Zelensky alleged in a recent interview that head of his office Kirill Budanov told him that he was right in predicting before his trip to Poland in early June that their spiraling UPA dispute is part of President Karol Nawrocki’s politicking against Prime Minister Donald Tusk ahead of fall 2027’s parliamentary elections. Budanov allegedly told him that “Mr. President, you were right. We feel that they will [revoke the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, from you]. It’s a matter of time.”
Two days before Nawrocki did precisely what he threatened to do several weeks prior in response to Zelensky renaming an elite commando unit in honor of the “heroes of UPA”, the Volhynia Genocide’s culprits, Wirtualna Polska (WP) cited several sources to report on what really happened. According to them, former President Aleksander Kwasniewski suggested reorganizing the newly renamed UPA unit under GUR as the pretense for then picking a new patron, thus enabling Zelensky to save face.
They added that “The idea of a joint Polish-Ukrainian historical declaration has also emerged. It would be modeled after the one adopted in June 2018 by Mateusz Morawiecki and Benjamin Netanyahu, which ended the dispute over amending the law on the Institute of National Remembrance.” It was also proposed that Zelensky initiate a call with Nawrocki whereby he’d agree to open up more sites for exhuming the remains of the Volhynia Genocide’s victims and discuss the aforesaid declaration.
WP reported that “Budanov reportedly appealed primarily for time” and “The Polish side complied”, but “matters on the Ukrainian side stagnated” at the further expense of “the already low level of trust” in Zelensky, thus “Poles assumed Budanov might be stalling for time and bluffing his way to a compromise.” They then editorialized that Poland’s opposition to Ukraine’s EU membership in the scenario of Nawrocki revoking the order from Zelensky wouldn’t bother Kiev since it could take decades to join anyhow.
His talks with the G7 and E3, according to them, show that he doesn’t need to compromise with Poland. Reflecting on WP’s report, there’s no doubt that Zelensky lied through his teeth about what happened during Budanov’s trip to Poland, and Budanov also burned his bridges in Warsaw after returning his own award from Poland in solidarity with Zelensky while accusing Warsaw of generating hatred against Ukrainians in his X post about this. The Nawrocki and Zelensky teams are thus now in a political war.
Zelensky dispatched Budanov to manipulate Nawrocki’s team into convincing him to indefinitely delay the execution of his threat to revoke the order in order to then discredit him ahead of fall 2027’s next Sejm elections. The purpose was to shift the electoral balance back into the favor of the Ukrainophile ruling liberal coalition so as to avert the scenario of a conservative-populist coalition replacing them. This can therefore be seen in retrospect as a meddling operation aimed squarely against Nawrocki’s allies.
This is crucial to realize in light of his interview as a whole, which was analyzed here as a declaration of personal war against Nawrocki, presaging possible political and even security consequences for Poland due to Zelensky ominously comparing Nawrocki to Orban. It can now be concluded that Zelensky began meddling in Poland against Nawrocki even before he revoked the order. This in turn suggests that more politically unfriendly moves will follow and potentially come to characterize their ties by 2027’s vote.
