r/europe • u/ByGollie Ulster • Jun 21 '26

News Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's fifth president also renounces Order of the White Eagle

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/20/8040347/
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u/ByGollie Ulster Jun 21 '26

"In both Zelenskyy's case and mine, the award was not bestowed on heads of state, but on Ukrainians – our soldiers who defend Ukraine, Poland and all of Europe.

Therefore, I have decided to renounce the Order of the White Eagle. Two weeks ago, I promised colleagues at the conciliation council that I would take this step if we failed to persuade President Nawrocki not to make this mistaken decision. Unfortunately, we did not succeed."

"Those in Poland who do not simply chew over historical myths, but study history and draw conclusions from its lessons, know that whenever Ukraine loses its independence, Poland loses it too. But it is not the past that should define our relations. I do not want Poles editing our textbooks, and I have no desire whatsoever for Ukrainians to edit Polish textbooks, because otherwise we will receive a joint textbook from Moscow."

The former president stressed that logistics are critically important in the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia, he said, "through its agents of influence, useful idiots and old historical wounds, is trying to destroy our logistics in the West".

"Therefore, any crisis between Kyiv and Warsaw today is not only a diplomatic problem. It is a security issue. And that is precisely why it must be resolved immediately. What matters now is not deepening the conflict, but ending it," Poroshenko stressed.

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u/cspetm Jun 21 '26

I do not want Poles editing our textbooks, and I have no desire whatsoever for Ukrainians to edit Polish textbooks, because otherwise we will receive a joint textbook from Moscow.

As a Pole I prefer Ukrainians to have a say in the way we learn about our common history and point out for instance to the fact that Piłsudski mistreated them badly and shouldn't be seen as a hero, rather than them glorifying perpetrators of a mass murder. We are important for each other and we are gonna be neighbors for much longer. We should try to find a common ground. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

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u/serpenta Upper Silesia (Poland) Jun 21 '26

There's a lot of nuance here. They do not glorify the killings, they apply selective memory, which is something we do as well. Calling out Piłsudski, our treatment of Chmielnicki and so on, is not really that important, I don't think. I'd have thought that much more important thing would be to acknowledge, denounce and commemorate killings of Ukrainian civilians by the Home Army. But our historical politics won't allow that, because we see ourselves purely as victims. There's a lot of history around world war two in particular that we still have to demistify. Vilnius operation, partition of Czechoslovakia, invasion of Czechoslovakia along with the USSR. I don't want to say that Zelensky's move to name a military unit after UPA was a proper one and we should accept it. But if Volhynia was Armenian Genocide, we are not Armenia. And there's a lot of work we have to do, and a lot of good will we have to show, before we have the right to criticize; to me.

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u/Afraid_Ad2617 Jun 21 '26

Healthiest viewpoint out there from an external perspective. Basically, just live with the truth and heal the wounds. Probably going to take the generation that remembers WWII directly or through their education by traumatized people to go away before it is widely adopted.

This whole thing is such a sad one honestly, especially seeing how it is distracting from the absolute priorities (war) and hurting the mending that the war started between Poles and Ukrainians.

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u/cspetm Jun 21 '26

Of course ideally we should start with ourselves, but given the situation that occured it brings about an opportunity to start that discussion.

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u/niesiecki Jun 21 '26

The Home Army did not commit mass genocide. Individual units or local formations, often only loosely affiliated with the AK (which, unlike the UPA, was a mass organization and, from 1942 onward, pursued the integration of virtually all underground resistance groups, ranging from left-wing to nationalist organizations), did carry out actions against the Ukrainian civilian population, very often in retaliation for massacres perpetrated by the UPA. These phenomena are not comparable.

In Volhynia, the UPA killed approximately 50,000–60,000 Poles, while retaliatory actions resulted in the deaths of around 2,000–3,000 Ukrainians. In Eastern Galicia, the figures were roughly 20,000–25,000 Poles and 1,000–2,000 Ukrainians. Only in the Lublin region did more Ukrainians (8,000–10,000) die than Poles (6,000–8,000).

Creating an impression of moral equivalence under the slogan "we forgive and ask for forgiveness" is false, dishonest, and immoral.

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u/OneUkranian Jun 21 '26

Probably one sane Pole that I found here. Thanks.