Zelensky is returning a Polish order to Poland after Poland’s President Nawrocki stripped him of the decoration for having revived the memory of a Ukrainian militia that murdered 100,000 Poles and Jews during the Second World War. In doing so, Zelensky is escalating the diplomatic crisis between Ukraine and Poland.

“We believed that the Order of the White Eagle had been awarded to the Ukrainian people and to our army in 2023. That is what was said at the time. Today I sent the medal back to the President of Poland,” Zelenskyy writes in a post on Telegram.

He has attached photographs showing the decoration being packed into a parcel for shipment to the neighbouring country to the north-west.

Zelensky recently named a Ukrainian special unit after the Second World War militia. This reopened old wounds for the Poles, and Nawrocki responded by stripping Zelensky of the Polish order.

But Zelensky is not prepared to accept that. He relativises history.

“Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful forms of interaction with Poland in an effort to prevent differing interpretations of the complicated and painful parts of our peoples’ past, and to ensure mutual respect for all innocent victims of the twentieth century,” Zelensky further writes.

The very notion that there are different interpretations of a massacre of 80,000–100,000 people is the definition of revisionism.

This matter has the potential to damage Zelensky’s reputation not only in Poland.

Has all the support and all the money gone to the heads of the clique in Kyiv?

Zelenskyy has acquired greater striking power with drones deep inside Russia. They have also succeeded in halting the Russian advance in Donbas. But if this is translated into a revival of the ghosts of the past, Kyiv may be miscalculating.

This is a tradition with which Europeans want nothing to do.