Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that he had returned a state decoration to Poland, one day after the Polish president announced he was stripping him of the award over a dispute concerning events from the Second World War.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki said on Friday that he had revoked the medal awarded to Zelensky in 2023, after the Ukrainian president renamed a military unit in honour of Ukrainian wartime rebels accused of carrying out massacres against Poles.
The dispute over the role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army threatens to deepen the diplomatic rift between the two close strategic partners at a time when Kyiv is rallying its allies to pressure Russia into ending its war on Ukraine.
Zelensky wrote on X: "We believed that the Order of the White Eagle, awarded in 2023, was directed at the Ukrainian people and our army. That is what was said at the time."
He added: "Today, I have returned the decoration to the president of Poland."
Zelensky posted a photo of the decoration being placed in a box and sent to the office of the Polish president.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political opponent of Nawrocki, urged both leaders to remain calm.
Some Ukrainians regard the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as heroes for their resistance to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and as symbols of Kyiv's struggle for independence from Moscow.
However, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was also implicated in the Volhynia massacres — a series of killings that took place between 1943 and 1945 — which Poland says were carried out by Ukrainian nationalists who killed around 100,000 Poles. Thousands of Ukrainians also lost their lives in retaliatory killings.