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A WWII Ghost Cracks the Poland-Ukraine Alliance as Zelensky Skips Recovery Conference

Poland stripped Zelensky of its highest state honor after Ukraine named a military unit after a WWII nationalist group responsible for massacring Poles — triggering a boycott of the Gdańsk reconstruction conference and threatening Ukraine's EU accession prospects.

Published about 2 hours ago
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A WWII Ghost Cracks the Poland-Ukraine Alliance as Zelensky Skips Recovery Conference
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History ambushes an alliance

A decades-old wound tore open one of wartime Europe's most consequential partnerships this month when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky named a special-operations unit "Heroes of the UPA" — a tribute to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the WWII-era partisan force revered in Ukraine for fighting Soviet and Nazi occupiers but notorious in Poland for orchestrating the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Polish civilians in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 1945.notesfrompoland +1 Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded on June 19 by revoking the Order of the White Eagle — Poland's highest state honour, which had been granted to Zelensky in 2023 — the first time in the decoration's 320-year history that it was permanently stripped from a recipient.politico Zelensky mailed the medal back, and both presidents then boycotted the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk, co-hosted by the two countries on June 25-26.euronews +1

A rift that only benefits Moscow

Poland regards the 1943-45 Volhynia massacres — in which an estimated 100,000 Poles were killed, mostly women and children — as genocide; Ukraine does not use that designation and honors UPA leaders for their resistance to Soviet occupation.notesfrompoland Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski argued publicly against revoking the honour, warning that the dispute "serves Moscow's interests."politico +1 Ukraine's foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, condemned Nawrocki's decision as "a strategic mistake from which only Moscow benefits."politico

An opinion poll released the day Nawrocki announced his decision showed 51 percent of Poles supported stripping the honour, rising to 80 percent among his opposition base — making it difficult for him to reverse course even if he wanted to.notesfrompoland +1

What the conference still delivered

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko led Kyiv's delegation and the two-day summit closed with roughly 160 agreements worth more than €10 billion, including a $3.4 billion World Bank package and the first €3.2 billion tranche of the EU's €90 billion loan programme.intellinews +1 Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also announced a €6 billion tranche for drone production — a shift from humanitarian reconstruction toward wartime capability funding.euromaidanpress Even so, Svyrydenko was excluded from a parallel EU Eastern Flank summit, and bilateral meetings were confined to counterparts from the Czech Republic, Finland, Estonia and Tusk — a narrower room than Zelensky would have commanded.euromaidanpress

An unresolved question with long-term stakes

Both sides of Poland's otherwise bitter political divide have previously said they would not support Ukrainian EU membership until Kyiv "resolves" the historical dispute — a condition whose terms remain undefined.notesfrompoland Poland is among the member states whose consent is required for accession to proceed. With Nawrocki's base rewarded by the confrontation and Zelensky disinclined to rename the unit, no diplomatic exit is in sight.