One of Zelensky’s recent interviews made it clear that he’s now in a personal war with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who revoked the Order of the White Eagle from him after he glorified the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits at the state level, as was explained in this analysis of it here. In that same interview, “Zelensky Lied Through His Teeth About What Happened During Budanov’s Trip To Poland”, pretending that Poland already decided to escalate when it actually shared de-escalation proposals.
Head of his office Kirill Budanov, who served as his envoy in the run-up to Nawrocki revoking Poland’s highest honor from him, now loyally joined his boss’ personal war against Nawrocki and arguably also Poles considering that a whopping 74% of them support their president in this dispute. Moreover, another reputable poll showed that he has 54.8% approval rating that grew 8.4% since the last poll, which is a record. It’s therefore accurate to describe their attacks against him as attacks against Poles.
Having briefed readers on the context, it’s now time to turn to exactly what Budanov said in a recent conversation with students that was reported on by local media. He declared that “I assess [Nawrocki’s move] very poorly, I assess it as a mistake. Moreover, a terrible mistake. I return again to what I said earlier: the ancient rules are that you must have good or neutral relations with your neighbors. Escalation with neighbors always causes serious problems – from political to purely economic.”
No self-respecting leading of a proud nation like Poland would ever accept their neighbor glorifying at the state level those who genocided their ancestors. Ironically, it was Zelensky who violated Budanov’s “ancient rules” by doing this, and his country will now suffer political consequences since “Ukraine Will Never Join The EU As Long As Nawrocki Remains President Of Poland”. As for economic ones, they’re unlikely under the ruling liberal coalition, but that could change after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections.
Moving along, Budanov also said that “I assess this as immaturity, first and foremost. Simply immaturity. I assess this as the immaturity of people in Poland who pushed for and ultimately made such a decision.” The point above about Nawrocki being a self-respecting leader of his proud people is relevant to repeat. Budanov is also the one who’s behaving immaturely by playing dumb about Nawrocki’s motives. He’s seemingly trying to provoke him and that’s below the level of the statesman that he presents himself as.
Budanov’s last words were that “This is very strange, and it is unworked and unprepared. Because if you are going to go into such things, you should have at least stripped Mussolini and so on. Because it looks extremely strange.” He’s once again behaving immaturely by ignoring what his Polish counterpart Agnieszka Jedrzak said about how the order isn’t revoked posthumously. Moreover, the Polish State ceased to exist twice, ergo why it couldn’t revoke the order from Mussolini or Catherine the Great.
It was expected that Budanov would loyally support Zelensky, but he didn’t have to do so in such a crude way by insulting Nawrocki, trying to provoke him, and pretending that he wasn’t aware of Jedrzak’s clarification about why the Order of the White Eagle wasn’t revoked from Mussolini. All of this reflects even more poorly on him and his side, and it’s bound to infuriate Poles, who stand behind Nawrocki. The Polish-Ukrainian dispute is therefore worsening due to Kiev and further damaging people-to-people ties.
