Zelenskyy returns Poland's highest honor as row deepens
Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Saturday that they were returning Polish state honors after Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped the Ukrainian president of Poland's highest award.
Zelenskyy said in a social media post that sent back the Order of the White Eagle, which he received in 2023 as a symbol of friendship between Poland and Ukraine.
"Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful formats of interaction with Poland, in order to strive to avoid misinterpretations of the complex and painful pages of the past of our peoples and to ensure due respect for all innocent victims of the 20th century," he wrote.
He called the medal a symbol of Poland's "highest trust," but also suggested it no longer held the same meaning after Nawrocki's decision.
The Polish decision to strip the honor from Zelenskyy could further strain ties between the two close strategic partners as Kyiv seeks to rally international support to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
"This is a gift to the Moscow aggressor, who will certainly use it against both of our countries," Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, wrote on social media, saying that he was returning the Gold Officer's Cross of the Polish Order of Merit.
On Friday, Nawrocki announced that Zelenskyy would be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle — Poland's highest state honor, which had been awarded by former President Andrzej Duda in 2023.
The decision followed Zelenskyy's move to name a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War II militia that Warsaw accuses of participating in massacres of Poles.
Poland has been one of Ukraine's key allies since Russia's full-scale invasion, hosting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.
Nawrocki said the move would not affect Poland's support for Ukraine's defense against Russia.
Ukrainian officials renounce Polish honors in protest
Ukrainian officials argued that Nawrocki's decision was beneficial to Russia.
Ukraine's ambassador to Warsaw, Vasyl Bodnar, described the move "as a gesture towards all the Ukrainian people" and announced that he was relinquishing his Knight's Cross of the Polish Order of Merit.
Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga also said that he would return a Polish award he received in 2022, calling the decision "a strategic mistake … that benefits only Moscow."
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political rival of Nawrocki, urged both countries to preserve their solidarity, warning that a dispute between Poland and Ukraine "delights Putin and shocks our allies."
Russian strike on Kharkiv kills 1
Meanwhile, a Russian airstrike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed at least one person and injured nine others on Saturday, according to Governor Oleh Synyehubov.
Russia's Defense Ministry said on Saturday morning that its air-defense systems had intercepted and destroyed 187 Ukrainian drones across the country overnight.
In recent weeks, Moscow and Kyiv have intensified attacks on each other as US-led efforts to end the war, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, remain stalled.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
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