San Francisco Frontiers - Zelensky to skip key Ukraine conference in Poland over WWII row

The annual event -- which kicks off on Thursday in Gdansk -- is due to gather business leaders and officials to discuss the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, but has been overshadowed by weeks of squabbling over historical memory.

Poland's nationalist president Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of Warsaw's highest honour -- the White Eagle Order -- last week.

That escalated tensions triggered when the Ukrainian president named a military unit after the WWII Ukrainian UPA insurgent army -- seen in Poland as war criminals responsible for the massacre of thousands of Poles in western Ukraine's Volyn region.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Tuesday that she would lead Ukraine's delegation at the conference, effectively confirming that Zelensky would not attend the event.

In Ukraine, many see the UPA partisans as heroes who fought for independence against Soviet, Nazi and Polish rule.

Zelensky symbolically returned the Polish award over the weekend and -- in a show of solidarity -- his predecessors Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko also sent theirs back.

Over the weekend, the Ukrainian leader accused Poland's political class of trying to score "political points" domestically and accused them of fuelling anti-Ukrainian sentiment.

Poland has been one of Ukraine's main allies during the Russian invasion, now in its fifth year, taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and turning into a logistics hub for western support for Kyiv.

But there have been several waves of disputes between Kyiv and Warsaw over the WWII legacy.

On Tuesday, before Svyrydenko's announcement, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk -- at loggerheads with the country's nationalist president on a number of fronts -- sought to defuse the tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv.

"I will not in any way lend a hand to stoking this tension," Tusk told reporters.

"I am also counting on the fact that on both the Polish and the Ukrainian side there will be more people who will be able to stand up to these moods and emotions, and who will lead both Poland and Ukraine toward the future."

- 'We are defending Poland' -

Previously held in Rome, Berlin and Lugano in Switzerland, the Ukraine Recovery Conference has become a high-profile event to boost support for Kyiv.

Poland has presented its hosting of the conference as an economic and political win -- hoping its businesses will be in a good position to get lucrative deals in Ukraine when the war ends.

The event was also meant to solidify Warsaw's position as Kyiv's neighbour and ally, with Poland saying it wanted a seat at a table at eventual settlement talks and worried it will be sidelined by western European countries.

Despite being an ally of Ukraine, Tusk has said the blame for the diplomatic crisis lies with Kyiv and called on Zelensky to reverse his decision to name the military unit after the UPA.

Poland's demand fuelled fury in Ukraine.

"We are defending Poland, we are defending Europe right now, not the other way around. Our fighters are defending it, and Ukrainians are dying," Zelensky told Ukrainian media Sunday.

- 'Political points' -

Zelensky said fighters had asked him to name their unit after the UPA and that he had signed similar decrees "hundreds of times during the war".

"I've never told them (soldiers) what I like or don't like," he said.

The legacy of the UPA as an anti-Soviet force has been revived within the Ukrainian army as they fight off Russian invaders.

Both Warsaw and Moscow have criticised the trend, seeing the insurgents as war criminals and Nazi collaborators.

Zelensky has accused Polish politicians of trying to gain domestically from the spat, ahead of parliamentary elections next year.

"You radicalise society and where will this social hatred lead? To ratings. This is a political struggle that can end badly," Zelensky said.

Poland is home to over 1.5 million Ukrainians -- both refugees who came after 2022 and economic migrants.

In recent weeks, there have been a string of anti-Ukrainian incidents in Poland.

P.Adams--SFF