Watch: Inside the deepest diplomatic crisis between Poland and Ukraine

Published on

09/06/2026 - 9:07 GMT+2

Politics is about symbols and this time was no different.

A recent military designation has sparked a major diplomatic crisis between Warsaw and Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named an elite special operations unit after "UPA Heroes" to honour their modern battlefield performance. In response, Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced intentions to strip Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state award, the Order of the White Eagle.

For Poland, the UPA, or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, is responsible for a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing in the 1940s that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia (known as Volyn in Ukrainian and Wołyń in Polish), a historic region with deep Polish and Ukrainian roots. This violence also systematically targeted Jewish survivors who had escaped the Holocaust.