Today at 13:04
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that tensions between Poland and Ukraine play into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin and urged both sides to avoid escalating emotions after President Karol Nawrocki moved to revoke the Order of the White Eagle previously awarded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, UATV English reports.
“The conflict between Poland and Ukraine delights Putin and shocks our allies. The task of Presidents Zelenskyy and Nawrocki is to calm emotions, not fuel tensions. The front line is elsewhere,” Tusk wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov announced that he is returning the Gold Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, which he received in 2025, in response to Nawrocki’s decision.
Budanov said the move was a gesture of solidarity after the Polish president stripped Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state decoration.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also announced that he would return the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, awarded to him in October 2022, calling Nawrocki’s decision a “strategic mistake” that benefits only Moscow.
“We regret that emotions have prevailed in Warsaw and pushed Polish politicians toward unjustified, impulsive and disrespectful steps directed not only against President Zelenskyy, but against the Ukrainian state itself,” Sybiha said.
He stressed that the issue was “not about orders, but about respect,” noting that Kyiv had spent the past year and a half working to depoliticize historical disputes, restore the work of historians, and facilitate search, exhumation and reburial efforts requested by Poland, including ongoing work in Huta Pieniacka.
“We never wanted this conflict,” Sybiha said, adding that the current escalation is “counterproductive and unnecessary for both Ukrainians and Poles.”
“Not a single president of another country will dictate our history,” the foreign minister stated, expressing hope that “cool heads” would eventually prevail and that Poland would return to an equal dialogue corresponding to the allied relationship between the two countries in confronting their common enemy in Moscow.
