War in Ukraine: this decision by Volodymyr Zelensky which angers Poland

A decision that sets fire to the powder. The northern special operations center of Ukraine’s special forces was this week named “Heroes of the UPA,” the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, in honor of nationalist insurgents who massacred Poles during World War II. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree recognizing the contribution of a Ukrainian special forces unit to the fight against Russian forces. The UPA, an armed formation active between 1942 and 1949, linked to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), aimed at the creation of an independent Ukrainian state, recalls Euronews.

The Ukrainian president argued that he had done so “in order to restore the historical traditions of the national army and taking into account the exemplary execution of the tasks entrusted to it during the defense of the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine.” Some Ukrainians view the UPA as heroes for the resistance it led against the Soviet Union, and as symbols of kyiv’s struggle for independence from Moscow. The UPA therefore challenged Soviet domination, notably by collaborating with the Nazis.

As Reuters reports, the UPA was also involved in the Volhynia massacres, a series of exterminations carried out between 1943 and 1945 during which Poland claims that around 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists. Thousands of Ukrainians also died in reprisals. Even today, these massacres and these crimes, a painful chapter in relations between the two countries, are regularly agitated by Polish nationalists to justify the anti-Ukrainian feeling which continues to rise in Poland, reports RFI.

Offended Polish leaders

The Ukrainian president’s decision quickly aroused strong anger in Poland. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Friday May 29 that renaming the Ukrainian unit after the UPA “hurts the memory of the victims of this organization and undermines dialogue between our nations.”

“Indignant”, President Karol Nawrocki for his part declared that he had welcomed Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision “with great sadness”. “This is not how relations between nations are built,” he told journalists on Friday. The leader estimated that “the glorification of the UPA provides Russian propaganda with fertile ground for disinformation. “If we quarrel over the past, someone else will impose the future on us (…) Only Vladimir Putin will benefit from a Polish-Ukrainian dispute over history,” he warned.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, while criticizing the two Polish and Ukrainian presidents, condemned Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to choose this historical reference, which he describes as “disturbing”. “I expect the two presidents to manage to rise above this story and try to build Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, difficult but necessary,” he said. This episode “hurts our historical sensitivity and unnecessarily brings these historical processes and their interpretations to a fairly worrying level”, judged the pro-European Prime Minister.

On the social network

Une distinction accordée à Zelensky retirée ?

Karol Nawrocki does not intend to leave this episode without consequences. He said he wanted a state body to examine the possibility of stripping Volodymyr Zelensky of Poland’s highest honor. “I proposed that one of the items on the agenda be the revocation of President Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle,” declared the nationalist Polish president, a great ally of Donald Trump.

Poland was a staunch supporter of kyiv during Russia’s war in Ukraine, and former President Andrzej Duda awarded Volodymyr Zelensky the Order of the White Eagle in 2023. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian presidency said Reuters that the Ukrainian president had received this distinction in recognition of his contribution to bilateral relations, democracy, peace and security in Europe and for his “constancy in the defense of inalienable human rights”.

For his part, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Heorhyi Tykhyi, told journalists that it was regrettable that Poland reacted negatively to the choice of naming the unit after the UPA. Ukraine had no intention of offending anyone, he said. “Our history confirms that only Moscow benefits from conflicts between Ukrainians and Poles,” he said. For Ukrainian soldiers, “the UPA struggle symbolizes absolute opposition to Moscow’s imperial policy.”

Historical differences between Poland and Ukraine regularly affect bilateral relations, despite increased cooperation in the face of Russian aggression. Warsaw continues to demand that kyiv recognize responsibility for the massacres in Volhynia. In recent years, however, reconciliation measures have been taken, including joint commemorations of the victims of this massacre and the lifting, in November 2024, by Ukraine, of the ban on exhuming the remains of the victims.