Polish President Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle

Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Volodymyr Zelensky of his highest state award, the Order of the White Eagle.

This was reported by Karol Nawrocki in H.

"The President of the Republic of Poland is the Grand Master of the Order of the White Eagle and is obliged to uphold the honor of this highest state award. This duty also falls on the Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle. Therefore, after President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to award one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the title of Heroes of UPA, after consultations with the Chapter, I decided to deprive the President of Ukraine of the Order of the White Eagle," Nawrocki commented.

At the same time, the Polish president assured that this decision is not directed against the Ukrainian nation and will not change anything in support of Kyiv during the war with Russia.

In turn, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha reacted to this and announced that he would renounce his high award, the Commanderʼs Cross with the Star of the Order of Merit for Poland. He will return the award, which he received in 2022, back to Poland. Sybiha believes that this decision by Nawrocki is a strategic mistake from which only Moscow will benefit.

"We regret that emotions took over in Warsaw and forced Polish politicians to take unjustified, impulsive and contemptuous steps not even towards President Zelensky, but primarily towards the Ukrainian state," he wrote.

Scandal surrounding the name of the SOF unit

On May 26, Zelensky signed a decree awarding the Separate Special Operations Center "North" of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the honorary title "named after the Heroes of UPA”. The document states that this was done "to restore the historical traditions of the national army".

Later, former Polish President Lech Walesa reported that due to this decree he would stop wearing the badge with the Ukrainian flag, which he had had since the beginning of the full-scale war, and current President Karol Nawrocki proposed to deprive Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Polandʼs highest state award.

For the same reason, the Ukrainian flag, which had been hanging there since 2022 along with the flags of Poland and the EU, was removed from the town hall in Lublin, Poland.

And the Vice Speaker of the Polish Sejm Krzysztof Bosak called for blocking Ukraineʼs movement towards the EU until Kyiv "departs from the cult of criminals and unblocks all exhumations" of the victims of the Volyn tragedy.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha explained Zelenskyʼs decree as follows: Ukrainians did not want to offend Poles and chose the name for the SOF unit to remember those who fought against imperial Moscow many years ago.

Amid the scandal, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called on the presidents of Ukraine and Poland to have a "direct and frank conversation" because, he said, "diplomacy has not yielded any results" to resolve the conflict between the countries. Tusk was referring to the meetings of the Ukrainian delegation with Polish officials.

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