Former Polish lawmaker returns state honor in protest over Zelensky's award revocation
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Former Polish lawmaker Piotr Fogler said on June 20 that he had returned his state honor, the Golden Cross of Merit, in protest over Polish President Karol Nawrocki's decision to strip President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle.
"I am symbolically returning my decoration to this president in protest against the foolish decision to take the order away from the President of Ukraine, a Ukraine that is fighting," Fogler wrote on Facebook.
Zelensky was presented with the award, Poland's highest state honor, in 2023 by then-President Andrzej Duda.
Fogler said his gesture was not directed at the president who originally awarded him the honor, whom he said he respects, but at the current head of state. He accused Nawrocki of increasingly "making a mockery of Poland and all of us."
"What he has done and continues to do is a nightmare," Fogler added.
The development comes amid a growing diplomatic dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv over historical memory and Zelensky's recent decision to rename a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk cautioned against further escalation, calling the continued involvement of Polish and Ukrainian politicians in the controversy a "strategic mistake" that would harm both countries.
Nawrocki revoked Zelensky's honorary Order of the White Eagle on June 19 following criticism in Poland over the Ukrainian president's decision to name the military unit after the UPA.
The World War II-era organization fought for Ukraine's independence but is remembered in Poland primarily for its role in the Volyn massacres, during which tens of thousands of Polish civilians were killed in what remains one of the most painful chapters in Polish-Ukrainian history.
The decision has fueled political tensions in both countries, prompting several Ukrainian officials and public figures to return Polish state honors in protest and drawing warnings that the dispute risks benefiting Moscow.
Former Ukrainian Presidents Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005), Viktor Yuschenko (2005-2010), and Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019) announced on June 20 that they, too, would renounce their Order of the White Eagle honors.
