The diplomatic rift centers on Kyiv’s decision to rename a military unit in honor of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a group celebrated by many Ukrainians for their anti-Soviet resistance but condemned by Warsaw for the mass killings of approximately 100,000 Poles during the Volhynia massacres. Zelenskiy maintained that the 2023 decoration was intended for the Ukrainian people and their military, rather than as a personal political gesture.
The fallout rapidly expanded as three former Ukrainian presidents—Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, and Petro Poroshenko—joined Zelenskiy in returning their own Polish state awards, arguing that the current confrontation undermines years of progress in bilateral ties. Senior officials, including Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, have similarly renounced their honors. While Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski warned that such historical disputes only benefit Moscow, President Nawrocki defended the revocation as a necessary response to an exceeded "pain threshold" regarding Polish national memory. Despite the mutual return of medals, both sides maintain that the incident does not signal a departure from their broader security alignment against Russia.
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