Zelensky last month granted the name "Heroes of the UPA" to the Separate Special Operations Center "North" unit. The decision provoked an immediate backlash in Warsaw.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki has proposed that Zelensky be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle, an honor bestowed on him in 2023 by then-President Andrzej Duda, but no final decision has been taken.
Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper said this week that Poland's anger was fully warranted.
"Zelensky, by conducting politics through historical symbols, leaves no room for distinctions and their associated moral ambiguity," the paper wrote.
The German daily acknowledged that the abbreviation UPA carries sharply different meanings on either side of the border. In Ukraine, the UPA is seen primarily as a partisan force that resisted Stalin's rule after 1945. In Poland, the organization is remembered for the mass killing of tens of thousands of Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine between 1943 and 1945.
The FAZ warned the stakes for Kyiv are high. The dispute risks overshadowing a Ukraine reconstruction conference scheduled for late June in the Polish Baltic city of Gdańsk and could, over time, alienate "one of Ukraine's most important advocates in the EU and NATO."
Polish outrage was "justified, regardless of what political games President Nawrocki is now making of the affair," the paper added.
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Source: PAP