When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, Poland did something that will go down in European history. It opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees, opened its territory to transports of humanitarian and military assistance and, by 2023, had given Ukraine a third of its own military hardware.
Four and a half years into the war, that moment feels distant. Old historical wounds have reopened between the two countries, chief among them the Volhynia massacres.
During the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalists carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign in western Ukraine's Volhynia region. Before the war, the territory had belonged to Poland, but was under German occupation at the time of the killings. Polish civilians, Jews, and Czechs were massacred by forces of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) with the goal of establishing an ethnically homogeneous, independent Ukrainian state.
In a 2025 declaration issued by Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the government said it “shares the pain and grief of the Polish people” and acknowledged “the sensitivity of the Volyn tragedy in Polish society.” However, it stopped short of explicitly recognising that the UPA organised the massacres. Instead, it described the events as “a tragedy of two nations” and continues to portray the UPA as a national liberation movement that fought for Ukrainian independence against both Soviet and Nazi occupation.
This is where the diplomatic blow-up began: in May, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy renamed one of the army's brigades in honour of the “Heroes of the UPA.”
Warsaw saw red – its president Karol Nawrocki, from the conservative PiS party, revoked Zelenskyy's Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest state honour. Zelenskyy's response was ice-cold: he sent the medal back by post.
To understand the deeper rivalry between the two countries, we need to look beyond medals and the weaponisation of history.
Analysts such as Christophe Tymowski, assistant editor at the Revue Militaire Suisse and specialist in Polish affairs, argue that Poland is concerned a Ukraine hardened by four and a half years of war could eventually eclipse Poland's own influence in Central and Eastern Europe and challenge its status as NATO's leading power on the alliance's eastern flank. Should Ukraine join NATO, Warsaw's relative strategic weight could diminish.
Poland is also worried about an agricultural giant like Ukraine further integrating into the European market and competing with Polish farmers, already a major source of tension between the two countries.
Yet Poland still has leverage. First, it can veto Ukraine's membership in the EU and NATO, as well as aid packages and sanctions against Russia. Second, around 80% of the logistics supporting Ukraine pass through Poland. There's no real risk in the short term that Warsaw would threaten to reduce these flows, but they remain a source of pressure.
According to author and Ukraine expert Sébastien Gobert, the recent tensions over Volhynia are more of a pretext than the real reason for Poland's pressure on Ukraine.
With Polish parliamentary elections due in 2027, historical memory and relations with Ukraine are likely to become increasingly prominent campaign issues. The dispute could “poison the political climate and influence the Polish elections, and therefore Warsaw's future policy,” Gobert told The European Correspondent.
It also offers an opportunity for Poland's opposition parties, particularly PiS and its far-right allies, to argue that Poland has received too little in return for its extensive military, financial, and political support for Ukraine.