The relationship between Poland and Ukraine is one of those relationships that cannot be simply defined by the words “allies” or “neighbors.” It represents a very complicated relationship. It involves the memory of a painful past, economic interests, domestic politics, and, above all, the conviction that the security and existence of one country is directly related to the security and existence of the other.

I. Poland: Ukraine's most stable ally in Europe
After February 24, 2022, the day of Putin's Russia's military invasion of Ukraine, Poland was among the countries that stood most strongly by Ukraine. It opened its borders to refugees, made its territory available as a vital corridor for Western aid, especially from the United States.

Poland provided weapons, economic aid, and political capital to Ukraine. In many European capitals there was much reluctance to help. In the Polish government and people there was none at all. Poland understood from the beginning what several other European countries later recognized: the war in Ukraine was not just Ukraine’s war. Its outcome would determine the security architecture of Eastern Europe for years to come, and, in particular, Poland’s own security.
Precisely for this reason, the disagreements that followed between the two countries were strongly perceived in Warsaw.

The Polish expectation was understandable: a country that had done so much for Ukraine expected the president of this country to show special sensitivity to the interests of the Polish people, their concerns, and Poland's history.

II. Wheat: an economic problem that Zelensky read very politically
The clash over agricultural products was perhaps the first serious signal that the period of unconditional solidarity was over.
The war changed the traditional routes of Ukrainian exports. The European Union opened its markets and corridors to Ukrainian products, an understandable decision in the conditions of Russian aggression.
But some of the Ukrainian production did not simply transit through neighboring countries. It entered their markets and put pressure on domestic prices.
In Poland, this directly affected the country's farmers. For Kiev, the issue was the survival of an economy at war. For the Polish farmer, it was the survival of his farm.

Both sides are right. Both concerns are real. And that's where the problem began. Ukrainian President Zelensky and his government, at times, did not sufficiently recognize this distinction.
When Poland decided to protect its market and Ukraine reacted, taking the matter to the World Trade Organization, Zelensky could have legal and economic arguments.

But politically, his decision was wrong. Ukraine was not facing a neutral or adversary state. It was facing a vital ally, a country that made territory, infrastructure, weapons, diplomacy, and a significant portion of its political capital available to Ukraine.
Diplomacy requires the ability to understand that not every battle that can be fought legally is worth opening politically. Zelensky and his government could have sought a solution for Ukraine's exports by negotiating directly with the friendly Polish government. And surely an understanding would have been reached. But Zelensky did not do so. This was his first serious mistake.

III. Accusations at the UN about Ukraine's most constant ally in Europe?!
In September 2023, at the UN General Assembly, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about several European countries that were turning the wheat issue into a “political theater” and helping, even indirectly, Moscow. Poland was not mentioned by name.
No one in Warsaw had much doubt about who the message was aimed at. Zelenskiy erred not necessarily in his right to oppose a Polish policy, but in the tone, place, and manner in which he did so.
Opposing a decision or agricultural policy of Warsaw is one thing. Creating the impression that Poland, a country that from the beginning had been among the strongest European voices against Putin's aggression in Ukraine, was contributing to Moscow's game, is something else entirely.
In Poland, the message was perceived roughly like this: we are helping Ukraine militarily, politically, and economically, while the Ukrainian president criticizes us from the podium of the United Nations!
For Zelensky, who had successfully used public diplomacy to mobilize the West after Putin's Russia's aggression, this was a moment when the same weapon was misused against a strong and enduring ally of Ukraine.

In relations between friends, there are issues that are better resolved at the table than on public podiums. Public pressure that might work against hesitant countries was not necessarily the right instrument for Ukraine against Poland.
IV. Border protests: Zelensky lacked sensitivity to Polish reality
Protests by Polish farmers and agricultural transporters at the border further deepened the disputes.
From the Ukrainian perspective, blocking the border in a time of war seemed unjust and potentially dangerous. Any disruption to supplies and trade had real consequences for a country fighting for its survival. This concern was completely understandable.
But here, again, Zelensky made a tactical mistake: he read the problem almost exclusively through the Ukrainian reality, and not through the Polish reality. The Polish farmer did not experience the crisis every day, through the map of the front in Donbas. He saw the price of grain, production costs, loans, family income and competition. The Polish transporter thought about his contracts and market. For an ordinary Polish citizen, foreign policy and household economy are not the same thing.
And no Polish government, left or right, could indefinitely ignore these social groups of great importance to the country, demanding that every cost be justified by the need to help Ukraine.
Zelensky seems to have belatedly grasped this reality: support for Ukraine does not override Poland's domestic politics. A country can want Ukraine to win and, at the same time, protect its own farmers, transporters, and businesses. There is nothing contradictory here.
IV. UPA: the major mistake that Poland could not pass over in silence
If disputes over grain, trade, or transportation can be negotiated and resolved through technical agreements, history is much more difficult. History touches identity. It touches families. It touches graves. And it touches the way a nation sees itself and its victims.
For this very reason, President Zelensky's decision this year to award a Ukrainian special forces unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA" was, in relations with Poland, a much more serious mistake than the previous economic disagreements.

For Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA, is associated, in part, with the struggle for independence, resistance against Soviet rule, and the attempt to create a Ukrainian state. This is an element of Ukrainian historical memory and cannot be denied. Both countries are centuries-old enemies of chauvinist Russia, of the Tsars, of the Soviet dictatorship, and of Putin today.
However, a state that aims to build a strategic partnership with its neighbors cannot build a policy of national memory by only looking at history from its own perspective.
For Poland, the UPA has a completely different meaning. It is directly related to the massacres of the Polish civilian population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War II. For many Polish families, it is not about an abstract debate among historians. It is about people killed, families destroyed, villages destroyed, and graves that still remain part of a painful collective memory today.
In Polish institutional memory, the Volhynia massacres occupy an extremely important place, and the Polish Parliament has described them as genocide. As they truly are.
In this context, naming a Ukrainian military unit “Heroes of the UPA” could not be seen in Warsaw as simply an internal Ukrainian choice. When a symbol you choose to honor your army is associated, in the memory of your neighbor and one of your most important allies, with the mass murder of its citizens, the issue ceases to be solely yours.
Here Zelensky should have shown much more sensitivity. Since February 2022, Ukraine has received extraordinary political, military, humanitarian and social support from Poland. Zelensky himself was honored by Poland with the Order of the White Eagle, the highest decoration of the Polish state. And this was not a protocol decoration. It was a symbol.
A sign of the highest respect that the Republic of Poland gave to a foreign leader and, through him, an expression of Polish solidarity with the Ukrainian people, in their most difficult moment.
It is for this reason that Polish President Karol Nawrocki's decision to strip Zelenski of the Order of the White Eagle makes sense.
In my opinion, this is a fair position. Zelensky can choose the symbols he wants for Ukraine and its army. Meanwhile, the President of Poland is not obliged to continue to award the highest Polish honor to a head of state who takes an action perceived by a large part of Polish society as insulting and denigrating the memory of tens of thousands of their murdered compatriots. State decoration is not a right acquired forever.
If the symbolism of the recipient's actions directly conflicts with what the decoration represents, the awarding state has the right to react. And the Polish President did just that.
He could choose the easier diplomatic path. He could make a critical statement, send a message to Kiev, and close the matter with the familiar argument that "we should not give Moscow the pleasure of seeing Poland and Ukraine quarrel."
Such an approach would have created another, even bigger problem. It would have created the mistaken idea that, because Ukraine is fighting against Russia, the countries that support it should remain silent, even when fundamental issues of their national memory and dignity are seriously affected.
The Polish president rejected this logic. And it is here that the stoicism of the Polish position clearly emerges. Nawrocki did two things at once.

On the one hand, it gave Zelensky an extremely strong signal about his actions with the UPA, by stripping him of Poland's highest decoration. On the other hand, it did not equate Zelensky with Ukraine and did not equate this serious dispute with Poland's strategic interest.
Ukrainian President Zelensky, in certain positions, seems like a loyal disciple of George Soros and an ideal friend of the Soros brothers Rama and Vučić. This is also the source of his pro-Serbian and anti-Albanian stance towards Kosovo, clearly expressed recently in his visit to Serbia a few days ago and in his meeting with Vučić (in the article of Tuesday, August 11, 2026, entitled "Behind the scenes of the anti-Albanian pact Soros-Rama-Vučić-Zelensky, how the war bargains turned into a geopolitical blow to the Albanian issue", the newspaper "Sot" has a very integral analysis of this Sorosian report).
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For all the disagreements so far, due to Zelensky's mistakes, not clearly reading the internal situation in Poland and its painful history, similar to the painful history of the Ukrainian people themselves, in the cases of the Red Army massacres, Poland chose to say: We will continue to support Ukraine against Russian aggression.
And at the same time, with great strength and dignity, Poland also chose to take a stand: We will protect our farmers. We will not be silent about our history, because Ukraine is at war.
These two positions will coexist. Poland's strategic interest remains a free, sovereign Ukraine capable of resisting Russia. Just as Ukraine's strategic interest remains to ensure in its relations with Poland that this very important ally for its struggle and resistance remains respected and understood.
Ukraine had and continues to have great needs for Poland. It needs its territory and infrastructure, its political support, its military cooperation, and its weight within NATO and the European Union. Poland is the fourth largest economy in the European Union and the country with the highest defense contribution from NATO countries, compared to its GDP. Poland represents the pillar of NATO in Eastern Europe.
And, in perspective, it is the most supportive country on Ukraine's path to integration into the European Union.