A former Polish defence minister is to return his medal to Ukraine. This is the second such instance among Polish politicians
Rzeczpospolita reports on this.
He explained that he had taken this decision as “a gesture of solidarity with all the families who have been waiting for decades for the opportunity to honour their loved ones with dignity, and who still face obstacles today”. He was presumably referring to the events of the Volhynia tragedy. Błaszczak added that this was “a protest against the stance of the current Ukrainian authorities”.
The former Polish defence minister stated that, in doing so, he was also expressing his support for the country’s president, Karol Nawrocki.
Błaszczak’s statement came a day after a similar decision by Poland’s former Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński. He declined the Ukrainian Order of Yaroslav the Wise. Kaczyński explained that he wished to express his attitude not towards Ukrainians, but towards the “Ukrainian elites”, and to support his president.
Why Poland stripped Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle
On 26 May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree conferring the honorary title ‘Named after the Heroes of the UPA’ on the ‘North’ Separate Special Operations Centre of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The document states that this was done “to restore the historical traditions of the national army”.
Subsequently, former Polish President Lech Wałęsa stated that, as a result of this decree, he would cease to wear a badge bearing the Ukrainian flag, and for the same reason, the Ukrainian flag – which had been flying there since 2022 alongside the flags of Poland and the EU – was removed from the town hall in Lublin, Poland.
On 2 June, Krzysztof Bosak, Deputy Speaker of the Polish Sejm, called for Ukraine’s accession to the EU to be blocked until Kyiv “renounces the cult of criminals and unblocks all exhumations” of the victims of the Volhynia tragedy.
On 19 June, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state honour — the Order of the White Eagle. Following this, Presidents Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko all declined the order. The Head of the Presidential Office, Kirill Budanov, Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga and former Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman have also declined their other Polish honours.
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