Founder and CEO of Promote Ukraine
Preparing the European future of Ukraine!
Marta Barandiy
Poland and Ukraine are in a diplomatic crisis over history.
Zelensky signed a decree naming a special operations unit “Heroes of the UPA” — after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought for independence in the 1940s. Poland’s president Nawrocki stripped him of the Order of the White Eagle, the country’s highest state honour. Ukrainian officials are returning their Polish decorations. Both sides are hurt. And Russian propagandists are celebrating.
I understand both reactions. And I think each of them, taken alone, misses something important.
So here is what I believe — as a European, as someone who works on human rights, and as someone who comes from a part of the world where history was written in blood and then rewritten in propaganda.
The UPA fought for Ukrainian independence. They resisted Nazi and Soviet occupations. The goal — a sovereign Ukrainian state — was legitimate.
The UPA also carried out massacres of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Tens of thousands of men, women and children. This too is documented history. And it must be named directly — without the word “but.”
Both of these things are true at the same time. And the ability to hold both truths together without erasing either one — that is moral maturity.
European values — the very values Ukraine is fighting for right now on the battlefield — do not allow us to honour a liberation struggle by erasing its crimes. And they do not allow us to use historical crimes as a weapon of collective condemnation against an entire modern nation and its soldiers.
A hero is not an alibi as well as memory is not a licence for collective hatred.
But there is something more dangerous happening beneath the surface of this diplomatic dispute. And it is not happening in presidential palaces. It is happening in hearts — and in comment sections, and potentially in real life where real victims may arise from this shortsighted hatred.
On both sides of the border, this conflict is giving people a sense of permission to dehumanise each other. Ordinary Polish citizens writing: “Then give back the tanks, the weapons, the money, the place in Europe we gave you.” Ukrainians responding with fury. And in that exchange, something fragile is breaking — the ability to see the person on the other side of the border as a human being, rather than a representative of someone else’s collective guilt.
This is how wars between nations actually begin. Not with formal declarations. With the quiet permission that historical grievance gives people to stop seeing each other.
I want to say something specific about the medals — because the symbolism matters here. When Ukrainian officials returned their Polish honours, it was an act of solidarity with Zelensky and with the Ukrainian army. I understand that impulse and I respect it. But the reaction it triggered among many ordinary Polish citizens — “then give back the weapons and the money too” — reveals exactly the trap we have walked into together.
These things must be separated. Symbols and security are not the same category.
Poland’s support for Ukraine has been extraordinary. It must be recognised and it must never be taken for granted.
But that support was solidarity of a neighbouring democracy that knows what occupation means, that understands what it costs to lose sovereignty, and that has a direct strategic interest in Ukraine not falling to Russia. Polish support for Ukraine is, in the long run, also Polish self-defence. This is not a transaction that can be reversed over a naming dispute without betraying the very values that made it meaningful in the first place.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it clearly: the conflict between Poland and Ukraine “delights Putin and shocks our allies.” He was right. The front line runs elsewhere.
And since we are speaking about honours and moral consistency — I cannot avoid one more fact. Benito Mussolini is still a knight of the Order of the White Eagle.
He received it in 1923 from Polish President Wojciechowski during an official state visit — standard diplomatic protocol of the era. He later built a fascist dictatorship that served as a model for Nazi Germany, launched colonial wars, and became Hitler’s ally.
Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski recently raised this publicly, proposing a review of the order’s list of recipients and naming Mussolini and Catherine II among the cases that should be reconsidered. That is an honest and necessary initiative.
But here is the question I cannot let go of.
An honour given to Mussolini in 1923 as a diplomatic gesture — never revoked. An honour given to Zelensky in 2023 for a specific contribution to the defence of democracy and European security — revoked over a decree about a military unit’s name.
This is not a principle consistently applied. This is a principle selectively applied. And that is a very different conversation.
I am not saying these standards should cancel each other out. I am saying they must be applied equally. Because if they are not — we are no longer talking about historical justice. We are talking about political convenience dressed in the language of memory.
And a double standard is not a European value.
I am making two short video essays on this topic in attempt to show that complexity and moral clarity are not enemies — and that propaganda flourishes precisely where we refuse to hold both truths at once.
Polish victims of Volhynia deserve truth, burial and memory.
Ukraine deserves not to be reduced to the crimes of people who lived eighty years ago while at the same time legitimately fighting against oppression.
Both of these sentences are true. And that is exactly where the mature conversation begins.
History is not made honest by making it simple. And propaganda begins precisely where complexity is forbidden.
………….
Ex-Ukrainian ambassador to Poland: President Nawrocki disregards decades of reconciliation between Warsaw and Kyiv
Vasyl Zvarych
Former Ambassador of Ukraine to Poland
In July 2024, serving as Ukraine’s Ambassador to Poland, I was honored to be decorated by President Andrzej Duda with the Commander’s Cross with the Star of the Order of Merit.
For the trust, the fellowship, and the years of honest partnership — I remain profoundly grateful to my Polish friends. And it is in that same spirit of honesty that I ask them to understand what conscience now requires of me.
My devotion to the interests of the Ukrainian state, my duty to honor the dignity of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Armed Forces, my fellow diplomats, and the free and unbroken Ukrainian people, as well as my deep sense of justice, compel me to return the state decoration of the Republic of Poland.
It pains me to say this, but evidently some representatives of the Polish political elite never truly understood — and perhaps never wished to understand — the real price of Ukraine’s freedom: who Ukrainians are, against what enemy and for what values the Ukrainian people are fighting and shedding their blood today.
This spat has got to end.
Nawrocki has caused a huge problem.
The sort of problem that usually can only come from a Kremlin agent.
A closely related topic from Ukraine:News :-
🟪 IF BELARUS ENTERS THE WAR, UKRAINE MAY FACE ONE OF ITS HARDEST STRATEGIC DECISIONS YET
Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the Achilles strike drone brigade, says he believes Lukashenko will likely be drawn into war against Ukraine — and that Belarusian sons and daughters will be sent to die for it.
If that assessment proves correct, the question becomes far bigger than Belarus alone.
It becomes a question of timing.
Does Ukraine wait to be attacked and absorb the first blow, risking new strikes, sabotage, incursions, and the opening of another active direction along the northern border?
Or does Ukraine consider acting preemptively against the military infrastructure, relay stations, staging areas, logistics hubs, and concentrations that could be used in such an attack?
The consequences of either path would be enormous.
If Ukraine waits, it risks giving Russia and Belarus the initiative. A northern threat does not have to become a full-scale invasion to be dangerous. Even the threat of one forces Ukraine to divert troops, air defenses, reconnaissance assets, and ammunition away from the east and south. It stretches manpower, complicates logistics, and creates political pressure inside a country already fighting on multiple fronts.
But a preemptive strike carries its own risks.
It would hand Moscow and Minsk an immediate propaganda narrative, allowing them to claim Belarus was “attacked” and potentially giving Lukashenko the justification he has so far tried to avoid for direct entry into the war. It could also complicate Ukraine’s diplomatic position if the evidence of imminent attack is not overwhelming and public.
That is why this is such a dangerous calculation.
Ukraine cannot afford to ignore a real military buildup on its northern border, especially after repeated warnings about relay stations, drone support infrastructure, and Belarusian territory being used to facilitate attacks on Ukrainian cities.
At the same time, Ukraine also understands that the first side seen to cross a new threshold can pay a political price for it, even if the military logic is sound.
So the real issue may not be whether Belarus attacks tomorrow.
It is whether the signs of preparation become so obvious, and the threat so immediate, that Ukraine concludes waiting would be more dangerous than acting first.
Zelenskyy has caused a huge problem.
Nawrocki scratched the scabs of old wounds to make them bleed again.
Actions not dissimilar to those of a Kremlin agent.
The name was chosen by the men, not Zel.
No. Zelenskyy initialised current crisis deliberately and we already see that it brought him a lot of support in Ukraine (Cui bono?). Nawrocki had no choice. Even when the men choose, President is to support it or not on state level.
BTW old wounds **will be** the issue as long there is no official agreement between nations about it. I always thought that only Russia is a beneficiary of this topic not being resolved but Zelenskyy shown that he could benefit from it too. That’s sad.