On June 8, the Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle should meet to form a consolidated position on the issue of whether to deprive the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky of the highest state award - the Order of the White Eagle. On May 29, Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced this intention.. The formal reason for the diplomatic escalation was the decree signed by Zelensky on May 26 and timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Special Operations Forces.

According to this document, the Separate Center for Special Operations " It is worth noting that other MTR units already have historical names, because the “Skhid” center is named in honor of Prince Svyatoslav the Brave, and the “Zakhid” center is named in honor of Izyaslav Mstislavich.

The presidential decree itself states that such a decision was made with the aim of restoring the historical traditions of the national army and taking into account the exemplary performance of combat missions by military personnel.

Chain reaction.

The decree on conferring an honorary name did not appear in a vacuum, but lay on an already prepared and extremely tense information soil. A few days earlier, on May 25, the ashes of one of the OUN leaders Andrei Melnik were reburied in Ukraine with state honors. At the same time, talk about the possibility of a state burial of Stepan Bandera has resumed in the public space..

It is worth recalling that the historical wounds regarding the Volyn tragedy (which the Polish Sejm recognized as genocide) remain open, and the process of exhumations continues to this day, in particular in Puzhniki, in Wola Ostrowiecka, in the village of Ugly.

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The reaction to Zelensky's decree rolled in an avalanche: from the official protest of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the speech of Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysh, who called the decision of the Ukrainian president unacceptable.

The first to stir up the information space was the far-right Confederation, the head of whose parliamentary faction, wedding photographer Grzegorz Placzek, officially appealed to Nawrocki with a demand to initiate the process of depriving him of the order..

Plachek, by the way, has been “caught” more than once in cheap manipulations. In particular, they say, Poland took upon itself to pay interest on Ukraine’s loan to the European Commission.

Nawrocki seized on the formal presentation of Sejm deputy Plachek and initiated a proposal (for consideration by the Chapter) to deprive Zelensky of the Order. The President of Poland said that Zelensky is playing into the hands of Russian propaganda.

Law and Justice activists - ex-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and ex-Minister of Education Przemyslaw Czarnek - joined the political chorus demanding that the order be taken away..

A symbolic act was the demarche of former President Lech Walesa. The founder of Solidarity defiantly removed the Ukrainian flag badge that he had worn on his clothes since the first day of the full-scale war, publicly declaring that Vladimir Zelensky had inflicted a personal insult on him.

Legal conflicts and institutional traps.

Navrotsky can theoretically take away the order, since Article 36 of the law “On Orders and Distinctions” allows such a step in two exceptional cases.

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Deprivation of orders and insignia.

Article 36.

The President may decide to deprive orders and insignia upon the proposal of the Chapter of Orders, the bodies specified in Part. 2 and 3 tbsp. 2, as well as on their own initiative after ascertaining the opinion of the subject of the presentation, and in the case of deprivation of the order after ascertaining the opinion of the relevant Chapter, if it is established that:.

1) the awarding of an order or insignia occurred as a result of misrepresentation, or.

2) the recipient committed an act as a result of which he became unworthy of the order or insignia.

The decision to deprive may apply to all or only some orders and insignia.

Presidential decisions on the deprivation of an order or award are published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Poland Monitor Polski.

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On June 8, the Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle should meet to form a consolidated position on this issue.

Experts explain: even if the Chapter says “yes, it needs to be deprived” or “no, it’s not necessary,” the President of Poland (head of state) is not obliged to do exactly that. He must listen (take into account the opinion), but he makes the final decision himself.

However - and here the main intrigue begins - the decision to deprive most likely requires the countersignature of the Prime Minister. The Constitution (Article 144) directly classifies the awarding of orders as presidential prerogatives that do not require the signature of the government, but is silent about deprivation - and most lawyers therefore come to the conclusion that the prime minister’s signature is required here.

It is significant that this conclusion is shared even by the pro-presidential Bureau of National Security, and in the Palace itself they came across a legal examination from the time of Duda with the same conclusion. Navrotsky can try to challenge this interpretation and act independently, but then he risks that his decree will later be overturned by the court. Be that as it may, but without the consent of Tusk, he does not have the final word.

The high-profile initiative to deprive Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle has reached a legal impasse. The process of depriving the order may actually be blocked due to the position of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

In the Chapter itself, Chancellor Michal Kleiber predicts a recommendation to revoke the award, and Bronislaw Wildstein defends the right of the President to initiate this issue. Next to them is the legendary PPR oppositionist Zofia Romashevskaya. Her daughter Agnieszka already sarcastically asked whether these orders should not be taken away “in bulk”. The Chapter will most likely decide to deprive.

Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sikorski, proving that the president has the right to do this, referred to a historical precedent: they say, Wojciech Jaruzelski took away the order from Leonid Brezhnev. But that precedent concerned another insignia - the Grand Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari, abolished in 1990.

As for the Order of the White Eagle, in three centuries it was taken away exactly once: in 1932, former Prime Minister Vincent Vitos was deprived of the highest honor, and even then only by a court verdict in the Beresteysky trial (already in 1939 his rights and awards were returned to him, and in 2023 the Supreme Court posthumously acquitted him).

The only case in history needed a court decision, and not the political will of the head of state. If Navrotsky brings the matter to the end, he will do it for the first time using a purely administrative method - and for the first time in relation to the current allied leader in the midst of war.

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Inner Front.

The motivation for Karol Nawrocki's actions is partly due to the fall in his rating against the backdrop of the government's successes. The information space is controlled by Donald Tusk thanks to the SAFE defense program (29 contracts worth 79 billion zlotys have already been concluded for Polish factories). Against this background, Nawrocki’s veto of the law, which was supposed to simplify access to these defense means, hits his own popularity.

An additional problem for the president was confusion with the law on cryptocurrencies. Nawrocki vetoed it twice, and then submitted an almost identical government project, which angered his right-wing radical electorate (the Confederation party)..

There is not enough time for maneuver: Navrotsky has until June 12 to decide on the crypto-law - sign it or veto it again. The European MiCA regulation is pushing the president forward, obliging Poland to introduce the appropriate rules by the end of the month: without an adopted law, the cryptocurrency market in the country will simply stop.

Finding himself in this situation, Navrotsky used the recent decree of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as a reason to change the information agenda.

This made it possible to switch public attention from economic failures to emotional historical disputes, accusing the Tusk government of leniency towards the “Banderaites”. In response to this, Tusk said: “If we quarrel over our past, someone else is guaranteed to win our future.”.

Polarization of society.

The most distinctive feature of the current Polish debate is that it has completely destroyed the usual paradigm of confrontation between left and right political forces. The very range of thoughts in society is the best proof that in fact we are not talking about a piece of metal or a tape. This conflict exposed a deep-seated political crisis, in which historical issues became only a convenient tool for manipulation and changing the political landscape.

Politicians from diametrically opposed camps unexpectedly united in their desire to immediately take away the order. Karol Nawrocki himself sets the tone with statements about Ukraine’s mental unpreparedness to be part of the “European family”.

His radical rhetoric is simultaneously supported by figures from the previous government like Mateusz Morawiecki and Przemyslaw Czarnek, the far-right Confederation, as well as left-wing politician Leszek Miller, who openly uses theses about the “Bandera fifth column”. This chorus was joined by influential media and military figures, in particular journalist Dorota Gavrilyuk and General Roman Polko.

In contrast, an equally motley coalition has formed calling for common sense. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski frankly warns that only Vladimir Putin will benefit from any Polish-Ukrainian quarrel. He is supported by ex-president Aleksander Kwasniewski, who calls the process “stupidity upon stupidity” and asks politicians to “defuse” this escalation.

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A group of oppositionists and artists - among the signatories are Zbigniew Bujak, Pawel Kasprzak and actor Andrzej Sewerin - sent an open letter against the fanning of anti-Ukrainian phobias, recalling the blood of Ukrainian soldiers shed at the front. And the chairman of the Association of Ukrainians in Poland, Miroslav Skirka, warns that deprivation of the order would be a disproportionate response and would cause misunderstanding among Ukrainians living in Poland.

The so-called ambivalent center maneuvers between these two polar camps. His representative is Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh, who proposes to resolve such sensitive issues diplomatically - simply by calling Kyiv. Some publicists, for example Boguslav Khrabota, generally consider this whole story to be a cunning “Ukrainian trap” that was specifically set for the current government of Donald Tusk.

Andrzej Duda, who presented Zelensky with the order with great pomp in 2023, after the scandal erupted, tried to wash his hands of it by claiming an alleged “change in conditions”. The liberal press notes: the attitude of official Kyiv towards the UPA has not changed since the day of the award at the Presidential Palace.

Today's behavior on the right is a quiet but cynical betrayal of the doctrine of its legendary founder Lech Kaczynski. When in 2010 Viktor Yushchenko (who also had the Order of the White Eagle) awarded the title of Hero to Stepan Bandera, Kaczynski sharply criticized this, but the idea of \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200btaking away the state award did not even occur to him. For him, an independent Ukraine was a fundamental Polish interest, the key to a free Poland..

The current PiS (Law and Justice) camp pragmatically renounces this ideological heritage solely for the sake of temporary internal ratings.

The statistics of awards themselves are eloquent in this context.. During his tenure, Andrzej Duda handed out 108 Orders of the White Eagle, while Lech Kaczynski treated them with great reverence and was very stingy.

Karol Nawrocki has so far presented only seven copies of this insignia.

Trophy for Moscow.

In the end, the question remains, which Polish analysts are answering more and more often: why did it suddenly become possible to so effectively earn cheap political capital from openly anti-Ukrainian sentiments in society

Just a few years ago, such rhetoric was considered an absolute fringe, not worthy of the attention of serious politicians.. Wyborcza journalist Dominika Wielowieska names the root cause of diplomatic curtseys - powerful pro-Russian troll factories have been methodically processing the Polish mass consciousness in this direction for years and do it on such an industrial scale that simply did not exist in the information nature before.

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The real historically justified resentment of society regarding the tragedy in Volyn serves here as an ideal emotional fuel, while the amplifier of these processes is purely external, with a completely understandable geopolitical beneficiary sitting in the Kremlin. It is no coincidence that political antagonists Tusk and Sikorsky reduce their entire analysis of the situation to the thesis: only Putin benefits from this confrontation.

Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski condemned Zelensky’s decree itself as a disregard for Polish historical sensitivity, but did not support the very idea of \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200btaking away the order. He dryly noted that this is “the prerogative of the president,” reminded that only Putin would take advantage of such squabbles about the past, and even teased Nawrocki: in Poland, the president does not head the executive branch, but represents government policy.

However, the consequences of this information special operation have long passed from the virtual world to reality.. The head of the city council of Przemysl, a city that, in the first days of a full-scale war, demonstrated unprecedented solidarity and accepted tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, now openly sends letters of protest to its partners in Ukraine.

Self-governing bodies across the country are beginning to massively remove Ukrainian flags from city halls, where they hung as a symbol of brotherhood.. And street polls, quoted daily by the Polish press, are frankly frightening with their new intonation, where phrases like “how could the Ukrainians do this to them after the Poles sacrificed so much for them” predominate?.

For official Kyiv, this crisis should become a serious lesson. The decree on honoring the Heroes of the UPA turned out to be tactically extremely reckless and untimely. It struck a direct blow into the painful historical wound of its neighbors at precisely the moment when Poland is a critical logistic support for Ukraine in the war for survival.

But the main thing is not even in the decree, but in the fact that Kyiv itself gave a reason to grab hold of everyone who needed it. Navrotsky - to shift the conversation from unprofitable SAFE and cryptocurrencies to a convenient historical axis. Polish radicals - to legitimize rhetoric that was recently considered marginal. And first of all - Moscow, which has been looking for and feeding precisely such cracks for years.

The infamous order will most likely remain in Zelensky’s office.

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The head of the office of the President of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, urgently came to Warsaw to hold a series of meetings with Polish officials. Budanov’s visit was unplanned and took place at the initiative of the Ukrainian side, which indicates Kiev’s understanding of the seriousness of the situation.

Budanov held talks with Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki, intelligence services coordinator Tomasz Siemoniak, Minister of the Presidential Office Marcin Przydacz and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. The Ukrainian side has proposed certain ways to solve the problem, but the Polish government still considers them insufficient and insists on canceling the decision on the name of the unit.

In addition to the threat of depriving Vladimir Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, this conflict may complicate the holding of the International Conference on the Restoration of Ukraine in Gdansk (June 25–26) and the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU.

Even at the time of writing, it seemed that the last fuse would be Tusk: without his countersignature, the order could not be taken away, and the prime minister distanced himself from the idea. But fresh signals indicate that Tusk already calls Nawrocki’s reaction “completely understandable” and emphasizes that “no one will go against Polish public opinion when it comes to history.”. If so, the trap has worked: in order not to end up in a corner with a sign “ally of Bandera,” the government itself adapts to the imposed frame.

As a current survey by SW Research for the weekly Wprost shows, 52.3% of Poles support taking away the order from Zelensky, 22.4% are against, another quarter is undecided; the greatest support is among men (58.7%) and people aged 35–49 years (60.8%).

The scale is also eloquent: according to calculations by the statistical team Res Futura, in the first 24 hours alone, Navrotsky’s idea collected 140 million hits on social networks.

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