Poland has explained why the order stripped from Zelenskyy is still held by Mussolini, Catherine II and Schröder, the ‘Kremlin’s friend’
As Agnieszka Jędrzak, Minister in the Office of the President of Poland, wrote, he is included in the first two categories because honours are not revoked posthumously.
As for the former German Chancellor, known for his close ties with Russia, he “has never insulted the Polish nation as openly as the President of Ukraine has, although his activities in support of Putin’s Russia should indeed be condemned as harmful to Poland and Europe,” says Jędrzak.
“During Schröder’s time in office, no monuments honouring Hitler or Himmler were erected in Germany. No unit of the Bundeswehr was named after ‘SS heroes’,” she added.
The scandal surrounding the naming of the Special Operations Centre
On 26 May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree conferring the honorary title ‘in the name of 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 no longer 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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