proposed that 1 of the points be to take president Zelensk of the Order of the White Eagle – president of the Republic of Poland @NawrockiKn. pic.twitter.com/4NaOAIjO3C
— Office of the president of the Republic of Poland (@presidentpl) May 29, 2026
Zelenski's decision is widely criticised, among others, by the Institute of National Memory, which reminds that building the cult of the Ukrainian Insurgency Army must rise opposition due to the work of this formation for crimes in Poles during the Volyn massacre and events in east Galicia from 1943 to 1945. The Institute recalled that the UPA ideology was based on the highly nationalistic assumptions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the aim of the action was to make a state devoid of national minorities. The IPN indicates that the culmination of the crime was on 11 July 1943, erstwhile dozens of Polish towns in Volyn were attacked.
