Five Consequences Of The Polish President's Revocation Of The Ukrainian President's Award
- 21.06.2026, 19:23
This decision goes beyond a purely symbolic gesture.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced the decision to strip Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state award—the Order of the White Eagle, according to BBC.
This came three weeks after Zelenskyy issued a decree granting an elite unit of the Ukrainian army the honorary designation “Named After the Heroes of the UPA.”
Attitudes toward the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Ukraine and Poland differ drastically, and this has caused widespread outrage in the Polish media.
In the days since then, tensions seemed to have eased somewhat. However, on the evening of Friday, June 19, Navrotsky addressed the nation, announcing that he was, after all, revoking the order awarded to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This decision goes beyond a purely symbolic gesture and could have a huge impact on domestic politics in Poland and Ukraine, as well as on interstate relations in Europe.
Consequence #1: Did he revoke it or not?
The Order of the White Eagle has a history spanning more than three hundred years, during which it has been revoked only once. This happened in 1932, and the “victim” was a well-known Polish politician of the time, Wincenty Witos. Seven years later, the order was returned to Witos, but the fact remains that there is simply no established procedure for stripping anyone of this order. And this means that the question of whether Zelenskyy remains a recipient of this order remains open.
On the one hand, the Polish Constitution stipulates that the president’s acts take effect only after they are signed by the prime minister. This signature by the prime minister is called a countersignature. The Constitution lists 30 exceptions to this rule, including, for example, the conferral of orders and other decorations, but it does not include the revocation of such awards. In other words, following this logic, Nawrocki can, by his own decision, award anyone the Order of the White Eagle, but without the signature of Donald Tusk, he cannot revoke that order.
On the other hand, as some Polish lawyers point out, the law on awards stipulates that the president may, by his own decision, strip any person of an order if the award was the result of deception or—and, apparently, this is precisely the case with Volodymyr Zelenskyy— “if the recipient has committed an act that renders him unworthy of the order or award.” The law does not provide for the prime minister’s countersignature in such a case.
Must Donald Tusk sign Navrocki’s decree for Zelenskyy to be stripped of his order? It remains unclear. The Polish prime minister has already responded to Karol Nawrotsky’s decision, stating that “the task of the presidents of Ukraine and Poland is to de-escalate tensions, not to fuel them,” but Tusk’s actual position remains unclear from these remarks.
In any case, formally speaking, Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains a recipient of the Order of the White Eagle until the decision to strip him of this award is published in the Polish government’s official gazette—Monitor Polski—which is published by the government’s legislative center.
Consequence Two: A Zugzwang for Tusk
In any case, Donald Tusk now finds himself in an extremely awkward position: any decision he makes regarding Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s order carries reputational risks and threats to his approval ratings—both personally and for his political party as a whole. This is significant because Poland is effectively already in campaign mode ahead of the critically important parliamentary elections scheduled for next year.
If Donald Tusk signs the decision to strip Zelenskyy of the order or otherwise “overlooks” it, he will symbolically align himself with Nawrocki’s Ukraine-skeptical political camp and acknowledge the president’s position, which will make productive cooperation with Kyiv incredibly difficult.
If Tusk blocks the president’s decision, he will not only go against the opinion of the majority of Poles, as reflected in opinion polls, but will also immediately face a barrage of criticism as an “accomplice of the Bandera followers,” or even a “pro-Ukrainian politician” — and in today’s Poland, such a label sounds worse than a curse.
It should be added that the saga surrounding the revocation of Zelenskyy’s order is unfolding against the backdrop of a massive healthcare scandal that has outraged Polish society and could potentially affect the leadership of Donald Tusk’s party. In short, the Polish prime minister has found himself in a perfect storm, which his political opponents are gleefully exploiting, and it will be extremely difficult for Tusk to extricate himself from this situation.
Two weeks ago, when the scandal was just heating up, Gazeta Wyborcza reported that if Tusk were faced with the dilemma of whether or not to strip Zelensky of his order, he would not go against Nawrocki. “Tusk will not go against the opinion of the majority of society. Moreover, he holds a similar position on the UPA issue,” the publication quotes a source close to the prime minister as saying.
Since then, Tusk has had at least two conversations with Volodymyr Zelenskyy—the details of which have not been disclosed. Tusk said that he “understands Navrotsky’s feelings”—Navrotsky had proposed stripping the Ukrainian president of the order—but has never publicly disclosed his personal position on the matter.
Consequence Three: The Fate of the Gdańsk Conference
The scandal over the awards is unfolding just days before the opening of the Ukraine Recovery Conference—a major conference on Ukraine’s recovery scheduled to take place next week in Gdańsk, Poland, the hometown of both Donald Tusk and Karol Nawrocki.
This conference is undoubtedly important for Ukraine: at it, Kyiv aims not only to once again draw the world’s attention to the ongoing war but also to attract funding for the country’s economy, which has been depleted by military operations.
This event is no less important for Poland. First, the flawless organization and execution of the conference should reaffirm Warsaw’s ambitions as a leader in the Central European region, a hub of influence, and an “expert” on Ukraine. Second, Polish businesses—which have a vested interest in ensuring that future multibillion-dollar contracts for Ukraine’s reconstruction do not bypass them—had pinned enormous hopes on the event. “Everyone would like to make money while helping Ukraine,” Tusk stated on the eve of the latest round of the scandal involving the order.
Among the top participants expected at the Gdańsk conference were Tusk himself, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Just a few hours before Navrotsky announced his decision regarding the order, the Polish publication WP.pl reported that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was also planning to visit Gdańsk.
Under the current circumstances, amid the scandal surrounding the order, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chances of attending the conference—which, after all, had not been officially confirmed—have greatly diminished. But the Ukrainian president’s refusal to come to Gdańsk would, in effect, drastically lower the status of this event. BBC sources close to the Ukrainian president say that a final decision regarding the trip to Gdańsk has not yet been made. However, even if Zelenskyy does attend the conference, the atmosphere there will be irreparably damaged.
Consequence Four: Kyiv’s Response
The very first reactions from Ukraine to Karol Nawrocki’s decision showed that the Poles, perhaps unwittingly, have achieved an effect of uniting Ukrainian society, comparable only to the situation following Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s famous exchange with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the Oval Office last February.
In Ukraine, there had previously been criticism of the patronizing tone of Polish politicians, who took it upon themselves to dictate which historical figures Ukrainians should honor and which they should not. Here, the Poles’ intense focus on issues from days long past—amid an ongoing hot war that claims Ukrainian lives every day—was described as petty and even hysterical. And it was hard to expect any other reaction to Navrotsky’s decision, even from Vladimir Zelenskyy’s staunchest domestic critics.
Ukrainian commentators pointed out that the Order of the White Eagle is still held by Russian Empress Catherine II, who played a role in the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century, Hitler’s allies Miklós Horthy and Benito Mussolini, and, finally, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who makes no secret of his warm feelings toward Vladimir Putin. Against this backdrop, the stripping of this award from Volodymyr Zelenskyy is difficult to perceive as anything other than surreal, they wrote.
“Stripping President Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle reveals President Nawrocki’s attitude toward the entire Ukrainian people and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, no matter what President Nawrocki tells us… It’s a shame that President Navrotsky has never been to Ukraine and, it seems, has no plans to go. But I’m counting on the sense of responsibility of the Ukrainian and Polish elites and societies,” — wrote on Facebook a member of the Verkhovna Rada from the opposition party “European Solidarity” and co-chair of the interparliamentary relations group with Poland Mykola Knyazhitsky.
“You’re targeting the wrong people, Navrotsky. Your approval ratings and hatred of Ukrainians are blinding you, preventing you from seeing the real threat to Poland. But it is Ukraine that is fighting this threat, not President Navrotsky,” wrote former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Just a few hours after Navrotsky announced his decision to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of his order, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga—who, as a diplomat, had served in Warsaw, among other places—stated that following the Polish president’s “strategic mistake” and “reckless actions” by the Polish president, he no longer saw any possibility of retaining another Polish order—the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, which he had been awarded in October 2022.
The following morning, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, former head of military intelligence General Kirill Budanov, announced that he was renouncing the Gold Officer’s Cross of the same order. “I am convinced that this gesture by the Polish president is not about justice or anything of the sort… Like any Ukrainian, I cannot stand aside and simply watch as a campaign of hatred is being ground out against our citizens without any basis or justification,” he explained his decision.
The current Ukrainian ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, also announced his decision to decline the Polish order. It is likely that this “flash mob” of returning Polish state awards will not end here.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself has not commented on Karol Nawrocki’s statements or his final decision since the beginning of this scandal.
“Staging something like this during the war with Russia over historical memory isn’t very far-sighted. Navrotsky won’t be able to fend off the Russians with memory alone if it comes to that,” a source close to the president told the BBC.
Consequence Five: What’s Next?
It remains unclear whether Kyiv and Warsaw intend to limit themselves largely to symbolic reactions to the incident or whether they will escalate the situation further—and if so, to what extent.
Nevertheless, it is clear that if Warsaw’s goal was to force Kyiv to reconsider its policy on historical memory, it has suffered a crushing failure in this regard. The “Sever” Special Operations Center will clearly continue to bear the name “Heroes of the UPA,” despite (and even in defiance of) all the frustration felt by the Poles over this issue.
Ukrainian-Polish relations will most likely enter a new phase of crisis, the depth of which is difficult to predict at this time. Some Polish politicians are calling on the government to sabotage operations at the Rzeszów airport—the main logistics hub for Western military aid to Ukraine—or to block the EU accession negotiations that Kyiv has just begun. However, these calls pale in comparison to the proposals to screen Polish government employees for Ukrainian ancestry, which were voiced last week in the Sejm.
In any case, it is already safe to predict that the approximately one million Ukrainian citizens currently residing in Poland are unlikely to experience a warmer attitude from the Polish public in the near future, whose anti-Ukrainian sentiment, in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, will be fueled by representatives of the major political camps.
The cooling of bilateral relations between Kyiv and Warsaw will likely also result in Poland remaining on the sidelines of a new round of consultations on potential future peace talks — the beginnings of this process could be observed last week, when the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom discussed the peace process in London. Warsaw has long suspected that Berlin would not hesitate to sideline Warsaw in these negotiations, and now that trust and mutual understanding between Warsaw and Kyiv are out of the question, doing so will be even easier.
Another open question is how the current crisis will affect the dozens, if not hundreds, of grassroots Ukrainian-Polish initiatives—covering a wide variety of areas of life for both states and both peoples—that emerged and took root before and during the war.
And perhaps the main challenge facing both countries right now is the need to completely rewrite the very formula of Ukrainian-Polish relations on a fundamentally new foundation. The question is whether this is even possible in principle—first, against the backdrop of the current crisis, and second, in the midst of the full-scale war that Ukraine is waging.