Three former Ukrainian presidents have renounced the Order of the White Eagle in protest after Polish officials revoked the state decoration previously awarded to current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n
Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, and Petro Poroshenko announced their decision to return the highest Polish state decoration following the move by Karol Nawrocki to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the honor. The former leaders stated they view the decision as a strike against both the Ukrainian president and the Ukrainian state.<\/p>\n
Leonid Kuchma, who received the order in 1997, declared he could no longer hold the decoration. He emphasized his historical efforts to foster Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation alongside former Polish President Aleksander Kwa\u015bniewski, specifically referencing their 2003 commitment to forgiveness.<\/p>\n
Viktor Yushchenko stated that the Order of the White Eagle was not merely a personal honor, but a symbol of respect for the Ukrainian nation currently fighting against Russian aggression. He argued that the revocation of Zelenskyy’s award transcends a personal dispute and impacts the broader relationship between the two nations.<\/p>\n
Petro Poroshenko offered even sharper criticism, labeling the decision by Karol Nawrocki as harmful to Ukrainian society. Poroshenko noted that the move was welcomed by Dmitry Medvedev, suggesting that the Kremlin benefits from any action that weakens Ukrainian-Polish cooperation.<\/p>\n
The wave of renunciations followed President Zelenskyy’s own decision to return his Order of the White Eagle. Karol Nawrocki justified his action by citing the naming of a Ukrainian military unit after the UPA, which he deemed incompatible with Poland\u2019s historical memory of the Volhynia massacre.<\/p>\n
The protest has since expanded to other senior officials. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Chief of Staff Andrii Yermak, his deputy Ihor Zhovkva, and Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar have all announced they are surrendering their Polish state honors in solidarity with the decision to strip Zelenskyy of the award.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three former Ukrainian presidents have renounced the Order of the White Eagle in protest after Polish officials revoked the state decoration previously awarded to current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Kravchuk, Yushchenko, and Poroshenko Reject Polish Honors Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, and Petro Poroshenko announced their decision to return the highest Polish state decoration following the move […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-and-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}