Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called on the presidents of Ukraine and Poland to have a "direct and frank conversation" amid the scandal over the naming of a Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit "after the Heroes of the UPA".
He wrote about this on the social network X.
Tusk said he was proposing a meeting between Volodymyr Zelensky and Karol Nawrocki because "diplomacy has not yielded any results" to resolve the conflict between the countries. Tusk is likely referring to the recent meetings of the Ukrainian delegation with Polish officials.
"Before emotions destroy our solidarity, which was born in the face of the Russian threat. Cooperation is in the interests of both our states and peoples, and conflict is in the interests of Moscow. This is probably obvious to all of us," the Polish Prime Minister noted.
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 of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the honorary title "named after the Heroes of the UPA". The document states that this was done "to restore the historical traditions of the national army".
Later, former Polish President Lech Walesa announced 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.
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