Poland can’t accept Ukraine’s decision to rename its army unit after UPA heroes, the spokesman says

He emphasised that the final decision regarding the order rests entirely with President Karol Nawrocki, but Poland will still wait for Zelensky to change his decision. He added that “diplomacy likes silence.”

We'll wait a while longer to see if President Zelensky changes his decision. We cannot accept this situation," Leśkiewicz said.

The Spokesman added that President Nawrocki will not make a decision on the order before his upcoming visit to the United States at the invitation of President Donald Trump. Leśkiewicz noted that there had been no direct conversation between the Ukrainian and Polish presidents yet.

He also mentioned that the situation with the unit renaming  “has a significant educational dimension,” so this issue is discussed not only in Poland but also abroad.

“We're constantly talking about the UPA, and not just in Poland. We're also taking this discussion to the international forum, which needs to understand why this decision by the President of Ukraine has such a negative impact on Polish-Ukrainian relations. Not just symbolically, but also politically and socially," he says.

More on the controversy

On May 26, President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree granting a Separate Special Operations Centre North of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the honorary name Heroes of the UPA. The document states that the purpose of this decision is to “restore the historical traditions of the national army.”

Lech Wałęsa, former President of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, reacted to this by removing a pin featuring the Ukrainian flag and accusing Zelensky of “honouring UPA bandits,” thereby “insulting him and all his killed compatriots.”

Bartosz Cichocki, Poland’s former Ambassador to Ukraine, returned the Order of Merit, which President Volodymyr Zelensky had awarded him in 2022. The Ukrainian flag was removed from the town hall building in Lublin, Poland.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry stated that for Ukrainian military personnel, “the UPA’s struggle symbolises resistance to Moscow’s imperial policies and is in no way directed against Poles.”

Marcin Przydacz, head of the International Policy Bureau at the Office of the President of Poland, said the Ukrainian president should call his Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki and apologize. Nawrocki himself has called for the Order of the White Eagle (Poland’s highest honour), which was awarded to him in 2023 by then-Polish President Andrzej Duda, to be revoked from the Ukrainian president.