President Volodymyr Zelensky’s official aircraft returned to Krakow from Chisinau early on Tuesday, capping a series of foreign visits that deliberately circumvented Poland. Flight tracking data, closely scrutinised in Moscow, showed the Ukrainian leader travelling to a Nordic-Baltic summit in Tallinn via Moldova rather than through the usual logistics hub at Rzeszow, a notable snub to Warsaw. The rerouting follows a decision that has caused deep offence in a country that has served as Kyiv’s most vital European supply line and diplomatic champion since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Viewed from Warsaw, the affront is visceral. The trigger was the Ukrainian parliament’s move to name a military brigade after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War Two nationalist force remembered in Poland for the 1943–44 massacres of tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. For many Poles, the UPA’s legacy is not one of liberation but of mass killing, and the honour has reopened wounds that even the shared existential threat from Moscow has never fully healed. German-language analysts in Zurich note that bilateral relations have sunk to their lowest point since February 2022, as historical grievances resurface with an intensity that alarms Western allies.

The dispute has spilled into Poland’s domestic arena, amplifying its sensitivity. When a deputy science minister of Ukrainian descent described UPA fighters as “resilient soldiers” who fought for freedom from the Soviet Union, opposition lawmakers accused the government of tolerating historical revisionism. The parliamentary uproar underscores how the memory of the Volhynia tragedy remains a political fault line in Polish society, one that can be easily exploited by populist voices at a time when national solidarity behind Ukraine is already showing fatigue.

From Kyiv’s perspective, such honours are part of a broader state-building effort to forge a unifying identity by celebrating all forms of anti-Soviet resistance, a narrative that resonates powerfully amid the current war. Yet capitals in Washington and London observe these moves with unease, concerned that the cultural politics of memory risk fracturing the coalition that keeps Ukraine armed and solvent. Moscow’s state media, meanwhile, have eagerly amplified each twist of the row, framing it as proof of innate friction within the Western camp—though Russia’s own historical manipulation of Ukrainian nationalism is rarely mentioned in such reports.

As the war grinds on, the incident illustrates how Europe’s unresolved twentieth-century traumas can suddenly intrude upon present-day security architecture. Both Warsaw and Kyiv appear reluctant to escalate the rhetoric further, but without a credible, sustained reconciliation effort—perhaps through a joint historians’ commission—such cracks offer dangerous opportunities for the Kremlin to weaken an alliance that remains Ukraine’s lifeline.