Speaking before a Cabinet meeting in Warsaw, Tusk said his government was working to limit the damage caused by a series of recent decisions that have strained relations between the two neighbours.
"I am fully aware of how easy it is today to inflame anti-Polish sentiment in Ukraine and anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland, and how this can bring a short-term domestic political benefit," Tusk said.
"Regardless of what opinion polls may say, and bearing in mind Poland's strategic security and national interest, I will not contribute in any way to escalating this tension," he added.
Tusk said Poland's long-term interest lay in building "the best possible relations based on a vision of the future, not on traumas of the past," while acknowledging that historical grievances, "particularly on the Polish side," were legitimate.
Tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv have intensified in recent days after Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky of Poland's highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle, amid a dispute over the legacy of the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
The decision followed Ukraine's naming of a military unit after the "Heroes of the UPA," a nationalist force that Poland holds responsible for the wartime massacres of tens of thousands of its citizens in the Volhynia and eastern Galicia regions of what was then German-occupied Poland.
Poland set to host Ukraine Recovery Conference
The row comes just days before the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026), a major international gathering scheduled to take place in the Polish Baltic city of Gdańsk on Thursday and Friday.
Tusk stressed the importance of continued cooperation between the two countries, saying Poland had helped prepare around 200 agreements and memorandums for the conference, including many directly involving Polish and Ukrainian companies.
"We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars," Tusk said. "These are not Polish government funds, but money that will also be spent by Polish companies in Ukraine after the war."
He said it was in the interests of both countries to ensure that cooperation continued despite political disagreements.
Referring indirectly to the ongoing dispute, Tusk quoted the late Polish statesman Władysław Bartoszewski, a former foreign minister and a survivor of the Nazi German Auschwitz death camp, who said that "it is worth being decent, even if it does not always pay."
"In Polish-Ukrainian relations, both sides should know that it is worth being decent," Tusk said. "And in this case, it also pays off."
The prime minister added that the reconstruction conference would proceed regardless of political tensions.
"No matter who is making our work more difficult at the moment in Warsaw or Kyiv, this conference will take place," he said.
PM to lead Ukrainian delegation in Gdańsk
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced that she would lead Ukraine's delegation to the conference, appearing to confirm that Zelensky would not attend.
"I will head the Ukrainian delegation and our work at URC 2026 in Gdańsk," Svyrydenko wrote on social media.
She said the delegation would include business leaders, executives of state-owned companies, representatives of local communities, as well as government and parliamentary officials.
She added that numerous meetings were planned at different levels to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine, Poland and their European partners.
Diplomatic sources had earlier indicated that Zelensky was still weighing whether to travel to Poland. Commentators linked his hesitation to the dispute over the withdrawal of the Polish Order of the White Eagle, which the Ukrainian leader received in 2023 from then-President Andrzej Duda.
Nawrocki warns Ukraine over EU accession
In a statement on Friday, Nawrocki warned Ukraine that its path toward European accession "requires a willingness to honestly confront the difficult chapters of its own history."
He said: "A united Europe was built on the rejection of totalitarianism and the cult of violence. For those who do not understand this, there can be no place in the European Union, and Poland will certainly not allow it."
On June 15, Ukraine opened the first phase of accession talks with the European Union, marking a key step in Kyiv's long-term effort to join the bloc as it continues to defend itself against Russia's invasion.
The historical dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv focuses on the legacy of the UPA, a nationalist force that fought for Ukrainian independence during and after World War II.
Many Ukrainians regard UPA members as national heroes for resisting both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and for their role in Ukraine's struggle for independence.
In Poland, however, the group is widely associated with the Volhynia massacres, a campaign of ethnic violence in 1943-1945 in which Polish authorities say about 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists.
Tensions over the wartime killings have periodically strained relations between Warsaw and Kyiv, despite Poland's strong political and military support for Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
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Source: IAR, PAP, polskieradio24.pl
Click on the audio player above for a report by Marcin Matuszewski.