Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has returned Poland’s highest honour after his Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki said he was stripping him of the award.
The Polish Order of the White Eagle was bestowed on Zelensky in 2023 by then-President Andrzej Duda.
But Kyiv caused outrage last month after renaming a Ukrainian army unit after a group of controversial World War Two fighters called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
Three senior Ukrainian officials have also said they are returning awards bestowed by Poland, to show solidarity with their president.
Many in Ukraine regard the UPA, which existed in the 1940s and 1950s, as heroes who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Soviet Red Army, Nazi Germany and Polish authorities. The group’s red and black flag is often used by Ukrainian troops on the front line today.
Poland, however, accuses the UPA of carrying out a genocide of about 100,000 ethnic Poles in Volhynia (now Volyn in Ukraine) in 1943-45.
In a statement on social media, Zelensky said Ukraine would “remain open to all meaningful formats of engagement with Poland in order to try to avoid conflicting interpretations of the difficult and painful chapters of our shared past”.
He added Ukraine was “grateful to the Polish People for their support and co-operation”.
Poland has been one of Ukraine’s main allies during the war against Russia, taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and serving as a logistics hub for aid to Ukraine.
