Polish President Karol Nawrocki went through with his threat to revoke the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, from Zelensky due to him renaming an elite commando unit in honor of the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits. He explained his rationale in a 12-minute-long video that can be watched here with English subtitles. Nawrocki clarified that this move won’t lead to a reduction in Polish support for Ukraine against Russia and insisted that it’s solely being done out of national self-respect.
Instead of accepting Poland’s sovereign right to revoke its highest honor from whomever it wants for whatever reason, Ukrainian officials reacted with fury, while social media has since been full of even more vicious Ukrainian troll attacks against Poles than several weeks ago when Nawrocki first flirted with this. Head of the Presidential Office Kirill Burdanov, Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga, and Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland Vasily Bodnar all vowed to return their own Polish state awards in protest.
“Ukraine Is Now Indisputably An Anti-Polish State”, helped along as it’s been by Germany as explained here, but this wasn’t inevitable since Ukraine could have revered many other historical figures as national heroes besides fascist war criminals who genocided Poles. In response to these political tensions initiated by Zelensky, Ukraine is expected to pivot closer to Germany, which has been one of its top military patrons since late 2023. They also clinched a “deep strike” co-production deal last month.
In October 2023, outgoing Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Ukraine and Germany of striking a deal behind Poland’s back, reminding Zelensky that Poland has done more for Ukraine than Germany has and speculating that Germany will one day seek a rapprochement with Russia at Ukraine’s expense. His successor Donald Tusk was accused by conservative opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski of being a “German agent” due to his political career being associated with very pro-German policies.
Poland accordingly began to subordinate itself to Germany from Tusk’s return to power in December 2023 till now, but former conservative President Andrzej Duda (the one who awarded Zelensky the Order of the White Eagle) and his successor Nawrocki helped keep this trend somewhat in check. In fact, Nawrocki lobbied hard for Trump to reverse his decision to cancel a planned rotational deployment of 4,000 US troops to Poland, a little less than half of the total that it hosts, and even send 5,000 more.
The ruling liberal coalition is now pressed to at least pretend not to be subordinate to Germany ahead of fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, which raises the chance that Poland might once more compete with Germany over Ukraine to a degree even before a possible conservative-populist coalition replaces it. In tangible terms, Poland mustn’t let Germany obtain more reconstruction contracts than it does, to which end Poland might reconsider facilitating the dispatch of German military aid to Ukraine as leverage.
If newly anti-Polish Ukraine pivots closer to Germany while scapegoating Poland for its loss to Russia, then it can’t be ruled out that Ukraine might follow its German patron’s lead in restoring relations with Russia after the current conflict ends. That would be a nightmare scenario for Poland, which fears those three and Belarus teaming up against it. Poland would then be at their mercy, or at least the German-Ukrainian duo’s, unless it beats them to the chase in restoring ties with Russia first.
