Poland says Ukraine postponed meeting of presidents. Kyiv claims there was no agreed date

The head of the International Policy Bureau of the Office of the President of Poland Marcin Przydach stated that the Ukrainian side has postponed the meeting between the leaders of the two countries.

This is reported by the Polish publication Tvn24.

Przydach claims that during the visit of the head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov, who was visiting Poland, the parties agreed on a telephone conversation between the leaders of the two countries.

Further, according to Przydach, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to hold telephone talks. Instead, the Ukrainian side proposed a meeting between the presidents of Poland and Ukraine.

After that, the place and date of the meeting were determined (Przydach does not specify whether this was purely a proposal from Poland or an agreement between Warsaw and Kyiv). After that, Ukraine postponed the meeting to another, more distant date.

“Therefore, it should be concluded that the Ukrainian side was not interested in a real discussion with the Polish president,” he said.

When asked by Babel, the press center of the Office of the President replied that there was no agreed date for the meeting between the parties.

Zelensky said in an interview with TSN on June 21 that he had suggested that Polish President Karol Nawrotski meet. In response, Nawrocki said that “Ukraine has no place in Europe, because it is bad for the Polish farmer”.

Zelensky and Nawrocki were also expected to attend a conference on the restoration of Ukraine, which is scheduled to take place in Gdansk on June 25-26.

However, according to Przydach, Nawrocki did not receive an invitation: “The president does not attend an event to which he was not invited by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Neither does any of his subordinates”.

Conflict over the name of the SOF unit

On May 26, Volodymyr 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 a badge with the Ukrainian flag, and 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.

On June 2, 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.

On June 19, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of Polandʼs highest state award, the Order of the White Eagle. Presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, and Petro Poroshenko subsequently renounced the order. The head of the Presidentʼs Office Kyrylo Budanov, the Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, and former Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman all renounced their other Polish awards.

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