Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not attend the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026) in Gdańsk on June 25–26, The Guardian reported on June 23. First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko will lead Ukraine's delegation instead.

The decision follows an escalating row between Kyiv and Warsaw over historical memory. On June 19, Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked Zelenskyy's Order of the White Eagle — Poland's highest state honor — because Ukraine had named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War II organization that remains deeply divisive in Polish historical consciousness, according to Reuters and AP News. The next day, Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials returned their own Polish decorations in response — a move that effectively shut down any possibility of quiet resolution, Al Jazeera reported.

The Historical Split

The core issue sits at the intersection of how two nations remember the same period. During 1943–44, the UPA carried out mass killings of ethnic Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Polish historians and the Polish state classify these events as genocide. Ukrainian historiography and politics tend to emphasize the UPA's role fighting Soviet and Nazi occupation, downplaying or contextualizing the killings of Polish civilians. This interpretive gap has never been resolved between the governments, and it resurfaces whenever either side uses symbolic gestures — military unit names, decorations, commemorations — that invoke the UPA.

BBC News first reported Warsaw's threat to revoke the honor on June 10; Nawrocki acted nine days later. The speed of escalation — from threat to revocation to reciprocal return of awards in under two weeks — reflects how thin the political tolerance has become on this issue.

Conference Impact and the Signaling Problem

The reconstruction agenda itself is substantive and insulated from the bilateral dispute. Poland and Ukraine have lined up pledges from the EU, the G7, and international financial institutions to discuss infrastructure, energy, and private investment frameworks. Svyrydenko, who manages Ukraine's economic policy, is well-positioned to negotiate these technical matters. Ukraine needs hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, and donor countries have strong reasons to keep that machinery running regardless of Polish-Ukrainian tensions.

But international conferences operate on two tracks at once: the technical work and the message it sends. The URC is designed to signal to the world that Ukraine has international backing for its future. Zelenskyy's physical presence has been central to that message at previous editions. His absence does not prevent the funding conversations, but it creates an opening for critics to argue the West is disorganized, and it complicates Poland's position as co-host of an event meant to project unity.

For Nawrocki, the timing reveals a tension between competing pressures. Polish public opinion on the Volhynia killings is intense; a newly elected president had little political space to accept the UPA unit-naming without a visible pushback. But acting six days before a conference Poland is co-hosting appears to have underestimated how quickly Kyiv would respond in kind—or alternatively, reflected a judgment that domestic credibility mattered more than conference optics.

Zelenskyy's decision to stay home rather than appear under these conditions follows similar logic. Attending Gdańsk with the Order of the White Eagle publicly revoked and his own decorations returned home would look like acceptance of terms his government has rejected. The relationship's trajectory now hinges on whether either capital views this standoff as tenable over a longer reconstruction period, when Polish political will, transport corridors, and bilateral trust will carry real operational weight.